The White House is a seat of American power and the home of the most powerful man in the world. But it is also a workplace for kitchen staff, butlers, and valets. From one remarkable family, all descendants of a former slave, the White House has employed 10 members, starting in the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Perhaps even more remarkably, the tenth family member started as a part-time messenger and retired last month as a special assistant to the president and a senior director for the National Security Council.
Establishing a Dynasty
Charles Ficklin, a child of a Virginia slave born in 1857, was the first family member to get a job in the White House. After he worked for wealthy families in Washington, the White House hired him in 1939 as a butler. Charles’ brother John Woodson Ficklin joined the White House staff in 1946 as a part-time pantry worker. John finally retired in 1983, eight presidents later. Although the movie “The Butler” depicted another person, Eugene Allen, as the first member of the residence staff to attend a state dinner, John and his wife, Nancy, actually had that honor when they attended one for the emir of Bahrain in July 1983 and sat at the table of their host, Nancy Reagan.
Charles and John’s younger brother, Samuel, was an engineer at the Bureau of Engraving, but he also worked as a part-time butler at the White House, when needed, from the Roosevelt to the George H. W. Bush administrations. Three of the Ficklin sisters, along with John’s wife, also worked as part-time pantry staff during the Truman administration. John’s nephew and that nephew’s son still work as part-time, as-needed butlers in the Obama household. Finally, both of John’s sons worked for the White House starting with the Ford administration (Bess Truman gave John the day off when his older son was born).
The Final Ficklin
John Wrory Ficklin, son of John Ficklin and the tenth and final member of the family to work full-time in the White House, was 7 years old when John F. Kennedy was shot and killed on November 22, 1963. By then his father was the White House maitre d’, the title for head butler. Planning for Kennedy’s burial and caring for the president’s family kept John Sr. away from home for a week. Mrs. Kennedy according young John’s father a great honor when she asked him to serve as an usher at the president’s funeral. Although the service of all the Ficklins is remarkable (the African Americans serving the most powerful men in the world during the civil rights movement naturally have a multitude of stories), John Wrory Ficklin’s service at the White House may top the list.
In January 2016, John Wrory Ficklin retired from his full-time job as a special assistant to the president and senior director for records and access management at the National Security Council. He started working for the White House as a part-time messenger during high school, and his jobs included transmitting messages between the Nixon White House and the Watergate special prosecutor’s office. He then moved on to become a part-time pantry staffer before joining the mail room of the National Security Council. He slowly moved up the ranks, serving for a time as a West Wing desk officer. Eventually, he turned his talents to modernizing the White House’s technology systems. As recently as the Clinton administration, national security staff used vacuum tubes to transmit paper messages. Under Ficklin’s supervision, however, the NSC is preparing to transmit about 12 terabytes of electronic data — equivalent to 5.3 billion paper pages — to the National Archives at the end of President Obama’s term.
Making History
Along the way, John Wrory Ficklin met his wife, then a Georgetown University student who would eventually graduate from Harvard Law, class of 1991. Her law school classmates included the future President Obama, whom Ficklin would one day serve — not as a butler but as a special assistant charged with classifying some of the most secretive documents in the world.
“The fact that in two generations you can go from slavery to special assistant to the president is indicative of the progress we’ve made as a country,” Ficklin told the Washington Post shortly after his retirement. “And I’m proud of it.”
The progress is even more remarkable when the president Ficklin assisted is African American.
“As a career employee of the White House, and also African American,” Ficklin said, “the president is what we had always hoped for but thought we would never see.”
What’s been the progression of your family in since they arrived in the United States? Ancestry can help you find out, with resources devoted specifically to researching occupations. Ancestry also has resources that can help African Americans uncover stories of determination and resolve throughout their generations, just like the Ficklins have told.