WASHINGTON – The White House yesterday sent nearly 10,000 dyed Easter eggs to a local food kitchen after the annual Easter Egg Roll was canceled because of rain.
“I guess tomorrow will be a peeling day,” said Susan Callahan, project director at the D.C. Central Kitchen, a charity that feeds about 3,000 poor in the District of Columbia each day.
She said 25 volunteers will make egg salad out of the hard-boiled White House Easter eggs.”It will be nice if somebody donated a boatload of mayonnaise – and onions and celery,” Callahan said.
The White House expected 40,000 people to come to the annual Easter Egg Roll, a popular open-to-the-public event in which kids get to roll dyed eggs with spoons across the South Lawn.
Instead, thousands of kids and their parents waited in long lines outside the gates for an “excellent tour of the White House,” said Ashleigh Adams, a spokeswoman for First Lady Laura Bush.
President Bush shook hands with a few kids when they arrived.The egg roll dates back to James Madison’s presidency (1809-1817), when it was held on the Capitol grounds. In 1878, President Rutherford B. Hayes moved the roll to the White House.
The last time it was canceled was 1984, also because of rain.