Thirty-four years at the Governor's Mansion

Ebony, July, 1989 by Roxanne Brown

Thirty-Four Years At The Governor's Mansion

THERE is only one person who can give an insider's account of events in the Arkansas Governor's Mansion for the past 34 years, and that lady can be found in the kitchen. Eliza Jane Ashley, food production manager, has written a book, Thirty Years at the Mansion, which details her memories there.

Needless to say, Mrs. Ashley didn't come to the Little Rock mansion as manager of food production. She started as a maid in 1954 under Gov. Francis Cherry. When highly controversial Gov. Orval E. Faubus was elected to office in 1955, Mrs. Faubus wanted to replace the male cook with a woman. "I hated to take the job because Henry [the cook] was my friend," recounts Mrs. Ashley in her warm, Southern lilt. "Mrs. Faubus said, 'Well, if you don't take it, somebody else will.' So that's how I became the cook at the Governor's Mansion."

And cook she did--for seven governors and their families, foreign dignitaries, heads of state, presidents and first ladies, and it is all in her book, Thirty Years as the Mansion, a collection of favorite recipes of the various first families and her recollections of life with them.

A youthful 71-year-old with jet black hair and as smooth, pleasant face, Mrs. Ashley chuckles as she recalls some of the fond memories that she shares in her cookbook. Don't ask her who her favorite governor is because she is far too diplomatic to tell you. "I like them all and they were all nice to me," she says with a knowing smile. Her most memorable time in the mansion was in 1957 when court-ordered integration came to Little Rock's Central High School where nine Black children sought to enroll and where the governor's son attended. "I watched out the window and saw the federal people serve the warrant on Gov. Faubus," she recalls. "I didn't have the sense to be excited back then; I had to work, so I just went on."

Cooking, says Mrs. Ashley, is something you have to like to have some skill at. When she was 15, she started in the kitchen on the plantation where she was born in Lonoke County, 30 miles east of Little Rock. Young Eliza, "Janey" to her friends, grew up picking cotton. Her grandmother was a cook at the same plantation, and when she died, Liza, as she was called, was brought to "the big house" to cook.

One of the people pictured with Mrs. Ashley in her book is Barbara Bush, wife of the President. She says the first lady struck her as being" genuinely nice". The most fascinating man to reside in the mansion was Winthrop Rockefeller, according to Mrs. Ashley. Gov. Rockfeller was the only well-known millionaire to head the Pine Tree State. "He didn't eat the same as the others," she says. "When he came to the mansion, he brought his own chef, butlers and everything." He also brought artichokers, lobster Newburg, vichyssoise and crab quiche, foods which Mrs. Ashley says "Southern folks, both Black and White, had never even seen, much less eaten."

The latest first family, Gov. William Clinton, his wife, Hillary, and their daughter, Chelsea, have practically "grown up" in the mansion, and they have a deep attachment to Mrs. Ashley Gov. Clinton began his first term in 1979 when he was just 32 years old. Chelsea was the first child born at the mansion since Mrs. Ashley has worked there. Mrs. Clinton, a lawyer, is the first lady in Mrs. Ashley's remembrance who is as busy as the governor. "She's almost like part of our family," says Gov. Clinton, of Mrs. Ashley. "When my wife and I moved in here, we were so young; she sort of looked after us. She's become a good friend as well as a valued employe."

Though Gov. Clinton has another year to go in his current term, Mrs. Ashley is ready to retire, and much to the first family's dismay, they may have to finish the term without her. Over the years, her tenure at the Governor's Mansion has meant 12-hour work days and seven-day work weeks. Gov. Dale Bumpers, who served from 1971 to 1974, put an end to her working on Sundays, but Mrs. Ashley regrets that so much of her time in years past was spent away from her husband, Fred Ashley, and her son, Louis Dodson. Today, as supervisor of a staff of from three to five people, she does little cooking, but she still likes to bake her famous pound cakes and chocolate chip cookies. On Sundays, she takes her place on the usher board of her church, Canaan Missionary Baptist, and every August (she has the entire month off) she visits her son, his wife and three grandchildren in Los Angeles.

Looking back on her life, Mrs. Ashley says she would have become a schoolteacher if she had gotten a better education. "We would have to stop [going to school] when the cotton was ready to be picked, where the White kids could keep on going," she says.

On a recent trip back to Lonoke County, Mrs. Ashley sampled changing times. Blacks and Whites turned out for her book party at a local bookstore, and she was given a key to the town by the mayor. "He said, 'You used to have to come in the back door, well now you can come in the front door," Mrs. Ashley says.