CASPER — They met at the White House four months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and both had stepped from intern roles to full-time jobs in the George W. Bush administration.
Dave McMaster was two subway stops away from the Pentagon in a hotel about to take the final test that qualified young Republicans to lead a GOP campaign when America Airlines Flight 77 dove into the structure.
Jenica McMaster remembers the time her 23-year-old self received a call from Air Force One, and on the other end was the president’s chief of staff in a stern voice wanting an explanation.
An innocent event involving kids behind a rope outside the White House went awry, interrupting the president’s planned day.
She was left in tears. Her future husband stepped in to console her.
“I just remember Dave walking me around the halls of the Old Executive Building talking me off the ledge,” she said. “That was one of the first times I knew that he was a keeper.”
Now more than 22 years into their marriage with three daughters, the Casper couple said they look back and sees God’s hand at work.
That took them from jobs in the George W. Bush administration as young college graduates to roles today leading a company that stores precious metals for Dave, and a new nonprofit helping Wyoming children in need for Jenica.
In-between, their lives have been full of faith, family, and adventures into the unknown exploring the challenges and opportunities of life together.
The path to the White House for Tempe, Arizona, native Dave, involved an undergraduate degree in political science at Arizona State University and what he thought would just be a summer internship at the National Republican Congressional Committee.
“I’ve always followed politics,” Dave said. “Reagan was my first experience when I was 6, watching him give a speech.”
But that summer of 2021 internship provided an opportunity to meet the White House director of the Office of Political Affairs at a reception.
He offered Dave an internship at the White House that fall, and he took it.
Launching his internship in the Office of Political Affairs for Dave meant attending a Republican campaign management college that prepared participants to run a GOP campaign whether it be congressional, state or local. Dave was the only intern in his office taking part.
His 9/11 Experience
On Sept. 11, 2001, Dave was at a hotel in Crystal City on the Virginia side of the Potomac River two metro stops south of the Pentagon and about 5 miles from downtown Washington.
He recalls they were supposed to take a final exam that day.
Dave remembers being on break and learning about the first tower of the World Trade Center being hit by an airplane, and then the staff of the college came in and told them a second tower was hit.
Those in charge of the training canceled the exam. Everyone who worked for the White House were told to contact their employers, and the others to go home.
Dave remembers piling into a car with four others, and in the process of trying to get out of the metro area they took Route 1 north toward the Pentagon.
He said they were on an overpass in standstill traffic when he looked to his left to see the Pentagon in “fire and flames.”
Sitting in the middle back seat, Dave said the sun roof was above him and he heard the increasing roar of jet engines approaching.
“I’m looking out of every window because I am thinking to myself, ‘Either I am going to get hit by another plane or I am going to see the Pentagon get hit again,'” he said.
“It ended up being two U.S. fighter jets scraping right over us,” he added. "They had been sent to intercept the flight that ended up impacting the Pentagon and they did the tightest spiral right over the Pentagon and just rocketed out of there.
“It was surreal to see that whole event.”
All traffic was stopped on the freeway, and they finally were directed off the freeway back into Virginia because entry to D.C. was closed.
They spent much of the day in a grocery store parking lot knowing they could get food and water.
Eerie National Mall
Landlines were shut down as was his ability to use his cellphone.
Eventually, a landline opened and he could call his mom in Arizona and let her know he was OK.
From the parking lot, they witnessed military helicopters buzzing the skies and eventually entrances into Washington, D.C., were opened.
A buddy dropped Dave off on the National Mall at the opposite end from the Capitol where he was staying.
Typically, the mall had hundreds, if not thousands, of people milling about.
“I walked the length of the mall and maybe I saw two other people the entire time,” he said. “It was a really eerie experience.”
Back at work the next day he learned Bush and Karl Rove, his adviser, shut down political activity and things became quiet in the office.
But Dave remembers a bomb threat in the Old Executive Building where the Office of Political Affairs was housed and Secret Service coming in with weapons drawn ordering everyone out.
More bomb threats happened later that fall.
“I remember having to run from the White House a couple of times because of bomb threats,” he said. “It was a historic time.”
Military commanders, the FBI director, CIA director and chairman of the Joint Chiefs were seen in the corridors around the White House.
He said occasionally the bosses in his office needed to send secure communications to senior Bush advisor Karl Rove, and he would be tasked with taking the message down to the White House situation room, where the equipment was available for secure communications.
For a 23-year-old intern, Dave said interacting with the Marines in the situation room during a pivotal time in America’s history.
And as the fall progressed after the attacks, he was offered a White House job.
He credits his parents with instilling a work ethic in him and teaching him “how to comport” himself professionally as a big reason he got the job offer.
He took it.
“I chalk it up to the Lord blessing me with an opportunity that I did not deserve in any way,” Dave said. “You are coming into work at 6 in the morning and there were some nights that I slept in the office because there was work that needed to be done.”
Jenica’s Journey To The White House
Jenica said her path to the White House was not because of politics, but an interest in event planning.
A resident of Wichita, Kansas, after high school she attended Azuza Pacific University in California and majored in communications.
Once back in Kansas after graduation, she met a family friend — who also happened to be Dave’s White House boss — at a Christmas party. He suggested she apply for a White House internship.
She had planned to work for her Kansas congressman.
The only intern position still available at the White House was in the Office of Public Liaison, which did event planning. She applied and was accepted.
Once arriving and because of 9/11, security was heightened. Offices in the Old Executive Office Building on the west side of the White House had been shifted to one side of the building because of bomb threats and the need to install bomb-proof glass.
Jenica said her office happened to be sandwiched next to Dave’s.
Initially, they met because Dave had to arrange special access for Jenica to go to a January welcome breakfast with his boss in the White House Mess, reserved only for commissioned military officers.
“That’s how I really got to know Dave,” she said.
But Dave said even though she caught his eye, he kept his distance because she was an intern at the time.
A month later, she was hired on full-time, and a few months after that in April or May of 2002, they started dating.
Jenica said working long hours in the same building helped build their relationship, but one event specifically put some cement into her decision that Dave McMaster was the one she would marry.
In the Office of Public Liaison she was assigned to help with Make-A-Wish Foundation visits and other events at the White House that involved young people.
As Halloween approached in 2002 she had the idea to proactively bring some children onto the White House grounds in costume to stand beside the rope line where President Bush would walk out of the building to the Marine One helicopter on Halloween.
Halloween Plan
In sharing the idea with another woman in the office, the woman had a son in a school with young special needs children.
Jenica looked at Bush’s schedule and made her plan.
“I thought, ‘Well that’s fantastic, we’ll just get them in their costumes and they can surprise President Bush as he walks out to his helicopter,'” she said.
Scheduling people to be at the rope line for Marine One departures did not require any special notice to others or a briefing paper for the president.
All the rope, people just had to be cleared through security, but Jenica gave the president’s personal aide a heads up about the plan.
Notices of the opportunity went to parents. They got excited. Kids got excited. Preparations were made.
On Halloween, they came to the White House in costume, and Jenica said she cleared them onto the grounds around 5 a.m. because the president’s departure kept moving up earlier and earlier.
Once at the rope line, something the 23-year-old did not plan on happened.
All the kids had to go to the bathroom.
“All of them,” Jenica emphasized.
She consulted with the Secret Service agents and they decided they had to let them into the White House to use the facilities.
Once inside, parents and children got excited and started “freaking out” about actually being inside the residence of the president, she said.
Jenica tried to “wrangle” the parents and kids and get them right back outside as quickly as possible.
But President Bush liked to show up early as a matter of practice and respect for his role, she said.
As children are “ripping” their costumes off and heading into the Diplomatic Reception Room’s potty facilities “which they weren’t supposed to be in,” and parents are not paying attention to them because because they are enamored with the White House.
Chief of Staff Andy Card and the president’s personal aide walk in.
Their looks told her she needed to do something fast. She tried to line up the kids as President Bush appeared.
“Shocked” President
“The president walked in the door and he was, like, shocked,” she said. “He had no idea that I had Halloween children waiting for him in the Diplomatic Reception Room.
"He was so great, though. He took a few of them and said, ‘Well, all right, let’s walk outside.’”
After the president left and the children and parents went back to their lives, she went back to her office.
The phone rang.
Card was on the other end from Air Force One wanting to know how that morning’s surprise to the president’s schedule happened.
That was followed up by a call from her immediate boss in the Office of Public Liaison asking the same thing, and then Rove.
“I got wrecked,” Jenica said. “No one understood how this happened and no one knew about it.”
Tears were flowing. She thought she was going to lose her job. The Secret Service agents who helped her were in trouble. Everyone associated with the event was on the hot seat.
Dave McMaster came alongside her and tried to find words of consolation.
“We walked for a really long time around the halls of the Old Executive Building,” she said. “I was just crying my eyes out.”
Despite the kerfuffle, the next morning images of Bush with kids in costume appeared on "Good Morning America" and the "Today Show." Positive media.
Jenica kept her job.
Dave McMaster adds: “It’s just not anyone who can impact the president’s schedule and live to talk about it that way.”
But the experience brought the couple’s relationship to a deeper level.
The two were married in February 2004, and two weeks later Jenica said she moved to New York City to plan the 2004 Republican National Convention.
Dave stayed in Washington, D.C., to work on Bush’s re-election campaign.
“So, that was kind of how we started our marriage, (through) the wild campaign season,” she said.
Post-White House Life
After the president’s re-election campaign, Dave served in the Republican national campaign headquarters, then segued to the president’s inaugural committee.
He received a job at the U.S. State Department in the second administration and stayed for six months.
The pair decided they wanted to start a family and did not want to do it in Washington, D.C. Dave had a job opportunity in Arizona, so they moved back to his home state.
Job loss, struggles, a law degree for Dave, three daughters, another job and a lot of life followed.
They moved from Arizona to Casper three years ago because of Dave’s role with the Scottsdale Mint. He now is the co-founder and president of Wyoming Reserve Opportunity Zone Fund Corp.
Jenica is finishing up her last year at Dallas Theological Seminary and serves as the executive director for Wyo4Kids, a CarePortal program similar to the program she helped start in Arizona.
Wyo4Kids works with the Wyoming Department of Family Services and local churches to help children and families in crisis.
They agree that the transition from the Arizona valley of 6 million residents where they spent several years to a city of 60,000 in Wyoming has been challenging at times.
Now, Casper feels like home.
“It’s our faith that has kept us grounded, that the Lord has called us to this community, to the roles that we have professionally,” Dave said. “So, we’re hitting a sweet stride right now and loving being here.”
As Arizona and Kansas natives respectively, the couple also finds it ironic that their post-college lives spent interacting at times with former Vice President Dick Cheney has led to the place where the long-time Wyoming politician spent part of his youth and graduated high school.
“If you ever asked me 25 years ago when we were both serving in the Bush-Cheney administration that we’d be in Dick Cheney’s hometown … I would have told you you were crazy,” Dave said.
“We look down at the field at NC (Natrona County High School) football games and just laugh,” Jenica adds. “We would never have guessed that we would be at Dick Cheney Field.”
Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.
