TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

She Hobnobbed With History

ADVERTISEMENT

By CHERYL BENTLEY

The Suncoast News

Published: January 30, 2009

In the 1980s, White House Chief of Staff Donald Regan, CIA Director William Casey, Secretary of the Treasury James Baker and Vice President George H. W. Bush all happened to converge where Teresa Imelda O'Gara was standing.

They were at a White House reception. The bigwigs in the Ronald Reagan administration exchanged pleasantries with O'Gara, who was an executive secretary at the White House. O'Gara has always regretted she has no picture with them.

But asking for a picture of her moment with the bigwigs would have been contrary to White House etiquette. Only the White House photographer could take pictures, she says.

"It was a whole different world," the 79-year-old O'Gara says while sitting in her New Port Richey condominium. "No one on the outside can understand," she says in her lilting Irish brogue. O'Gara came to this country from her native Ireland in the 1950s.

She worked in the White House from 1985-87 as executive secretary to Raymond F. Burghardt, who was then special assistant to Reagan and senior director of Latin American Affairs and later U.S. ambassador to Vietnam.

"There were only 12 special assistants at the time," she recalls. "I was working for one of them."

It was only one of the posts O'Gara held in a 30-year career as an executive secretary in the Foreign Service in the U.S. Department of State. Her secretarial work allowed her to meet some of the major players of the 20th century. O'Gara's career chalked up stints in numerous countries, including Israel, Norway, Hong Kong, Great Britain and the Soviet Union.

In her White House post, she worked across the hall from Oliver North, the Marine lieutenant colonel who was involved in the Reagan administration's secret sale of weapons to Iran for the release of American hostages. Some of the money from the sale was diverted to support the Contras, the pro-American forces in Nicaragua.

O'Gara laughingly recalls commiserating with North's secretary, Fawn Hall, whom she calls "just a beautiful girl and nice," about the long hours both of them kept. Hall later admitted to shredding confidential Iran-Contra affair documents.

O'Gara's duties at the White House included keeping records about visits from Latin American heads of state. Those records are now under the care of the National Archives and Records Administration, she says. "My work is history."

She never got to shake Reagan's hand because of the tight security after the attempted assassination of the president in March 1981. The Secret Service was particularly cautious after that, she remembers. It insisted all doors, including that of her office, be closed and locked on the few occasions Reagan visited the area where she worked.

By virtue of her position with the Foreign Service, O'Gara traveled first class and was invited to official functions given by both the United States and the host country. As a result, she was invited to one of Queen Elizabeth II's garden parties at Buckingham Palace and sat in the Royal Enclosure at the Ascot Racecourse.

In Norway, she was on the advance team that arranged a cruise through the Norwegian fjords for then-Vice President George H. W. Bush and wife Barbara.

"Mrs. Bush asked the ambassador, 'Where did you find this lovely Irish girl?'

" O'Gara recalls. She then twinkles with characteristic humor. "I don't remember what the answer was."

She was also in the entourage that accompanied President Richard Nixon and first lady Pat Nixon to see the ballet "Swan Lake" in Moscow.

The auburn-haired O'Gara has no regrets she never married. "God gave me something different," she says. "God gave me the whole world."

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT