Ex-Aides to Amy Carter Offer Tips to Chelsea Clinton

When 12-year-old Chelsea Clinton walks through the front door of the White House the day of her father’s inauguration, she’ll be the first child since Amy Carter to call the nation’s first house home.

She’ll also be America’s first child, and everyone will be watching her.

Leading a private life in the public eye isn’t easy, especially for a somewhat shy almost-teen-ager, with braces still on her teeth. But old White House hands say it’s possible.

“It is, it absolutely is. I saw it happen with Amy Carter,” said Mary Hoyt, Rosalynn Carter’s press secretary during the Jimmy Carter Administration. “I think it’s not only possible but very important.”

It was Hoyt’s job to keep the press from swarming Amy, so the advice she has for Chelsea comes from experience.

“I think that one, you keep a gang of friends around; two, get out of the White House when you can; three, don’t let the press get you down--and specifically smile, wave and pass right by them, and four, take advantage of the opportunity to meet world leaders and the finest artists, musicians and important figures in America.”

Amy Carter lives in Atlanta now, and the 25-year-old doesn’t give interviews; she had her fill of media attention years ago.

The Carters created a media circus when they sent Amy to a public elementary school.

But the commotion really only got in the way in the beginning, said Verona Meeder, Amy Carter’s fourth grade teacher at Thaddeus Stevens Elementary School.

“It wasn’t hard to keep people out once we learned to say no,” said Meeder, who retired last year after 25 years at Stevens. “But that first day, it was amazing.”

The school quickly set rules to make sure Amy’s fame didn’t interfere with her learning, said former Stevens Principal Lydia Williams.

Even the two Secret Service agents who accompanied Amy wherever she went didn’t enter her classroom. They stayed nearby but out of sight, in an office the school set up across the hall.

Williams said Amy’s classmates “loved her.”

“She just fit right in. It happened naturally,” she said.

The Carters did the right thing by keeping in constant communication with the school, Williams said. They also tried to make sure Amy followed the same rules as all the other fourth graders.

“When she first came, they would not allow her to miss a day of school for anything that was going on at the White House,” Meeder said. “The thing the Carters stressed most was they wanted Amy to be just like any other child. That was kind of impossible, but it was their goal.”

Inside the White House, Amy lived almost like any other child her age, says retired White House Executive Chef Henry Haller.

“Sometimes she brought some friends in and they’d go along on the corridor with roller skates--but not on the first floor, not on the parquet floors,” Haller said, laughing.

She also attended state dinners--usually with a book in hand to read if she got bored--and whiled away afternoons in a treehouse built for her on the White House lawn.

The White House staff likes having children around, Haller said.

But Amy Carter didn’t get any special treatment from the kitchen, Haller said.

“What’s good enough for the President should be good enough for everyone else,” he said.