Fun facts about the 2nd family’s residence

WASHINGTON – The vice presidential residence is not accessible to the public, one of the reasons the public knows little about where the president’s No. 2 lives.

Here are some of the fun facts author Charles Denyer found about the house and the people who lived there:

Rockefeller’s bed

Although Nelson Rockefeller never lived in the residence, the bed in the master bedroom was the talk of the town. The vice president to then-President Gerald Ford personally chose the $35,000 “cage bed” by surrealistic artist Max Ernst. Barbara Walters described it in a book as “covered in mink, watched over at the head and foot by medallions of the sun and moon,” with trap doors to hide lamps, telephones and electrical gadgets.

But while Rockefeller was willing to leave it behind for his successors, he had no takers.

“Mrs. Bush politely said, ‘You’re welcome anytime; we don’t need the bed,’ ” Denyer said.

Eleanor Mondale’s ghost

Convinced she was being visited by a ghost one night, Walter Mondale’s teenage daughter Eleanor called the Secret Service to report a man in her room. When the agents burst in with guns drawn, Eleanor explained it was a fleshless man she’d sensed.

“They requested I never do that again,” Eleanor recalled in a 1998 interview.

Years later, Dick Cheney’s granddaughter would inadvertently summon the Secret Service by mistaking a panic button in the bathroom for the way to flush the toilet.

Secret Service pranks

Secret Service agents were not above pranking each other during the long, often tedious hours they spent protecting the second family. One agent convinced another it was perfectly fine to do his laundry at the residence. That came as a surprise to Barbara Bush, who nonetheless found it amusing.

The agents, however, had her back when, clad in a bathrobe, she took her dog for an early morning walk not knowing the Soviet foreign minister was about to arrive for a breakfast meeting. Alerted by a helpful agent, Bush avoiding the waiting photographers by sneaking back into the residence and crawling to her closet.

Enjoying the privacy

One of the main reasons vice presidents and their families enjoyed the residence is the relative privacy and seclusion it offered. Wanting to keep a low profile even when ordering pizza, the Quayle family appropriated the name of one of their Secret Service agents, Joe Petro. The tradition stuck. Even after leaving public office, the Quayles still used Petro’s name when ordering pizza.