In 1933, Peggy Carey went to work as a busgirl in a cafeteria at “A Century of Progress,” the World’s Fair in Chicago. Jobs were scarce during the Depression, so the recent high school graduate embraced the work, even though it was 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, for only $4 a week. After all, her income supported eight family members, including an ill mother.
More than 35 years later, that same spirited worker landed herself a key job with the president of the United States. On Sept. 2, 1969, Ms. Carey became the White House housekeeper under President Richard Nixon, a job that was the pinnacle of her career after jobs with various hotel chains across the country.
A native and longtime resident of Chicago, Ms. Carey died April 1 in Regency Oaks Skilled Nursing Care center in Long Beach, Calif. She was 84.
As White House housekeeper, Ms. Carey was responsible for helping keep the executive mansion in order. She would meet regularly with Pat Nixon, plan the family’s meals and work in the White House kitchen to organize state dinners.
In her first days on the job, Ms. Carey told the Tribune, she was awed.
“No, I just can’t believe I’m here,” she said. “I can’t believe the other lives that were lived in this house–Abraham Lincoln, Dolly Madison, who served up boiled cabbage, and Abigail Adams, who hung her washing in the East Room. It’s like something that wouldn’t happen to me.
“But what it has done is that so many ordinary people who know me as being ordinary–a onetime waitress and dishwasher who got ahead by studying–are writing me and saying that if I can do it, then anybody can. It’s been an inspiration to them. But every day I ask, `Am I doing all right? Am I adjusting?’ “
Ms. Carey’s White House stay was short-lived–she was there less than a year when she moved to California to tend to her sick mother and aunt–but she often shared stories of her months there long after she left. For many years, she exchanged Christmas cards with the Nixons and remained a fan of the president despite the Watergate controversy.
“She never really wanted to talk about that,” said her sister, Paula Carney. “She was a staunch Republican and she wasn’t going to knock (Nixon) or believe anything against him.”
Growing up on the city’s North Side, Ms. Carey had been fascinated with hotels. Her grandmother had been a pastry chef at the Ambassador East and West hotels, and Ms. Carey often visited the hotels on weekends to take in the glamorous surroundings and get three square meals, her sister said.
When Ms. Carey was ready to begin a career, she gravitated toward the hotel business she had grown to love. She went to work for the old Stevens Hotel before Conrad Hilton bought it, and she worked for the Hilton Hotels Corp. for 23 years, where she supervised cashiers and took on various administrative duties.
In 1961, she moved from Chicago to the Executive House hotels in Scottsdale, Ariz., then on to hotels in Tucson and Boston. Before going to the White House, she worked for Sheraton Hotels in Long Beach, and became the chain’s western and southern regional director of housekeeping services.
Ms. Carey was never sure why she caught the Nixons’ eye. She figured it might have been because of a promotion she introduced at the Boston Statler-Hilton, in which the maids wore red, white and blue Yankee Doodle dresses as an employee morale builder. Nixon had been a guest at the hotel during his campaign.
Whatever the reason, she was thrilled to get the position. The White House job was her last full-time post before she quit working to care for her sick mother and aunt in California.
While she considered the White House environment exhilarating, Ms. Carey admitted the job was trying at times.
“I must learn every piece of furniture and every item of artwork and where it belongs,” she said. “I’m afraid to touch anything. I go home and have nightmares that something will be broken.”
Ms. Carey’s sister is her only surviving relative. Visitation will begin at 9 a.m. Thursday, with services at 1 p.m., in Blake-Lamb Funeral Home, 1035 N. Dearborn St., Chicago.
