Winter Park High grad calls White House job ‘surreal’
When Baxter Murrell strolls the halls of his workplace, he can’t help but be awestruck by his surroundings.
The 19-year-old Winter Park High School alumnus reported this week for a job with the Trump Administration. He was offered it after a whirlwind summer serving as an unpaid White House intern.
“For me, it’s really surreal,” Murrell said. “I feel like I’m living in a history book because everything that happens in the White House is like living history.”
As a staff assistant in the Office of Management and Administration, Murrell helps with the White House internship and volunteer programs in the same office where he worked as an intern. He said at the end of his internship — and
after his living arrangements and utilities were set to be shut off — the White House offered him a one-year, full-time job.
Floored by the offer, he opted to prolong his stay in the nation’s capital instead of returning for his sophomore year at Mercer University in Macon, Ga., where he’s a double major in political science and economics. For now, he’s taking classes online.
The White House press office did not respond to several requests for comment, but Murrell appears prominently in official White House photos, including one with all of the interns and Vice President Mike Pence.
His job is actually not in the historic mansion but based in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, where the vast majority of White House staffers
“There’s all the grandeur and everything is so magnificent. Everything is just so detailed and ornate.” Baxter Murrell on working at the White House
work. That building is adjacent to the West Wing.
Murrell said he’ll never forget the Fourth of July fireworks show, which he watched from the White House grounds, or the time he greeted President Donald Trump after Marine One landed on the South Lawn.
Among more personal meetings, Baxter said he was leaving for lunch with a colleague when a pack of Secret Service officials paraded past him with Pence in tow.
Pence saw the two young men and stopped to shake hands and ask about their day, Murrell said.
“I think probably the first day, maybe the first week and even now, and I walk around and my eyes are just lighting up,” Murrell said. “There’s all the grandeur and everything is so magnificent. Everything is just so detailed and ornate.”
One July afternoon, Murrell said he and several interns found themselves in Ivanka Trump’s office, where she whisked them to talk about their summer in Washington.
She documented the meeting in a photo posted to her Facebook page, which has been “liked” nearly 30,000 times to date.
Murrell’s journey to Washington began at Winter Park High School, where his fellow students voted him as “Most Likely to Become President” in the yearbook. An administrator asked him if he was serious about his White House ambitions and told him about the White House’s internship program.
By the time he turned 18, which was a requirement to apply, he had missed the deadline to apply for President Obama’s final year. While the White House internship program is nonpartisan, Murrell said he’s a registered Republican.
After Trump’s January inauguration, the new application was posted and Murrell began putting together answers to the essay questions, gathering letters of recommendation and creating a professional policy memo.
Weeks after he turned in the application, Murrell received an email from the White House while in a Student Government Association meeting at Mercer. He only read the word “Congratulations” before he ran from the room and called his parents.
“Baxter has always been so ambitious,” said his mother, Allison Murrell. “When he got the internship, we were just elated and overjoyed. We cried [on the phone].”
Baxter Murrell’s summer in Washington has only bolstered his passion for politics. Since childhood, he’s talked about wanting to run for president and now thinks he’s one step closer to his dream.
After finishing his undergraduate studies, he intends to pursue law school and one day run for office — perhaps for a U.S. House seat at first.
His political involvement began as a teen where he volunteered on Dean Asher’s U.S. Senate campaign. Winter Park Mayor Steve Leary remembers Murrell rounding up some friends to canvass a neighborhood with him one weekend.
Afterward, Leary bought the kids pizza.
“One of the things that is truly charming about Baxter is he’s not afraid to pick up the phone and ask a question,” said Leary, a neighbor of the Murrell family.
While Baxter Murrell has big goals and dreams, he’s happy to be a small cog in the White House.
He finds himself walking the streets on his days off, and often to the Lincoln Memorial where he’ll sit and take inventory of his time in D.C., as well as his future.
“There are days where I’m off from work that I’ll just go to the monuments … and sit there and take in all the surroundings,” Murrell said. “It’s all just surreal.”