Doyle Whitehead, whose humble roots growing up on an Amite County farm and attending a one-room schoolhouse led him to a globetrotting life as a steward aboard Air Force One for three presidents, has died. He was 86.
Funeral director John Brown of Brown Funeral Home in Gloster said Whitehead died Sunday at his daughter’s house in Denham Springs, La.
Whitehead had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
Visitation is 10 a.m. Friday at New Hope Methodist Church, Gloster, until services there at 1 p.m. Burial will be in the church cemetery, Brown said.
Whitehead was aboard Air Force One in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. In previous interviews with the Enterprise-Journal, he recalled consoling Jackie Kennedy — still wearing a blood-spattered pink dress in the back of the plane — on the flight back to Washington.
“There was a table with four chairs across from where the casket was, and that’s where Jackie Kennedy sat,” he said in 2016.
Whitehead said also served aboard Air Force One during the administrations of Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Lyndon B. Johnson.
He said Kennedy was his favorite president to work for.
One day Kennedy asked Whitehead where he went to school.
“I told him Oxford, and he laughed. I said, ‘Not the Oxford you’re thinking of,’ ” which would have been the university in England, as opposed to the one-room schoolhouse in Amite County’s Oxford community.
“He made a joke out of that later on: ‘I’ve got a steward that went to Oxford,’ and of course I did,” Whitehead said.
His least favorite was Johnson, who he described as crass and demanding. Whitehead said those character traits were pronounced on Day 1 of the Johnson presidency, when Air Force One was returning Kennedy’s body to Washington with his widow aboard and the nation was in shock and mourning.
Johnson had been sworn in on the plane before takeoff.
“While she sat in the back by the body, Johnson and his boys had a party celebrating his presidency. It got so loud, we had to close off where she and the body were from the party,” Whitehead said.
During his time in the Air Force, Whitehead played host to dignitaries including the Rev. Billy Graham, Henry Kissinger and Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins.
He witnessed presidential womanizing and excess and said Marilyn Monroe was a frequent flier during the Kennedy administration, but Johnson also had plenty of private time with his masseuses, even when the First Lady was aboard.
Of Monroe, Whitehead said, “She was beautiful until she opened her mouth. She was a drinker, and you know how drunks are they just go on and on. That’s what she did. Some of the filthiest things came out of her mouth; it was disgusting.”
Whitehead’s Air Force One career began when Eisenhower visited the base where he was stationed and one of his stewards had a heart attack, leaving the plane in need of a quick replacement.
“They were running around looking for somebody to take his place and I was standing right there,” Whitehead said. “I said, ‘I’ll go,’ so they stuck me on the airplane.”
Whitehead left Air Force One in 1966, telling his boss, “I’ve got to go. I’ve had all I can take.”
His next assignment was in Vietnam during the war, where one of his jobs was to escort the Rev. Billy Graham.
After that he flew with other dignitaries before retiring from the military in 1974.
While Whitehead’s career made him a familiar face with the most powerful men in the world and took him to more places than most people get to see in their lifetimes, he never forgot his home and returned to live out his retirement in Amite County.
“It was an honor for me,” Whitehead said of his job. “I felt like I’d come a long way in a short-term career. All my life, if I did a job, I tried to do it the best I could.”
