One family’s journey from slavery to the White House

John Wrory Ficklin was 7 when he learned that his father, the son of a slave, was important. It was 1963, and the nation was mourning President John F. Kennedy. Wrory Ficklin was sitting with his mother and brother, watching funeral coverage on TV in the family’s Washington apartment, when she gasped. His father, James Woodson Ficklin, was wearing a morning suit and standing beside Kennedy’s casket with other White House ushers. He was a White House butler at the time, but Kennedy’s widow, Jacqueline, asked that he join the ushers that day.

Woodson Ficklin worked a remarkable 44 years on the White House residence staff. His son, Wrory Ficklin, had a lengthy White House career, too — 40 years on the staff of the National Security Council.

Presidents come and go from the White House every four years or eight years, but the Ficklin family — Woodson Ficklin, his wife, some of his brothers and sisters, and son Wrory Ficklin — was a constant presence there for nearly eight decades, serving 13 presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Barack Obama.

One family by the president’s side for one-third of America’s 250-year existence.

With his 2015 retirement, Wrory became the last Ficklin employed there full time, capping a record of family service documented in his book, “An Unusual Path: Three Generations from Slavery to the White House.”

“The book is my family’s history, it’s African American history and it’s our country’s history,” he told The Associated Press in an interview. “My dad and I both stand on my grandfather’s shoulders, and I like to think that we both contributed a lot to our country.”

The first chapter in what Wrory Ficklin described as a “truly American story” opens with his grandfather, James Strother Ficklin, who was born a slave around 1854 in Rappahannock County, Virginia.

Strother was a water boy for the Confederate army during the Civil War. After emancipation, he did odd jobs for the family that used to own him.

He remarried in 1894 after his first wife died during childbirth, and moved to Youngstown, Ohio, to escape racism in Virginia and earn a living in the booming coal and steel industries. Records showed they returned to Rappahannock some years later, though it was unclear why.

Strother and his second wife, Helen, had saved enough money to buy 37 acres (0.15 square kilometers) of land in Amissville, Virginia, in 1901. He built a house and farmed the land to help feed the family. After Helen died while giving birth, Strother married his third wife, Vallie Lee Davenport, in 1907. They had 10 children - five girls and five boys.

One of those boys was John Woodson Ficklin.

Woodson Ficklin was 15 when he moved to Washington in 1934 to live with an older sister and her husband. He worked odd jobs and went to high school at night, graduating in 1939 - the year an older brother, Charles, began work as a White House butler. Charles Ficklin helped him land a part-time position washing dishes and doing whatever the butlers did not have time to do themselves. Military service during World War II briefly interrupted their White House careers, but they received promotions after they came home, with Charles Ficklin and Woodson Ficklin becoming head butler and butler, respectively. Woodson Ficklin met President Harry Truman and first lady Bess Truman on his second day as a butler when he served the couple breakfast.

New promotions followed under Dwight Eisenhower, with Charles Ficklin becoming maître d’ - the most senior butler - and Woodson Ficklin taking over as head butler, putting him in charge of six full-time butlers.

Woodson Ficklin succeeded his brother again in March 1967, when Charles Ficklin retired.

Woodson Ficklin was now responsible for the planning and execution of White House social events, ranging from luncheons and state dinners to birthday parties and South Lawn barbecues.

There were visits by British royals and the annual round of Christmas parties, the White House wedding of Richard Nixon’s daughter Tricia in 1971, and Gerald Ford’s daughter Susan’s decision to host her senior class prom at the White House.

Along the way, Woodson Ficklin earned the trust and confidence of the presidents and first ladies who relied on his expertise. Some sent thank-you notes after flawlessly executed events.

First lady Patricia Nixon wrote in October 1969 about “the great number of complimentary remarks we receive following each White House social event,” according to a copy of the letter reprinted in the book. “Our family is most grateful to you for the time and interest you devote to make each occasion so enjoyable and memorable for our guests and for us.”

President Jimmy Carter expressed appreciation in a March 1979 letter for the work Woodson Ficklin and his team did surrounding the signing of an Egypt-Israel peace treaty.

“Everything was perfect and we are grateful,” Carter wrote. Woodson Ficklin retired in May 1983. In perhaps the biggest show of appreciation for his 44-year career, the Reagans invited him and his wife, Nancy, to a state dinner that year for the emir of Bahrain.

He is believed to be the first member of the White House residence staff to be a guest at a state dinner, and he became the subject of a media blitz as a result. Woodson Ficklin sat at the first lady’s table and told an interviewer that she “put me at ease and made me feel like a guest.” Asked about the service, he replied, “Those are my boys. I trained them.”

Woodson Ficklin died in December 1984 at 65.

“Seeing my Dad on television was a big deal, and to see him participating in our president’s funeral service was beyond my youthful comprehension,” Wrory Ficklin wrote. He said years passed before he understood “the severity and the importance” of his father’s work.

Yet Wrory Ficklin ended up doing important work at the White House, too, after a summer job during high school delivering sealed envelopes between the White House and the special prosecutor on the Watergate investigation. He also worked for his father in the pantry during state dinners and other big events.

Wrory Ficklin joined the NSC staff in 1975, beginning a 40-year tenure that overlapped with his father and other family members. He started by working evenings as a clerk while attending college during the day and by 1987 was training new staff.

Under Obama, Wrory Ficklin was promoted to special assistant to the president for national security affairs. He retired in 2015 with a special request for his boss, national security adviser Susan Rice: Could he attend a state dinner, like his dad?

Wrory Ficklin and his wife, Patrice, were invited to the 2015 state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping. With some minor alterations, he wore the tuxedo jacket and cummerbund his father wore in 1983. The dinner was the highlight of his career, he said. “Just to experience firsthand the quality of the service, the precision of the butlers, the type of service that they provided, was a legacy to my dad, actually,” Wrory Ficklin said in the interview.

Associated Press