Gary Walters managed the president’s official residence for 37 years – now he’s sharing his most vivid recollections

Gary Walters has a “special feeling” about the White House East Wing. He met his future wife Barbara when she worked in the visitors’ office there. But asked to contemplate the wing’s destruction by Donald Trump, the former chief usher evidently still believes that discretion is the better part of valour.

“All the presidents and first ladies have made changes in one manner or another – some larger than others,” Walters, 78, says with the measured cadence of a man who has spent a lifetime guarding privacy. “One of the things that I have seen not commented on was back to when the West Wing was built.