It’s a pretty safe bet that Jim McDaniel knows the White House better than most.

The former director of the White House Liaison for the National Park Service spent 30 years learning the ins and outs of the building, crawling in attics, studying blue prints and managing everyone who had anything to do with the structure’s function. McDaniel, a parishioner of Church of the Nativity in Burke, assisted with renovations, inaugurations and the building of a horseshoe pit on the property.

Now, however, those decades of government service are behind him, condensed into an overflowing photo album — filled with pictures of presidents and first ladies and invitations to White House events — and buried in the basement of his Springfield home.

It’s been 12 years since McDaniel’s focus turned from his country to another. It’s been 12 years since his heart was captured by a people so utterly different from his own. It’s been 12 years since he reconnected with his faith and began to see the face of Christ in everyone, everywhere.

It’s been 12 years since his first trip to Haiti.

Family life

Born Nov. 3, 1946, in Watertown, Mass., just outside of Boston, McDaniel was the son of a first-generation Italian immigrant (his grandmother had crossed the Atlantic from Italy on her own at 16) and a World War II sailor. The “wartime romance” of his parents ended when his father left the family when McDaniel was 12, and he, his sister and mother moved in with his grandmother. McDaniel credits life in his grandmother’s typical Italian household, “with relatives coming and going all the time,” as the basis for his formation in faith and love.

“There weren’t a lot of material goods for us, but there was an overabundance of love and nurturing,” he said.

His grandmother’s gentle, peaceful spirit and her attendance at daily Mass made an impression of faith on him that he didn’t soon forget. He especially remembers the tears she would cry over the poor.

“She would talk about those poor people, those poor children,” he said. “I think that was the beginning of something that she was helping to plant in me.”

While attending Northeastern University in Boston, McDaniel took a co-op job with Minute Man National Historic Park in Lexington and Concord, Mass. He began to give tours and liked the National Park System so well that he pursued it as a full-time career. After being trained as a park ranger, McDaniel volunteered to move to Washington, D.C., to help develop parks programs for inner city populations. He married his wife, Michelle, in August 1970. Two children, Jim and Jill, were born during the next three years.

At the White House

Loving his job as a park ranger, McDaniel was offered a position at perhaps the ultimate of all National Parks: the President’s Park, encompassing the White House and surrounding grounds. For 10 years he worked alongside the director, learning the scope of the operation, the relationships with other agencies and the necessary balance it takes to maintain them. When his predecessor retired in 1983, McDaniel replaced him and worked as director under Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

In this job filled with variety, McDaniel oversaw the park rangers who helped with White House tours, assisted the architects and engineers who designed and planned major renovations, and worked with museum curators and interior designers.

“The people who would sit down with the president to design a new Oval Office rug were my employees, the people who hauled the trash to the dump were my employees,” he said. “That’s what made it exciting.”

A trip and a change

In the summer of 1998, McDaniel traveled to Australia with his daughter, Jill, to visit siblings of his grandmother. When Jill’s suitcase, filled with irreplaceable family heirlooms, was lost on the return trip, McDaniel prayed for its safe retrieval. When it was found, McDaniel asked God to give him some sign of how he could express his gratitude. At that weekend’s Mass, Father Dick Martin, Nativity pastor, mentioned the upcoming parish trip to Haiti. Before McDaniel knew it, he was signed up.

“I didn’t know anything about Haiti, and the more I started learning about it, the more I started to think, ‘Am I doing the right thing? This is a strange place,’” he said.

That first trip to the strange place, in December 1998, changed McDaniel’s life.

“There was just no way I could leave that experience there,” he said. “I had to do something to make a difference for the people that I had met, spent time with and learned about. The seed that my grandmother had planted broke through the ground.”

Though still working for the National Park Service, McDaniel began to feel his heart pulled in another direction. In the fall following his first Haiti trip, McDaniel attended his first Cursillo retreat.

The “emotional, spiritual experience” renewed a faith that had become routine.

“It took my relationship with Christ out of the church and into every day life,” he said. “After that weekend Christ was everywhere and in everyone that I came across.”

A couple of months later McDaniel was back in Haiti. He began sharing his experiences with other faith communities, including the international hunger relief association Food for the Poor, with whom Nativity has a close relationship.

“It’s hard to describe what there is about Haiti, but there’s something in the people that draws you to them,” he said. “It’s something spiritual. When you’re in Haiti you feel like you’re walking through the Gospel.”

Though he was committed to serving the country that he had now come to know well, it wasn’t until the death of his mother in 2001 that he decided to dedicate his life to the cause full time.

A spiritual loss

When McDaniel's mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2001, he, in a most unexpected manner, became even more intimately intertwined with the people of Haiti. The staff at his mother’s hospital was Haitian, and as soon as they found out she had a son who was trying to help their country, there's nothing they didn't do for her. They were extra attentive, watching over her or sitting with her after their shifts.

When McDaniel's mother passed away in August, McDaniel knew the presence of the Haitians had been a true ministry to her in her final days.

“Because of what the Haitian people did for my mom in the hospital, I owe them a debt,” he said. “I will never forget that. I will stay with them in one way or another for the rest of my life.”

As a result of that experience, McDaniel "crossed a line," and there was nowhere to go but Haiti. He retired five years early, in 2002, and never looked back, traveling to the impoverished nation 15 times.

Following last month’s devastating earthquake, McDaniel got himself back into “work mode,” sending out e-mails, constant updates and organizing emergency aid. Because of the relationship of his parish with the Haitian people, the disaster truly hit home.

“It’s like we’re running a little military operation out of Nativity,” he said. “The stories are very personal.”

In a few weeks when, all too soon, Haiti falls out of the media and star-studded post-earthquake spotlight, McDaniel’s focus on the country will remain steady. He’ll continue to help the people who, in so many ways, have helped him.

“It’s the closest I can get to Christ,” he said. “So little effort can make such a huge difference.”