4 decades of West Wing power on exhibit in Gaston Co.

GASTON COUNTY MUSEUM OF ARTS & HISTORY

Artifacts and photos from Nell Yates, who spent four decades as a White House secretary and assistants like Jimmy Carter (shown here in 1978) are on display at the Gaston County Museum of Art & History.

A Gaston County native’s career at the center of presidential power is on exhibit at the Gaston County Museum of Art & History.

“Nell Yates: Woman in the Wing,” which opened Jan. 17, chronicles her four decades as a White House secretary and assistant, which covered seven presidential administrations. Admission is free. Hours are Tuesday-Friday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. and Saturdays 11 a.m. – 4 p.m.

“Nellie Yates was the most professional public servant I have ever worked with,” said the late President Jimmy Carter said upon her death in 2018. “I know every other president she worked with shared my high opinion for her service on behalf of each of us and of our country.” Carter was president from 1977-81.

The Yates collection includes a signed headshot from Carter that reads “To Nell Yates, my friend” as well as a 1980 Carter/Mondale campaign button and a peanut lapel pin, along with other mementos, photographs and papers from her life outside the Oval Office.

Yates, born in Dallas, N.C., in 1924 to James Palmer Lewis and Corrie Pauline (Stroupe) Lewis, graduated Dallas High in 1942 and moved to Washington, D.C., a year later, where she met and married Dickson Yates.

Yates started her career in the federal secretarial pool at the Federal Housing Authority, where her work led to the White House, where she became a West Wing fixture as a staff assistant through decades of administration change between both political parties. Yates retired to her hometown and gave her collection of West Wing artifacts to the museum.

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