On Nov. 1, the day the waiting list reopened, Burke drove her dented Chevrolet Celebrity past the La Plata office, saw more than 100 people stretched along the sidewalk, and kept going -- back to the motel, where she cooks on a hot plate and makes calls from a pay phone by the highway.
'Like a Big Family'
None of the inconveniences of life at the White House -- no car, no cable TV, no privacy with her boyfriend -- bothers Anita Grimes all that much. Before arriving in November, she spent eight months in a homeless shelter in Hughesville.
Steven Stinger, 9, shares a rare quiet moment with infant brother Brandon at the White House Motel, where their five-member family shares a one-room unit in Charles County.
(Photos Michael Williamson -- The Washington Post)
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She can handle a motel, she said.
"To me, this is like an efficiency apartment," said Grimes, 35, who lives on food stamps and her boyfriend's salary as a heavy machinery operator. "It's not so bad: there's heat, running water, you don't have to pay for utilities."
It can be a caring place. One late December evening, her neighbor, Darlene Butler, flitted in and out, sharing Grimes's room and portable oven to bake a turkey. Butler's daughter, Amayia, 6, and Grimes's daughter, Leila Coles, 4, drew in coloring books on the floor. Across the parking lot, a miniature Christmas tree stood near a window, illuminated by a string of colored lights. The motel almost felt cozy.
When the turkey was finished, another neighbor gave Butler a ride to a nearby church so she could ask for help with the rent money.
"We're kind of like a big family here," said Grimes. "We're all in the same boat."
The residents know about want and struggle, about not quite having enough. And because of this, Grimes thinks that the prejudices of the outside world mean a little less at the White House. There is just one class: poor.
"You don't judge someone for living in a motel when you're also living in a motel," she said. "We help each other out here."
The mothers watch each other's children, and the kids sleep over in their friends' rooms. Neighbors crisscross the parking lot searching for Cajun chicken spice, a cup of mayonnaise, a bummed cigarette. One neighbor gave Grimes's daughter a bicycle for Christmas. Volunteer firemen drove through at Christmastime with their Dalmatian, dispensing dolls and toys for the kids.
On Saturdays, volunteers from a church bring breads, cakes and canned foods to the rooms.
"Of course, I don't want to spend the rest of my life here," Grimes said. "I want to give my daughter a place where she can play. Where she can have her own bedroom. But until that day comes, this is home."
Little Nevada
A half-century ago, a far different crowd flocked to the White House.
Built in 1953, the motel's colonial-style "tourist cabins" catered to waves of postwar vacationers on family road trips. Motel construction was booming along the Route 301 corridor. Thirteen years earlier, the Potomac River Toll Bridge, since renamed, connected Southern Maryland to Virginia and created a main thoroughfare for East Coast travelers.
