"The Pajama Game, Starring Blair Lee III." The Washington Post, 28 October 1977.

October 28, 1977, Friday, Final Edition

SECTION: Metro; C1

LENGTH: 392 words

HEADLINE: The Pajama Game, Starring Blair Lee III

BYLINE: By Donald P. Baker, Washington Post Staff Writer

DATELINE: ANNAPOLIS, Oct. 27, 1977

BODY:
Acting Gov. Blair Lee III, a millionaire who is no stranger in material comforts, nonetheless has encountered cultural shock in moving from his comfortable but cluttered white framed house in Silver Spring to the 54-room Georgian mansion that is the governor's residence here.

Lee moved in Sunday night and quickly discovered Government House to be "a strange and wonderful place, where you drop your socks on the floor and come back 10 minutes later to find they're gone," removed by a servant.

"I've had a terrible time with my pajamas," Lee told reporters at a press conference this afternoon. "I don't think I'm more slovenly than some of you but I usually wear the same pajamas four or five nights."

Not so as governor, Lee found instead of hanging his pajamas on a hook in the closet to be worn again the next night, Lee found there's not even a hook."

He said a servant comes in each morning and takes his pajamas to the laundry, and then returns them, pressed and folded, to a dresser drawer.

"But they're not going to change me," Lee vowed. "I'm going to make them stop. They'll have to do it my way."

Life at the mansion is apt to get even more casual this weekend when Lee's wife Mimi moves in.

Mrs. Lee, an outdoorswoman who end her own housework of their home in Silver Spring, is scheduled to arrive Friday "driving a station wagon with six aluminium canoes tied on top," Lee said.

Also living at the mansion are the Lees' son, Blair lee IV, his wife, Mary, and their 4 1/2-year-old son Jake.

"I had a session with Blair and Mary about how they might treat Jake so that he doesn't grow up totally spoiled," Lee said.

The young Lees have volunteered to pay $350-a-month rent to the state. Lee's son will work full time in his father's campaign for governor.

Although they are a lot of servants around, Lee said he has no plans to get rid of them, at least until he finds out what the other duties are.

One item he may decide to do without, Lee said, is the Lincoln Continental limousine, which he said "is half a block long and looks to be the most useless thing I've ever seen." As lieutenant governor, Lee was driven around in a Mercury.

"There is one luxury I am enjoying," Lee said."I can walk to work, and that I really dig. I wasted an hour and one-half each day for the last eight years" as a commuter.

GRAPHIC: Picture, Blair Lee III: brand new problem with socks, hooks, and his pajama system. By Margaret Thomas - The Washington Post