Death of a Nepo Baby

Live from Television City in Hollywood.

On the evening of October thirteenth, nineteen fifty seven, millions of Americans sat down to watch a special event on television featuring some of the country's most popular entertainers.

Ing Crosbie, Frank Sinatra, lorosbry Clony, Loie Armstrong.

But the real star of the show its yes, the Edsel, the car that the Ford Motor Company, sponsors of this show, was introducing to the public with unprecedented fanfare. Here's being Crosbie with old blue eyes, Frank Sinatra.

This is an opening show.

Oh you're know on TV for Edzel to go all the way. It's a great card too, bing and they're putting on a great square.

It was a big night when the Edzel first came out. This was a big deal, right.

It was about as big a deal as you can imagine.

But not too big to fail. Just two years after its launch, the ed Sell was out of gas. The very name immortalized as a byword for failure. But Edzell wasn't just the name of a car.

Edgell was the name of Henry Ford's only son.

And one of history's most famous NEPO babies. Yes, nepo baby. The nepo is short for nepotism. You may have heard the term nepo baby to describe celebrity children born to celebrity parents and all the advantages that come with that. But family connections affect every field of work and always have And when family is involved, so is drama. In this episode, we'll tell you the story of Henry and Ed sul Ford. Oh the pressure of being the son of that guy.

It had to be tough, knowing that you would never be able to top what your father had done because it couldn't be done anymore.

You'll also hear about the first father and son to make it to the White House. Service is the family business.

Service is the family business because the family business is America.

And speaking of the White House, we'll recount the tale of the famous daughter who strolled into sixteen hundred Pennsylvania Avenue on four legs. Was Pushinka a nepo baby?

I would have to say yes, I mean, look at the lineage she came from.

Three stories, three families, three big names, well two if you don't count the dog from CBS Sunday Morning and iHeart I'm Morocca. And this is mobituary this moment, NEPO, Babies of History, Edzel, Ford, John Quincy Adams, and Prushinka the Dog. You say the word ed Sel and most people think what.

A synonym for failure or commercial product failure in any event.

That's Matt Anderson. He's the curator of Transportation at the amazing Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation in Dearborn, Michigan. For ten seasons, I've hosted the CBS television series Innovation Nation at the Henry Ford, and Matt is my go to guy for all things automotive.

I like to think that the ed Sel was overstyled, oversold, and overpriced.

Would you say it was a bad car.

I don't think the Edzel was a bad car per se. I mean it was a solid vehicle. The engineering did work, but it just wasn't what the market wanted. Ford promised something entirely new in automotive engineering and design, and in the end, the Edgel just had things that are kind of gimmicky.

The Edzel was meant to compete with mid priced cars like Chrysler's Dodge and GM's Pontiac and Buick, and it boasted several genuine innovations like system warning lights on the dashboard, which every car made today has, But it also had features no one seemed to need, like a rolling dome speedometer, and debuting in the midst of a recession, it's low miles per gallon was a non starter for most consumers.

That was a comment made at the time. It made ever since, yes, at the Edzel represented a certain anatomical part, and we'll leave it at that.

The company had spent ten years and two hundred and fifty million dollars on the Edsol. After just three model years and a loss of three hundred and fifty million, the Edzel was discontinued over sixteen years after the man for whom it was named, someone who had nothing to do with the car, had died. The final insult to a man who never got the credit he deserved from the public or from his own father.

When folks generations into the future think back on the twentieth century. There are just a few names that are going to be remembered, and Henry Ford's is one of them.

Henry Ford revolutionized mass industrial production with the assembly line. He introduced the five dollar workday, helping to create a middle class, and he was the man behind the vehicle that changed America.

The Model T which Henry Ford had designed and introduced, changed the automobile from being a plaything for the wealthy into a tool of everyday life.

It ended the isolation of the farmer and made the Sunday ride at National Institution.

When Edsel Ford rolled off the assembly line on November sixteenth, eighteen ninety three, courtesy of Henry and Clara Ford, the family wasn't yet wealthy. Henry was still just getting started.

Just about six weeks after Edsel was born, he built his first internal combustion engine and it worked. He only ran it for about thirty seconds or so, but that moment kind of was a Eureka moment for Henry Ford and knew that this was what he was going to do. He was going to get into the automobile business.

An only child, Edseell grew up alongside that business. At age two, he wrote in his father's first gas powered automobile, the Quadricycle PSI, I've driven in a replica of the original, four big bicycle wheels, a little buggy seat and no brakes. You had to use your foot to stop at Fred Flintstone style. As a young boy, Edsell spent hours drawing

I think it's a measure of the esteem in which his father held him at that point that Edzell was a part of a very small group who was involved in designing the Ford Model T. Henry literally built a kind of a secret room in the corner of the factory where his top engineers would sit and work through what this automobile should be, and Edzell was there for all of those discussions.

As soon as he graduated from high school, Edzell went to work for his father full time, a newspaper at the time described him as quote a quiet, hard working youngster with a desk in his father's office, as familiar with every branch of the business as any of the officers in the company.

He was elected to the board of directors in nineteen fifteen when he was all of twenty two years old. So he moves pretty quickly from the bottom up to the upper reaches of Ford Motor Company.

Do you think that he worried that people thought he was there only because he was the boss's son.

That had to nagg at the back of Edgell's conscious that people somewhere up or down the line at Ford Motor Company would have thought he was just there by virtue of who his father was.

When Edzell asked for an exemption from military service during World War One to keep working at Ford Motor Company, he was accused of being a draft dodger.

I think that on him because he really did believe that he was of more value working at Ford Motor Company than overseas.

But Edseell, who was named president of the company at age twenty five, would prove himself worthy of his position and in many ways a stark contrast to his father.

They were very much different. In fact, about as polar opposite as you could imagine. Henry grew up on a farm. He never finished his grade school education and kind of worked his way up to his ultimate career goals.

Here's Henry espousing his belief that success starts and ends with hard work.

The young man makes his mind the work.

There's no event of what he can do, makes up his mind to.

That's the idea.

Where he has much an.

He must study.

And Henry was proudly unpolished. On the other hand, ed Sell was urbane and sophisticated. Henry did trust experts. Edseell admired them. Henry had little interest in the arts. Edzell was a great patron of music and art in Detroit. He commissioned the monumental Detroit Industry Murals from Mexican artist Diego Rivera for the Detroit Institute of Arts, and let me tell you, if you are ever in the Motor City, you must must go see them. Henry never drank and

Absolutely? Henry lived and breathed his work. Even when he was at home, he was still thinking about what was going on at the Ford Motor Company. Whereas Edsel he would put in his forty hours of fifty hours, whatever it took in the company. But when he went home, that was his time to enjoy with his family, to enjoy recreational pursuits, to enjoy education in Richmond, whatever it might be.

Edseell married Eleanor Clay in nineteen sixteen. They wasted no time in starting a family. Their first child, Henry Ford, the second, was born in nineteen seventeen. They went on to have three more. Now, in terms of whom you'd rather have.

As a boss, Henry had a very gruff management style, his way or the highway. Edzel preferred to let people talk about different options and think it over and come to a logical conclusion.

Edseel was just a lot friendlier.

And ed made a point of greeting everybody on the way into work in the morning, from the people on the ground level there right on up to the senior executives. And Henry always had a kind of a holder look about him, particularly as he got older, you know, almost a scowl about him, which would make him a little scary.

And not to be rude, but from certain angles he could look like mister Burns from the Simpsons.

That's an adequate embarrasson I think there.

I wonder if Henry was a jealous of his son when he saw how much employees liked Edsel.

I would imagine to some extent too, Henry was probably yellis just of Edzel's youth. It's inevitable as we get older, and here's Edzel rising up and just hitting the peak in the prime of his own life. And it's a time that's passed for Henry. So that had to have been a part of it too.

Did Henry ever try to undermine his son?

Unfortunately, Henry undermined his son at just about every turn.

Edseell may have been the company's president, but Henry never actually gave up the wheel. He retained full authority. Case in point, when the Highland Park plant was becoming overcrowded, senior managers appealed to Edseell.

So after listening to this and seeing the evidence, Edgel said, let's build an annex, a new building for administrative offices. And they gotten to the point where they dug a hole for the foundation.

But when Henry saw the hole, he didn't like it. He put the kebash on Edsel's expansion plans.

And try to reason with his father pushed back against this idea. Henry wouldn't hear it, and Edsel finally just as okay, fine, we'll close everything down, We'll fill in the hole. You'd think that would be the end of it, but it wasn't. Henry said no, no, don't fill in the hole. Leave it that way. And so for several months afterwards, everyone who came into Ford Motor Company saw this big, gaping hole in the ground. They were infect reminded every morning of who had the final say at

And to do that to his own son, yeah, very very cruel. Driving father and son farther apart where they're differing views on the world. Henry was viciously and very publicly anti semitic.

That is the darkest stain on Henry Ford's character and one that has not gone away and won't and shouldn't. He was a virulent antisemit.

In nineteen eighteen, Henry purchased the Dearborn Independent newspaper, which a year and a half later under his direction, began publishing a series of articles entitled The International jew The World's Problem, which claimed there was a vast Jewish conspiracy and blamed the Jewish people for everything from war to jazz music. The newspaper was distributed at dealerships across the country, reaching a circulation of nine hundred thousand, and.

Edzell and Clara too. To their credit, they were on the board of directors quote unquote of the Dearborn Independent because it was owned entirely by the Ford family. They resigned. Edgell in particular, said no, I'm not going to have anything to do with this newspaper. He knew he couldn't stop his father from publishing it, but at least he wasn't going to be a part of it.

And then in the mid nineteen twenties came a rift over Henry's other child, his beloved Model T.

The car was absolutely cutting edge in nineteen oh eight nineteen oh nine when it was built and introduced, but by the mid twenties eight to ninosaur.

The Chevrolet was helping General Motors roar passed Ford. But Henry didn't want to hear it.

That slump in the Model Tea's sales which really fall off a cliff. Starting about nineteen twenty five is where the break between Henry and Edsel really begins, where they're more or less friendly and familial relationship starts to fall apart.

After years of pleading, Edzell finally convinced Henry to trade in the Model T for the bigger and better looking Model A.

The Model A is no doubt the first Ford automobile that had real style to real class.

Boy, it seems like the cars that each of them championed were sort of a reflection of them temperamentally right. The Model T so important, ultimately very practical, The Model A nicer to look at, more comfortable to drive.

Yeah.

With its design supervised by Edseel, the Model A went on to sell over four and a half million and put Forward back on top. Henry took the credit, but it was Edsel's triumph and not his only one. Ed Soul was the driving force behind Ford's first luxury vehicle, the Lincoln Continental, which architect Frank Lloyd Wright called the most beautiful car in the world.

To this day, critics enthusiasts alike will refer to it as one of the most beautiful American production cars ever built.

The United States, even when it is running and low, is a pretty big business proposition.

You are now hearing rare audio of the press shy ed soel Ford appearing alongside his father in nineteen thirty five.

What I believe the country is getting ready to make a very decided step forward next year, and we are doing all we can to help it along. What do you think of that, Brodoc? But I think everybody has decided that they've.

Got to go to work.

By that point, Ford Motor Company, under ed Sel, was playing a major role in aviation.

People might not realize Ford Motor Company was very busy in the aviation business in the nineteen twenties into the very early nineteen thirties. They built one hundred and ninety nine four Trimotor airplanes, which were really the first successful all metal commercial aircraft flown in the United States.

When America entered World War II, Edsel oversaw production of one bomber per hour at the company's Willow Run plant.

It was Edseel that was there running the company, meeting with the government, meeting with the military, making things happen. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that Edgell made his dying breadth toward for World War II production of Ford Motor Company. He gave his every last ounce to that effort.

It was during the war, in nineteen forty three that Edseell began experiencing intense pain in his stomach. His physician diagnosed him with ulcers. When the pain didn't subside, Edseell visited specialists who discovered that he was suffering from stomach cancer.

Sadly, at that point it had spread to other organs, and you have to wonder if they had not misdiagnosed it as ulcers. You know, even in the early forty stomach cancer wasn't necessarily fatal.

But even as he weakened, Edzell continued working at the office, does he tell his father?

Edgell tells his father about his condition. Unfortunately, Henry sort of dismissed the whole thing. He said, well, no, Edgell's just feeling sick because he's partying too much, he's drinking too much, he's not eating the right foods, and Henry was a fanatic on diet. I think Henry refused to accept that his son could be terminally ill because this was the person who was going to keep for Boter company going.

Eventually, Edzell was confined to his home in Gross Point. Henry and Clara visited their son's bedside, but even in Edzell's final weeks of life, Henry was ignoring reality, insisting to associates that Edzell would be back at work in just a few weeks. Edzell Bryant Ford died on May twenty ninth, nineteen forty three. The obituary from the New York Times read, in the untimely death of Edsel Ford at age forty nine, the nation has suffered a serious loss.

There's a great story about some of the Ford production managers coming in to work the day after Edgel passed away and seeing the flag and half deaf, and they just upped the car and kind of burst into tears because they all knew what that meant and who they

After Edzell's death, had his own health went into rapid decline. He suffered a series of small strokes and a brain hemorrhage, and four years later died at his home in Dearborn on April seventh, nineteen forty seven. A decade later, the Ford Motor Company debuted its ed Cel line. How should edsel Ford be remembered?

Edsel Ford should not be remembered for the Edseel automobile. And that's one of the great ironies in American automotive history. People hear that name, they think about that failed car, and of course only did he have nothing to do with it. It really is the antithesis of what he stood for. And he should be remembered for his successes, certainly aviation for the Lincoln Continental, and he should also be remembered

Coming up the Adams family, a NEPO baby seeks to redeem his father at the ballot box.

I think he realized that he would have to carry on the family's name but also make it his own.

Imagine a Mount Rushmore of Nepo babies. We would probably include edsel Ford. We'd also have to save a spot for Jesus, since after all, he's the son of God. I'd give the third spot to e Liza Minelli. She's the daughter of Judy Garland and director Vincent Manelli, so she had a leg up in Hollywood from birth, but she earned that Oscar for Cabaret. As for that fourth slot, well, considering that the actual Mount Rushmore is for presidents, I'm giving it to our sixth president, who was also the

It's a tremendous amount of pressure. And it's not just any of the founders. It's John and Abigail Adams.

Alexis co is a presidential historian. She calls John and Abigail the original helicopter parents. And yes, I realized helicopters didn't exist in the colonial era, but you get the picture.

They were involved in every aspect of their children's life.

They were all up in it, right.

There is a really long to do list. It's exhausting.

Just one item on that list translating the works of Greek historian Thucydides. Mind you, Quincy was just ten years old at the time.

And from a young age he showed promise. It wasn't just that he was the eldest son, It's that he was exceptional.

The second of six, Quinsy was born July eleventh, seventeen sixty seven in Braintree, Massachusetts.

He is funny, he is pithy, but he's so serious and like his parents, and more like his father, he's always stressed out.

Well, of course, this is not a normal child rearing. Aside from being the son of a founding father. There's a revolution going on.

Yeah.

Literally outside their home they're seeing soldiers march by. They are aware that they are a prominent family in what the British are calling a rebellion. They're not calling it a revolution.

If this rebellion fails, his father could be executed right.

Very likely it is a treasonous act.

During the height of the Revolutionary War, the young boy traveled with his father on missions to Europe on behalf of the fledgling Republic. Crossing the ocean wasn't exactly smooth sand First, their ship was struck by lightning, and then they traded fire with and captured an enemy vessel. At the ripe old age of fourteen, Quincy was sent off without his father to Russia, where he served as secretary

You must not let the idea of going to Russia frighten you. You're fourteen years old, Johnny, already a man and never one for childish pursuits. Yes, and I have confidence that you will make both of us very proud.

I would rather stay you with you, father.

Funny. When I was fourteen, my father was sending me off to the drug store with quarters to play Ms. Pac Man. Now, even as a kid, Quinsy documented it all, but his diaries had pictures.

He's a doodler, So we have all these great journals in which he's drawing ships and people, and he's writing not only for himself and for the letters he has to write home, but also because he's really aware that they are significant in history if they make it. But if they make it.

I love though that he's doodling because it's the reminder that he's just a kid. He's fourteen, so he's doodling in the eighteenth century equivalent of a trapper keeper basically right.

Absolutely, And while there were no pop stars around back then, Quincy definitely had an American idol.

He was nothing short of a fanboy for George Washington. When he was abroad on his own and he was living at the Hague, he put up what is basically the equivalent of a poster of George Washington.

And George Washington was impressed by young Quincy, as were many of the founding fathers.

They all believed that he had incredible potential to continue their legacy without However, nepotism, because, of course, we were not a monarchy.

Now. Most of the children of the founding fathers could only land jobs through their connections. By and large, they were a pretty mediocre bunch, including Quinsy's own siblings. His brother Charles was described by their father, John Adams as quote a madman possessed of the devil. At fifteen, Charles was caught streaking across Harvard Yard. By age thirty, he'd abandoned his law practice, and his family brother Thomas, was described as a bully and a brute, and was equally unsuccessful.

Which was not totally unheard of, but it's certainly significant to name your child George Washington when your father was also kind of a big deal.

Let me ask did that hurt his parents' feelings.

Here's what's interesting is John Adams would complain about the smallest of things for pages upon pages, and he would not only do it in one letter, he'd repeat it in nine different letters. But sometimes he left this kind of personal business. Shall we say to Abigail, and Abigail wrote to Quincy's brother that when Quinsy named his child George Washington, that it hurt his father's feelings.

It seems that Quinsy got the memo. He named his second son, John George Washington Adams, was born just a few months after his grandfather was voted out of the White House. John Adams was the first president to lose a bid for reelection and serve only one term, a tough pill to swallow for the whole Adams family. How did this affect John Quincy Adams.

I think he realized that he would have to carry on the family's name but also make it his own.

And so Quincy decided to run for president in eighteen twenty four. According to biographer Paul C. Nagel, one of Quincy's motives was to quote emulate or surpass his revered father's distinguished career and thereby burnish the Adams family name. After a nasty four way race that included Andrew Jackson,

It's the first American dynasty. It's significant. He's proud, but he's also got to then sort of instill certain boundaries with his father, with other people, and he's well aware that he needs to be his own.

President.

John Quincy Adams became the first non founding father to hold the nation's highest office, but he'd seen all his predecessors in action up close. This is where being a NEPO baby, I think is probably useful for everyone, because he kind of knew all these guys growing up.

He did, and he took notes. He understood it was a great privilege.

Alas much like his father's time in office, Quinsy struggled. He'd come into the office without a popular majority, and throughout his term he faced opposition on everything from his support for education to his proposal for a national observatory. His happiest time as president kneeling in the White House garden growing vegetables. It was during his term that his father died on July fourth, eighteen twenty six, the very same day, Thomas Jefferson died, the fiftieth anniversary of the

I think he almost always felt like he was on the precipice of failure. To have it realized was probably the worst thing that ever happened to him.

And then months later a terror personal loss. His son, George Washington Adams died by suicide by throwing himself from a ferry into the Long Island Sound. Quinsy, like John Adams before him, was a demanding father, and it may have been an imminent confrontation with the old man that pushed George over the edge. At this point, John Quincy Adams could have retired to a quiet life.

He would have felt as if he was wasting his potential, because these are people who believe in service.

Service is the family business.

Service is the family business, because the family business is America.

John Quincy Adams did not retreat into private life. Instead, after much encouragement, he decided to run for a seat in the House of Representatives from his home state of Massachusetts, and he won in a landslide. But wasn't this a step down from the presidency.

Absolutely not. It's doing real work, meaning legislation, representing people, not just this performance of being the president and hosting and all those things which nobody really likes. You're actually doing work, and I think he loved it.

At age sixty four, service in Congress meant a chance at redemption for himself and the Adams family, and in this final act Quincy found a new passion in the fight against slavery. It's important to note of the first twelve presidents, John Adams and John Quincy Adams were the only two not to own slaves.

This is the most important case I've come before this court because what it didn't fat concerns it's the very nature of man.

That's Anthony Hopkins as John Quincy Adams in the nineteen ninety seven Steven Spielberg film Armistad. In eighteen thirty nine, fifty three enslaved Africans managed to take control of their captor's ship, the schooner Armistad, before the ship itself was taken into custody off the coast of Connecticut. The fate of the Africans, whether they'd be allowed to return to Africa,

Desperately need your strength and wisdom to triumph over our fears, our prejudices, ourselves. Give us the courage to do what is right. And if it means civil war, then let it come. And when it does, finally the last battle of the American Revolution.

Quincy's stature as a former president and the son of a founding father meant he could not be easily dismissed. Invoking the Declaration of Independence, he called for the African's inalienable rights of life and liberty to be restored. The Court agreed and ruled for the Africans. It was a great triumph for Quincy, perhaps the most significant of his long, long career. Seven years later, moments after casting a vote, John Quincy Adams suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and collapsed on

She is definitely a fluffy dog.

For babies can be Nepo babies do.

Mister Khushav and I had a very full and frank exchange of views on the major issues that now divide are two countries.

That's President John F. Kennedy in June of nineteen sixty one, just back from his summit meeting in Vienna with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. It was an especially tense time between the superpowers. The arms race was in full swing, and only months before Soviet Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space. But in the public relations arena it was no contest. The Soviets were definitely playing defense. Against JFK

She is definitely a fluffy dog.

Alan Price is the direct of the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum.

Kushink is a beautiful dog, absolutely and a lovely temperament, very friendly dog.

And the Kennedys were very comfortable around dogs. When they moved into the White House the winter before, they brought a long clipper, the German shepherd, Shannon the Cocker spaniel, and Wolf the Irish wolfhound. And then there were all their other pets.

They've got Tom Kitten the cat. They have hamsters named Debbie and Billy. They've got parakeets named blue Bell and may Bell. It's really just incredible.

They had a rabbit named Jaja, a gift from a magician.

They embrace ponies. They have three of them, right. They've got Macaroni and tex and Leprechaun.

Funny enough, the President was allergic to both horses. And dogs, But it seems he loved dogs more than he hated to break out. Enter Poushinka, the only dog that came with a passport. Seriously, she actually had a passport. I like to imagine the day Poushenka came to Washington, the other pets lined up inside the White House's grand foyer, awaiting her arrival, wondering who is this mysterious creature they've

I believe they were exclusive, though there were certainly other dogs who may or may not have been interested.

Now, Charlie may have had the confidence to put the moves on Pushenka because he too came from privilege. It was said that his uncle was Skippy, the wirefox terrier who famously plaid Asta in the thin Man series. So yes, Charlie was a nepo nephew. It should be noted that Poushenka wasn't just physically attractive.

She's a very smart dog. She learns very quickly from the gardeners that she can climb the ladders on the children's slide, and so they put a peanut on each step to get her to climb higher and hire and then learn to slide down the slide on her own.

The relationship between Charlie and Pushenka progressed quickly. I like to imagine that they did that lady in the tramp thing with the string of spaghetti. I assume all dogs who fall in love do that. And in June nineteen teen sixty three, Pushinka and Charlie became parents to four adorable pups named Blackie, Butterfly, White Tip, and Streaker. President Kennedy dubbed the offspring Pupnicks. Five thousand Americans wrote to the Kennedys pleading to adopt the Pupnicks. Two lucky Midwest

President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.

Today he was shot.

When President Kennedy is assassinated, these pets become a big part of the memories that America holds of a time that ends so abruptly.

Within weeks of the murder of President Kennedy, the family and all their pets vacated the White House. Charlie was sent to live with a Secret Service agent. But what happened to Prushenka?

So you still have Pushenka?

And how old is she now?

She's going on four years. Oh now, that's the voice of Chief White House Gardener Irvin Williams. He was interviewed in nineteen sixty five as part of an oral history for the JFK Library. He recalled that he met with Missus Kennedy just two days after the president was buried.

And she asked me that time, did I still want Pushenka and I said I should did, and she's as well. The sheika is yours forever.

They were very close.

This is Irvin Williams's son, Bruce Williams.

She kind of hung out in his office. I have a picture of her under his death.

Candidly, when I wrote about Shinka in my book on Presidential Pets twenty years ago, I never gave much thought to what happened to her after the President's assassination. But after some Internet sleuthing, we were able to track down Bruce. We connected on zoom. He's now in his mid sixties.

I can get the picture and read to hear the caption.

Bruce showed me a framed photo of the famous White House Rose Garden that his father helped design. Missus Kennedy signed the photo.

She says for Irwin Williams, who made this garden so beautiful, for the President who loved it so much, And it says who will care for it now that he is gone?

With deep regrets, Jacqueline Kennedy. So, Missus Kennedy trusted your father to take care of the rose garden. Yes, she also trusted him to take care of Pushinka.

Yes, And he was very happy to do that, and that's when she came home to our house.

The Williams family lived in a more modest home in Vienna, Virginia, just outside of Washington. Bruce was just six years old, the fourth of five kids. So one day, just Pushenka shows up in your house.

Yes, my father comes home from work and Pushenka comes in behind him, and she immediately runs under a chair, and five kids are now eyeballing her, and my brother sticks his hand in and she nips them. So we all realized that we just need to leave her alone.

But Pushenka soon adjusted to her new suburban life. Often she'd perch on top of the couch gazing out the window. The Williams has lived on three acres, so Pushenka may have very well assumed that this was her country home or datcha.

And she knew when my father was coming home because she would get up and go to the door. Her tail was really almost like a fan or a fluff or something. It was just full of hair. Was very cute.

And was she as soft as you wanted her to be?

Oh?

Yes, but she really wasn't a lap dog. I mean she liked her belly to be rubbed, especially when you were outside in the yard. She would like roll over on her back and legs up in the air and you could rub her belly.

In honor of her heritage, Bruce and his siblings photographed Pushinka in a Russian fur cap, and I have to tell you, I love this picture.

That was something we did as kids, so I think that's when we realized that she was a Russian dog.

I mean in that picture she really looks like Julie Christi and doctor Shabako. You can just hear Laura's theme just playing from that movie there.

I think she was just a little princess in her own right.

As for this princess's throne, my.

Father had a little bathroom that he would get ready in the morning, and she found the niche behind the toilet, and that was her home until nineteen seventy seven. That was her happy place.

And though she had receded from the spotlight, Pushinka was still receiving fan mail until the very end. Pushinka died in nineteen seventy seven. She was sixteen. Bruce's father, Irvin Williams, was devastated.

I was the one who took her to have her put down, and he didn't want to be home when I did that. I mean, she was really bad, but he couldn't bring it himself to do that. So I was the one who volunteered to do that. I mean it was sad to do, but she was at peace. That was the important part.

Irvin Williams died in twenty eighteen. He was the longest serving gardener in White House history, serving presidents from Harry Truman through George W. Bush. But he once told a reporter that he would probably be remembered more for his association with Poushenka, and it seems that Irvin Williams was more than fine with that. Poushenka's ashes were sprinkled in his casket and engraved on the back of Williams's tombstone were the words with trusted companion Poushenka.

So she's with him the rest of his life or internity wherever they're going.

Was Poushinka a nepo baby?

I would have to say yes, I mean, look at the lineage she came from.

But there's oftentimes a bad association with nepo baby. Did Poushinka give off the kind of arrogance often associated with nepo babies.

I would say, no, she was just just a dog. I think she'd just like to be by herself and away from kids.

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