He is currently writing the chronicling of life when she worked as a newspaper columnist and writer. Welcome, carl. Thank you. I appreciate so much being able to join the White House Historical association today and im very honored to give you a little bit of a background about Florence Harding and the book. I have to tell you, as is often said, a parent should not really have, per se, a favorite child and, you know, i think an author perhaps shouldnt have a favorite book. But i will say that this the research of this book and then the unique promotion that i did for the book will always be a very important part of my life. I started writing this book and researching this book at a time when the sun was just setting on the last generation of people who knew the hardings. Of course, they had been Young Children and one or two had almost been teenagers. And then at the end of the process the 75th anniversary of the death of president harding, of course he died in 1923, so this was in 1998, i retraced the hardings western tour, Trans Continental Railroad trip in the blistering summer of 1923 and all the stops along the way. And then even went up to alaska and the hardings have gone up to alaska and the president had driven the golden spike that completed the alaska railroad. And we, as a guest of the railroad, i was brought up and there was an elderly man there who had been at that original ceremony, then in his 90s, and he redid that little bit of the striking of the golden spike with a second golden spike. So this story has a lot of personal resonance for me. I would say that harding has resonance for me. As so often will happen, weve had many great first ladies who were married to president s who were not always remembered quite so kindly. But what ends up happening so often is these women really are forgotten. They are oftentimes turned into caricatures and nobody really gives them much attention. And i always detected something about mrs. Harding that i thought was as worthy and important as Eleanor Roosevelt was to the role of first lady. And as i began doing the research over a long period of years, starting when i was in college, i really felt the full measure of her greatness. Florence harding had been born to a very successful small town, a central ohio man who owned real estate, traded horses, owned a Hardware Store and started rather modestly. She was born above the Hardware Store on the second floor. The eldest of three, her father had hoped she would be a boy and so he sort of raised her as he would have a son, teaching her all of those things that at that time, with so much of a conscious, you know, notion of what gender should or shouldnt be doing, he sort of ignored that. And she rode horses, she had great physical strength, and they were close, but he was rather tyrannical. And her mother was a bit passive, and as time went on and she began developing more of a sense of what she wanted to do with her life, which was to be a serious musician, and he did send her to the cincinnati conservatory of music, there was a lot of there were a lot of arguments. And ultimately she ran away with a neighborhood boy and theres no proof of there being a legal marriage, but they held themselves out as married and was recognized as sort of a common law marriage and she became pregnant and had a son. Unfortunately, the husband, her companion, abandoned her and she had to come back into the small town of marion, her hometown, where she broke into a house that she knew was abandoned for the winter. From there, really continued to struggle. Ultimately her father made sort of a deal with her in which he would take her son in and raise him as his own. She begins giving piano lessons. One of her students is a young woman named charity harding, who has a brother by the name of Warren Harding, who is interested in journalism. He buys a small local paper and florence really goes after him. Hes five years younger than her, but they really form a great business partnership. She becomes the Business Manager of the newspaper and she ends up turning it into one of the most successful daily papers in the state. And it was not only it not only required a great deal of business accumen, but great interpersonal skills. Hes elected Lieutenant Governor and then makes a run for the u. S. Senate. Florence was really behind him in this. Now, he formed friendships a friendship with a powerful lobbyist by the name of hairry dougherty and he and florence became comanagers of hardings career. She comes to washington as a senate wife. And even though she was sort of a big fish in a small pond back in ohio, shes now just a senate wife, doesnt really know anybody, but harding, as the u. S. Senator from ohio, becomes friends with nicholas longworth, who was a congressman. Of course, nicholas longworth, married to alice roosevelt, the daughter of president theodore roosevelt, and already established as washingtons sort of premier hostess, and there the famous poker games began between the longworths and hardings. But they also included a man by the name of ned mcclain. Ned mcclains father owned the cincinnati inquirer and Washington Post, and his wife, evelyn walsh mclain, owned the hope diamond. And she and mrs. Harding, despite their 30year age difference, became instant friends, and in a sense more than friends. They became great confidants and evelyn and she were excited to discover that they not only shared a common bond in their love and respect for animals, for all living beings, but also for astrology and a belief in various forms of spiritualism. And mrs. Mcclain took mrs. Harding to her fortune teller, who was apparently everyones in washington, including the incumbent first lady at the time, edith wilson. And they did tarot card readings and astrology readings and she predicted in the winter of 1920, right as the republican president ial primaries are beginning, she predicted that if harding ran, he would be elected, but that he would die a sudden, peculiar death by poison. These things were reported in the newspaper at the time and, in fact, at the june 1920 convention in chicago, mrs. Harding spoke openly about them, saying she saw one word above her husbands head if he was elected, and that word was tragedy. Whats also going on, of course, at that time is the 19th amendment is on the verge of being passed, ratified. And mrs. Harding had always been a suffragist. She always believed in the equality of women. And during that Summer Campaign she began to give interviews with reporters, which candidates wives usually didnt, and rather unusually, to announce the fact that she didnt wear a wedding ring, she didnt like to cook, that her interests were mostly in business. She addressed some of the hot political issues of the day. For example, very much against the league of nations and entangling the u. S. In any overseas obligations, this of course coming on the heels of world war i. And harding is elected and in no small part because of florences management, particularly in the area of press relations, not unlike Jacqueline Kennedy in terms of having a strong sense of how to frame her husband as the ideal president ial candidate, both in terms of his words and deeds, but also in terms of his appearance. The evolution of media is very crucial at this time because you are although we dont yet have sound recordings, the sophistication of visual recordings is great and the hardings are really the first couple to have their images proliferate across all media, both in print and newspapers and magazines, but also in news reels, which were often played in the middle of when people went to the theatre at the time and saw the silent films, they would often show news reels, which of course had text because there was no audio recording describing the scenes. And so the country was exposed to Florence Harding in a way that they had never been before to any other first lady. And as first lady, she gets onto the steps Inauguration Day of the white house and she turns to her husband and she says, i got you the presidency, now what are you going to do with it . And once theyre in the white house later that day, she tells the servants to open all the windows so the public could look in, because she says its their white house. She came to the role of first lady with a very strong sense of public duty, that the public was in a sense her constituency. And, again, this is a similarity to Eleanor Roosevelt. And its not something often seen by any of her predecessors. We know that the first ladies before her always saw the role of the upkeep of the house, the entertaining, you know, at that point a traditional feminine role, womans role in american society. But Florence Harding really expanded that. She felt a sense of great Civic Responsibility and this manifested primarily with three constituencies. One was the wounded and disabled veterans who were returning from world war i, and in fact when harding helps to establish the newly formed veterans bureau, its mrs. Harding who weighs in, unfortunately, on the choice of Charles Forbes to head that. He was a friend of hers, and she very strongly believed he was capable of that. But she gets involved in veteran bureau affairs, and when scandals start to break shes on it very quickly. The second area she really concentrated on was kmeconomic d political and professional equity for women. She encouraged women to seek Higher Education. She supported a ban on sugar when sugar prices became too exorbitant. She talked about how the wife could have power and encouraged women to become more involved in the political process now that they had the vote. She said its not a question of if, its a fact. So women should become better educated. And although she was a republican, she supported what many at the time in both the democratic and Republican Party saw as a potential threat to their loyal members by the creation of a National Womens party. And mrs. Harding supported the National Womens party in their successful effort to have a marble bust of susan b. Anthony and i just forgot the other womans name. But anyway, the third area she focused on was animal rights. And she was rather radical. She didnt even support the use of animals in any kind of experimentations or development of products that humans would use and she was very engaging, very friendly, but also very blunt. And sometimes she rubbed people the wrong way. They attributed that to somehow her small town ways. But she also was very even though she was older than many of the other first ladies had been when they assumed that position, she was really very much in touch with current popular culture. So, for example, shes the first to use film, movies, a silent film qualified the covered wagon which the sound of it was provided by a live orchestra. She used that as after dinner entertainment in the white house. She was fascinated by the movie camera. Through Evelyn Mcclain, she got to know d. W. Griffith who came to visit the hardings in the white house. She brought the first radio into the white house. And although she tried her best to stick to the traditional notion that first ladies should not speak on the record with reporters, she couldnt help herself. So she really was in a very short period of time a very dynamic woman and a very honest woman. Now, everybody always also wonders about the scandals and the fact of the matter is, as far as personal life goes, we know from letters released that Warren Harding had a fullblown love affair with a woman who had been his wifes best friend back in ohio, Carrie Phillips. We also know because of dna that the very young nan burton, almost 40 years younger than harding, and passionately in love with him, had a child by him. The degree to which mrs. Harding new about nan burton is not entirely clear, although theres some suggestion that she suspected something, but she certainly knew about the Carrie Phillips incident. But in another entirely different dimension, the hardings very much loved each other. When mrs. Harding almost died in september of 1922 because of a kidney ailment, the president was beside himself and really the love and dependence they had on each other really emerged in firsthand accounts at that time. As part of her spiritualist beliefs, mrs. Harding was always rather almost obsessed with this vision she had for many decades of going to alaska. And she felt somehow it was part of some mission she had to complete. And so even though the president s health is beginning to deteriorate and hes looked over by a, frankly, very incompetent hom incompetent homeopath from their own town, who has her trust because she believes hes the only person that could save him. In fact, when the famous mayo brothers come and shes lying in the white house, its only doc sawyer who is able to save her. But through the notes of the second in command, the physician, joel boone, we know that sawyer was very incompetent and during this trip out west was doing things that were worsening what boone knew to be a very bad heart condition. And ultimately president harding died in mrs. Hardings presence in San Francisco on august 2nd, 1923 in the palace hotel in San Francisco. And so ultimately rumors began that she had poisoned him and there were some suggesting, even her good friend, that perhaps the power of suggestion, mrs. Harding believed it was a fa fate that the president would die. But later a book came out that said she poisoned him was utterly fiction, but the book was well crafted in that it took what were known truths and sort of spun a web around those. So ultimately mrs. Harding is was for many years remembered as the first lady rumored to have poisoned the president. Im also being i want to be conscious of the time here. I want to make sure im not speaking too long. And so do give me an indication if im doing okay or if im going over the time. Youre doing great. I believe we also may have some photos to share as well. Yes. Let me get those up. Yes, this is the home in marion, ohio, where Florence Harding grew up. It was the home of her father, amos, and many times she would learn how to slip out of the window and run off with the man she had the first common law marriage with. Well, that is a bulldog, and since i have two dogs, one a weimaraner and one a bulldog, im very happy you showed the bulldog. I believe his name was bully boy. I cant confirm that 100 . But the more famous one was the airedale, and oftentimes she would let laddy boy go to serve as a host for a lot of Animal Rescue and Animal Protection fundraisers. Here is mrs. Harding with a group of women she loved meeting at the white house, with a wide variety of women activists, whether they were professional organizations or even in the case of a delegation of filipino women who came seeking support for filipino for the independence of the philippine islands. She particularly special loved to encourage groups of graduating classes of women because she so believed in the need for Higher Education for women. Here she is after the election, but before the inauguration, at a Senate Wives Luncheon honoring her. The woman with the White Feather hat on one side is Evelyn Mcclain. On the other is lois marshall, who was the outgoing Vice President s wife. Evelyn mcclain left us colorful and vivid recollections of those years, the most famous is mrs. Harding after the body of the president has been brought back to the white house in a flagdraped coffin, asking the coffin to be opened and then speaking to him and telling him the trip hasnt hurt you a bit and expressing the feeling that and this is sort of what helped lead to these rumors, now that its all over, im beginning to think it was all for the best. And here is mrs. Harding, interested and fascinated by the new technology of film, motion picture. Here she is, of course, winding a camera on the lawn of the white house and i believe the group was a group of amateur women camera people, i guess you would call them, or camera women, i think they were called. But in many ways Florence Harding developed the notion of the photo op that both president s and first ladies use. She would pose with a group, she would participate by holding something that was symbolic of it and she never she was very selfconscious of her physicality and was uncomfortable sometimes posing for images, i suppose because the glasses, which sort of made her eyes pop out and so forth. But nonetheless, she always did it as part of what she felt was her public duty as first lady. And this is after her recovery from her illness in march of 1923, before they head down to florida for their annual winter vacation. At this point in the spring of 1923 so many of their friends, close personal friends who held power in the administration, the scandals were beginning. So albert fall, who they had known in the senate, the senator from new mexico, appointed secretary of interior, the secret leasing of oil, federal oil reserves at teapot dome and others, beginning to raise the eyebrows. The Charlie Forbes scandal breaks in february. And then, just two months after this trip, which is taken with attorney general dougherty and his companion, who was sort of a dollar a year man as the justice department, its discovered that smith was involved in the illegal trafficking of confiscated liquor during prohibition and he commits suicide. He was a very close friend of theirs. And so you can understand that by the time they are leaving a month later for alaska, mrs. Harding has a lot of dark clouds over her. Here she is at a fair helping to promote some of the te