INSIDE THE GATE
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It’s easier walking into the bullion room at Fort Knox than driving through the iron gates at Walker’s Point, the nine-acre rocky outcropping on the Atlantic Ocean that’s home to the Bush family here in Kennebunkport.
Walker’s Point is also the Number One must-see tourist attraction in town. “Bush-watchers” cluster along Ocean Avenue, focusing their binoculars on the massive shingled house, hoping for a glimpse of any member of the Bush family. Even spotting one of the dogs gets cameras clicking.
Truthfully, I invariably felt a tinge of envy when local pals would say, “Well, when I was out at the Point….” The hospitable Bushes are known for including Mainers and visitors at various events, but I’d never been there.
Not that I didn’t try.
One day back in 1990, when President George H. W. Bush resided at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, I had a nifty idea for my New Jersey newspaper column, “Wanderings.” Specifically: what’s it like to be a Secret Service agent at the Kennebunkport guardhouse in the dead of winter. (Okay, maybe not Pulitzer potential but it intrigued me.)
I drove to Maine from my home in Ridgewood on a nippy February day, planning to enjoy a winter weekend in my condo there and nail down the story. After unpacking and turning the electric heat up to 85 to ward off a sub-zero chill riming the living room windows, I picked up my reporter’s notepad and headed on foot to the Point, half a mile away.
The day was grey, windy and wicked cold. There wasn’t a car on the road or a light in any window of the houses along Ocean. As I got closer, the large shingled home owned by President Bush started to look like a gigantic ghost ship.
I got five feet into the compound driveway before I “felt” eyes looking at me, and heard strange clicking sounds coming from the thick shrubbery lining the driveway. I wondered if they were cameras tracking every step taken by this uninvited woman in a down jacket and blue wool hat as she inched her way toward the guardhouse.
Suddenly, I began to think this wasn’t such a “nifty” idea. Frankly, the place was scaring the bejesus out of me and I was about to raise my arms and yell “Friend! Not foe,” and bolt, when a middle-age guy with a beard and welcoming smile stepped out of the guardhouse and said, “Hey, howya doin?”
I explained my mission. He said, “Well, there’s not much to report because there’s not much going on here. You’re the most exciting thing that’s happened in a week.” We yik-yakked a few more minutes and I left, knowing I’d met the only guy on the planet lonelier than the Maytag repairman.
Fast Forward to late September, 2021 when another “nifty” idea came to fruition. After several emails, I secured an interview for the TOURIST & TOWN Fall Magazine with Doro Bush (Dorothy Walker Bush Koch), daughter of “41” and sister of “43.”
“Let’s do it at my house,” she suggested.
Dear God. Through the gates AT LAST!
So, on a sunny Friday morning last week, the agent in the guardhouse perused his visitor’s list, checked off my name and gave me directions. He said, “Just continue past Jeb’s house there on the left, then take a right by the pickle ball courts, and Doro’s is the last house before you come to where George and Laura Bush live.”
Heady stuff. But I remained super cool.
And had a delightful interview followed by a personal tour of the property with a gracious Doro Bush, all to be revealed in my upcoming article. And truthfully, it’s fun to finally say, “When I was out at the Point….” Because I was
