America's Front Lawn

New York Times Magazine
January 15, 1995
MAUREEN DOWD

AS IT BEGAN TO SLEET ON New Year's Eve, I was sitting on a bench across from the White House dreaming of Carole Lombard.

Watching the homeless who live in Lafayette Park drift around, I was reminded of "My Man Godfrey," the 1936 romp in which Lombard, as a madcap New York society girl, looks for a "forgotten man" in a scavenger hunt. Finding one (a down-at-the-heels William Powell) in a city dump on the East River, she offers him a job, asking blithely, "Can you butle?"

There are no screwball angels in Lafayette Park. Only a few well-dressed Washingtonians hurrying along the red brick paths. But the forgotten men and women camped near the statue of Andrew Jackson are a little less forgotten this winter. In the past few months, this quiet, pretty square has turned ominous and jittery. Like the scene in Disney's "Fantasia" scored to Mussorgsky's "Night on Bald Mountain," the park seems suddenly alive with macabre spirits, rising up and swirling around an unlucky White House.

"It has been a weird series of things, one after the other," says Bill Pugh, a 64-year-old Marine veteran from California who has made a bench in the southwest corner his home for a year and a half. "I'm beginning to get a little queasy about being here. We have a little rhyme that we put together: Now I lay me down in my bed, With the sounds of gunshots going off in my head."

Pugh presents himself as the Samuel Pepys of the park, witness to the eerie, violent goings-on. He recalls that he was sleeping on the ground one night in September when he was awakened by a "crunching, slamming" noise as a small plane crashed onto the South Lawn.

"About three minutes after that, this place was covered with every policeman you could think of: D.C. Government, Park Police, the Executive Protection Service, the Secret Service," he said, adding, with the savvy that comes from his milieu: "Actually, it was an F.A.A. slip-up."

Pugh says he was on his bench on Oct. 29 when he saw Francisco Duran stroll down Pennsylvania Avenue, pull a semiautomatic rifle from under his coat and fire through the north gate.

"Real tragic," he says, lighting a cigarette. "It's bad enough on the streets of New York or Los Angeles, but here in front of the White House, that's absolutely obscene."

In December, an unidentified gunman sprayed shots through the window of the State Dining Room. One man was arrested after making up a story about having a bomb in his car; another for trying to climb the north fence of the White House. And, in the most disturbing incident for those who live in the park, the Park Police shot and killed Marcelino Corniel, a homeless man who rushed across Pennsylvania Avenue waving a knife.

"It was a real shock, because he was the last guy we expected would do something like that," Mr. Pugh said. "He used to sit all day and sketch real-life scenes -- trees, birds, pigeons. He seldom spoke to anyone. But something snapped. The officers kept telling him to 'Drop the knife! Drop it!' But he wouldn't. It was just 'Bam! Bam!' "

Mr. Pugh, a compact man with ruddy skin and a yellowy white mustache, is wearing a maroon knit cap, and jeans and gloves with holes. Jazz squeaks from the Sony Walkman hanging around his neck. "My favorite was Stan Getz before he died," he says, waving off some young men offering peanutbutter-and-jelly sandwiches and Christian pamphlets. "Well, everybody loves Stan Getz."

Pugh says he is a retired master gunnery sergeant who served in World War II and the Korean War. He came here from his home in Marina del Rey, Calif., to have a knee operation at the Veterans Administration hospital, then lingered watching the passing scene. He says he gets a Government stipend, but prefers to stay in the park so he can save money and go to restaurants.

The park has an anthropology every bit as complex as that of the executive mansion across the way. Bill Pugh gets along pretty well with the various cliques, except for one trio of paranoid brothers who accuse him of being a C.I.A. operative sent by William Colby. He tries to steer clear of "the front line" of less stable park residents who gather along Pennsylvania Avenue to receive messages from Mars coming through pots on their heads and to protest various causes, vendettas and conspiracies. (One conspiracy involves the C.I.A. building robotic sleds under the sea.)

Dwight Baird, 44, lying amid his sleeping bag, economic books and cardboard marked with swastikas, announces grandly: "They hate me because I'm white. And I hate them." And, at another point: "My family are fascists. In fact, I've sued them."

The park, which was the front lawn of the White House until Thomas Jefferson turned it over to the public, has long been a symbolic slice of reality in the unreal Federal city. Administration officials and media big shots who never venture into the murderous parts of the city walk through Lafayette Park on their way to lunch at the posh Bombay Club; they glance at the same sprinkling of homeless people and feel that they've experienced the gritty side of Washington.

An extreme manifestation of this attitude came in 1989, when Government agents lured a drug dealer to the park so they could buy crack for President Bush to use as a prop in a televised speech on drugs. Speech writers wanted the President to be able to claim that drugs were being sold right outside the Oval Office.

Sometimes, as Presidents have grown isolated in crises, they have looked out the window and seen, in the park, the specter of their demise. During the Vietnam era, protesters shouted "Hey, hey, L. B. J., how many kids did you kill today!" as the anguished President stared back, asking advisers, "Why are they doing this to me?"

Not everyone appreciates the park's reputation for free speech. When protesters beat a drum round the clock to protest the Persian Gulf war, President Bush grumped to Republicans, "Those damned drums are keeping me up all night."

But now the mood has grown spooky. Frank J. Fahrenkopf, a former G.O.P. chairman, has demanded that the park be cleaned out so that Americans can "bring their kids to see the people's house without having bums abuse them or yell or scream or see people lying in their own filth."

Bill Pugh says he won't be around to see what happens. He was going to celebrate New Year's Eve at Mr. Egan's restaurant, a few blocks away. "I'1I have the hot roast beef sandwich and a couple of drinks -- V.O.," he mused. "By midnight, everybody in the park will be pretty well drunk and will go to sleep.

"In a couple of days, I'm going back to California," he said. "It's been an educational experience. But now I'm getting the heck out of this place."