First Daughters Recall Pain and Privileges of White House Life : Presidency: They tell of special treatment, as well as the glare of public attention and criticism of their fathers.

Luci Baines Johnson remembers going to sleep to the echoes of protesters outside the White House yelling “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many boys did you kill today?”

Peggy Hoover Brigham, granddaughter of President Herbert Hoover, recalls a time during the Great Depression when the mother of a childhood friend forbade them to play together. “She’s responsible for your father losing his job,” Brigham remembers the woman telling her friend. At an unusual gathering Friday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, women who grew up in the White House talked about how the experience was a decidedly mixed bag.

Susan Ford Bales, for example, got to have her senior prom at the White House. And Johnson’s marriage was the first White House wedding in 50 years, one that was celebrated on the cover of Life magazine and beamed to every household in the country.

But Johnson also recalled when a Secret Service agent yanked her out of her high school Spanish class after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

“I knew right at that moment that my life would never be the same, and it wasn’t,” she said.

Former First Lady Nancy Reagan introduced the panel, saying that each woman would bring a “human dimension to the presidential events of the last six decades.” This history, she said, was “too important to leave to the historians.”

Bales remembered being the first person to throw a Frisbee on the Great Wall of China (with cartoonist Garry Trudeau), and shaking hands with Chairman Mao Tse-tung, whom she remembers as overly forward toward her.

Bales and Johnson were both teen-agers and shared the discomfort of spending their formative years in what they called the nation’s big glass house or the nation’s fishbowl. Bales said there were wonderful benefits to being the daughter of the President, including getting to meet celebrities and getting VIP treatment at rock concerts.

“I loved Rod Stewart and was ecstatic when I got to go backstage,” she said. “The flip side of that was that the tabloids were reporting a week later that I was engaged to Rod Stewart.”

Bales and Johnson recalled going on dates while being shadowed by Secret Service agents and having their personal lives reported on in the press. But Hoover, who lived at the White House from age 3 to 6, said she had only nannies keeping her in line.

” . . . Later on we did get driven to school by the Secret Service,” she said. “I remember they had a big blue roadster with a rumble seat, and if we were good they’d let us sit back there.”

Maureen Reagan, who was grown and married when her father took office, said her memories centered on the White House. “I don’t think there is a warmer or more hospitable place,” she said. “I was always aware that our time there was finite, and I felt privileged. When it came time to leave, I cried.”

Most of the people who came to hear the discussion seemed impressed by this insider’s view of history.

“It really was magnificent,” said Vee Rosevear of Modesto, who came with her husband to hear the talk. “I found myself in tears more than a couple of times. . . . It really shows the personal side of things, to see the humanity of these people we read about.”

That is the intent of a new exhibit at the library.

Richard Norton Smith, library director, said the event and the exhibit were ways to bring history alive. He said the shared experiences of the women on the panel and the more than 40 First Ladies featured in the exhibit transcend politics.

“It is a special relationship that binds them all together,” he said.