Two years after graduating from Waukegan Township High School, Betty Williams told her mom she was changing jobs from clerk typist at Great Lakes Naval Training Center to a similar position in Washington, D.C. Her mother, Vivian Williams, was disappointed–not with the move but with the position.
“I’ll never forget when I told Mama that I was moving to Washington to work at the Navy Department. She was disappointed. She said, `Why not the White House?’ Back then in Waukegan, when people heard `Washington,’ what they knew was the `White House,’ ” Williams said.
“I had a good life in Waukegan, but I wanted to see more, do more, know more,” she said.
That was 1959. When Bill Clinton was sworn into office in 1993, Betty Currie (nee Williams) could tell her mom that her latest job change put her not only in the White House but also next door to the Oval Office. Currie is the president’s personal secretary.
Ask Currie how she got to the White House, and she says, “Fate had a lot to do with it.” But credentials, friends and co-workers tell another story.
She started learning the government ropes as a typist at Great Lakes right out of high school in 1957. Two years later she was learning the Beltway scene as a secretary in the Navy Department, the U.S. Post Office, then as executive secretary to the director of the Agency for International Development (AID), followed by 12 years as confidential assistant to three successive directors of the Peace Corps/Action Agency.
After 28 years, Currie was ready to leave bureaucracy behind. “I was unhappy and I needed a change,” she said. She took early retirement in 1984, fortuitously the year Water Mondale ran for the White House. Because Curry was no longer in government service, she was free to volunteer as office manager for Mondale’s running mate, Geraldine Ferraro.
Then when a friend asked Currie to join the staff of presidential hopeful Michael Dukakis and running mate Lloyd Bentsen four years later, she was back at the heart of the Democratic run for the office, this time as a paid office manager.
Both being short-term jobs, neither campaign disrupted her family. The first time she was already divorced from husband James Mitchell, whom she had married in 1965. And she had other family nearby to help her daughter, Toni Mitchell (now a staff trainer at AID), who by then had graduated from high school.
Married to Robert Currie for about two years by the time of the second campaign, she noted that Dukakis’ headquarters in Boston was a short flight. “Bob didn’t mind. And unfortunately we lost, so it was a short time away,” she said.
When another Democratic try for the presidency rolled around in 1992, Currie had little heart for the challenge.
“I said, `No way.’ It was too hard to take. They lost the two elections I worked on. But a friend said, `Come on, we need you.’ “
It was not to be another short-term commitment. She moved from office manager in the “War Room,” campaign headquarters, to secretary for the Planning Foundation Committee (precursor of the transition team) to secretary to the transition team, headed by Warren Christopher.
Not that she wanted to leave James Carville’s now famous War Room.
“I did so reluctantly. I was very happy in the War Room. That was excitement itself,” Currie said.
Following the election she was asked to work for Christopher (“whom I adore,” she said) on the transition team.
After about a month and a half, Christopher was appointed secretary of state. Clinton was ready to put together his own staff. Currie was ready to go home. It was not to be.
When Clinton’s personal secretary as governor of Arkansas could not leave Little Rock to go to Washington, his assistant Nancy Hernreich suggested he try Currie for the remaining transition period in Arkansas. Hernreich, whom Clinton asked to be his deputy assistant and director of Oval Office operations, had taken note of Currie on the transition team.
“She was extremely competent and delightful. She assisted in bringing in all the people (considered) for positions. Mr. Christopher was delighted. He found her competent in every way and good with people,” Hernreich said.
Christopher, reflecting on the frenetic period between election and setting up shop in the White House, was not surprised that Hernreich recognized Currie’s management talents.
“Out of the blue in Little Rock, I was assigned Betty Currie as my secretary amid all the chaos,” he said. “I was flabbergasted about her knowledge of Washington and her ability to accomplish amazing things. I felt like I was the luckiest man in town. I was struck by how dedicated and calm Betty remained even in the dislocation of `Campaign Little Rock.’
“I was pleased but not surprised that the president asked her to work with him at the White House,” he said.
Currie was a bit taken aback by the job offer.
“We won this time, so I stayed on. But I was surprised to be asked. I had told them I had retired,” she said.
Asked if she had any thoughts on why she was picked, Currie said, “I knew Washington. I had lived there longer than most people (on Clinton’s staff). I worked as an executive secretary.”
Now that she has worked at the side of what is generally accepted as the most powerful person in the world for more than three years, what does she think of her job? Her boss? All upsides? Any downsides? Does she pinch herself in wonderment?
As she walked from the lobby of the West Wing, past the Roosevelt Room back to her office, Currie acknowledged the awe of working at the White House, where history is constantly being made.
“You can’t help but think about it. I overhear the tour guides taking people through, offering bits of history. And I think about the people who have sat in there and there,” Currie said, nodding toward the Oval Office on one side of her office and gesturing toward the Cabinet Room on the other side.
“I get a thrill out of watching people come in to meet him,” said Currie, who definitely emphasizes the personal pronoun when referring to Clinton.
“They are so in awe of being here, of meeting the president. It makes me realize how important my job is. You forget that when you’re caught up in the daily working here.”
And that means she is not pinching herself. “But I consider it an honor. I feel that I’m making some sort of contribution in my own small way,” Currie said.
Which is?
“You name it, I do it,” she said.
She added, “Each day is different. And almost no day goes according to plan. You start out with schedule A,B,C,D. Then it starts to change. Its A1, A2, B1.”
Because the White House has a secretarial and a scheduling office, Currie is not at Clinton’s side taking dictation or prodding the president to move on to his next appointment. She does, however, use shorthand to make a note of something he wants or when she takes phone messages.
Hers is the calm voice answering “President’s office” to calls from such people as Christopher or House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
And it is the 56-year-old Currie, elegant in her typical uniform of suit or blazer and skirt, pearls and hair pulled back into a chignon, who offers a welcoming smile to visitors on their way into the Oval Office.
Even bigwigs are impressed by where they are, according to Currie. Asked if her job entails much kid-glove handling of egos, she answered, “This office is humbling; I think the egos are left behind.”
South African President Nelson Mandela heads her most-impressed-by list. Another name that came quickly to mind was the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
“They are all nice, nice, nice,” she said.
Asked if she considers meeting newsmakers as one of the perks of her job, she shook her head. “One of the parts of the job,” Currie said.
If it’s beginning to sound like the dream position, there is a downside. “I didn’t think the hours would be so long,” she said.
Typically she arrives about 7:45 a.m. and leaves about 8 p.m. weekdays, if there are no late-breaking press conferences. Saturday morning she’s back covering the office during Clinton’s weekly broadcast, unless he is taping away from the White House. Sunday Currie is more than ready for her day off, although she occasionally has had to hoof it back there.
Sunday is family time. Her mom, sisters Iris Williams and Esther Williams Yarborough and brother Theodore Williams Jr. and their families all live in the Washington area.
“I was the first to come here. Then slowly the rest of them moved here,” Currie said. She also has family in Texas and the Chicago area, including an older stepsister, Lee Graves, who lives in North Chicago.
“I find solace from being with family and friends, limited as it is. We treasure what time we do have to be together,” Currie said.
Currie also has to be away from home when Clinton travels out of the country, though she doesn’t accompany him on domestic trips.
Husband Bob, who recently retired as planning director at the Environmental Protection Agency and is looking to the day that he and Betty can spend their retirement traveling, explained their sacrifice of time as a deliberate commitment.
“It’s four years you set aside in your life. We’ve accepted it. We look for quality time together,” he said. There have been times when their only quiet time was the 15-minute commute to and from their home in Arlington.
“The upside is having a real understanding of what goes on in the White House, how complex the decision-making process is,” he added. “I have a lot of respect for Bill Clinton. And that is not a political statement. Bill Clinton is very smart. People expect that the president should have all the answers. But think of the range of issues he has to wade through.”
And Bob Currie is a fan of his wife: “She’s an elegant lady. I’m very proud of her.”
And in spite of the hours, Betty Currie loves her job even though she demurs when stating its importance.
“It’s not the end-all of the jobs in the world. I see it as a job. And it’s a job that I love to do,” she said. And having a boss you like helps.
“He’s one of the nicest, most wonderful people I have ever had the pleasure to work for. He’s warm. He’s humorous. He’s very intelligent. People think he’s one way on TV and another off. But he’s not,” she said. “What you see is what you get.”
The admiration is mutual.
When asked about his secretary, Clinton said, “As you might imagine, the office can get hectic on certain days, and Betty is always a calm, reassuring voice during those times. She has a kind spirit and is a constant example of efficiency and professionalism.
“But what I especially admire is her commitment and love to her family. She is a family person in the truest sense and a role model for many of us in the White House.”
He will get no argument on that from Cookie Anspach Kohn of Highland Park, a registered Republican. Currie’s mom, a valued friend of Kohn’s parents, the late Carolyn and Herman Anspach, was a housekeeper in the Anspach home for more than 30 years.
“I feel Bill Clinton must be wonderful, because anybody who would pick Betty Currie has to be a good person. She is one of the most wonderful people I know,” Kohn said.
People felt that way about Currie as far back as high school, according to Waukegan real estate agent and former classmate Chandra Simpson Sefton, who organized a class reunion held in September 1993.
Even though most of the black students, who were about a 20-to-1 minority in the 1950s, tended to socialize among themselves, Currie was different, according to Sefton.
“We didn’t have that many black kids. And those who were there pretty much socialized in their own group. But Betty mixed with everyone and took leadership roles in school,” Sefton said.
And that hasn’t changed. She is still driven.
“Philosophically, I’m a Democrat,” Currie said. “But I do this because in my own small way I like to think I’m contributing to the future of the country.”
