Considered president roosevelts personal and professional confidante. Hello, good afternoon, everyone, welcome to the Roosevelt Museum and to the reading festival. Were excited youre here for today. This program is a special one, ill tell, but it in just a moment. If youre familiar with the program at this point, about a 30 minute talk and ten minutes of questions and then a book signing. Were lucky enough to have cspan with us here today so if youre going to ask questions, use the microphone on the other side these sorts of programs are only made possible because of the trustees and our members. We have a trustee here today and thank you for your support. [applause] raise your hand if youre a member and would he truly appreciate it. If youre not a member, get one of the pins, and it gives you free admission to the library and museum. We have an exhibit on the japanese internment and very powerful. I hope youll see this. This program is very special because we are pea not going to be hear from an author, we are going to be hearing from a principal. Recently a fantastic book was written called the gatekeeper by a woman named kathryn smith, did research in one of the most least understood players in the roosevelt players. Missy lehand and it defined the presidency, its a remarkable book. I want you to take a deep breath and close your eyes, june 17th, 1933. And im going to introduce you to a woman who was probably the most powerful woman other than Eleanor Roosevelt in washington during this period. She had known president she knew Franklin Roosevelt when he ran for vicepresident , was with him throughout his polio recovery, and then in washington d. C. She was technically a secretary, but almost a defacto chief of staff. If you want today see the president , you had to see missy lehand. So, this was a very sexist time in washington. It was very difficult for women to be acknowledged for the role they played. Eleanor roosevelt was breaking bounds by her exercise of her role as first lady, redefining what it meant to be a first lady and missy lehand redefines what it means to be the secretary to the president. Please welcome missy lehand. [applaus [applause] well, thank you for at that warm greeting. Its such a joy to be here at hyde park. You may know that the president is on his way up to campobellow and ill be joining him with the other staff in our white house family. Its the first time he was there since he was stricken by polio, since 1920. Its a well deserved vacation. Weve finish the first 100 days of our administration and june 16th. What 100 days, i dont think there will ever be another one like it in a white house in history. [applause]. Oh, marvellous, this is an audience full of democrats. I heard there werent that many in duchess county. At any rate, it just makes you your head spin to think that all that happened in that 100 days, but the Banking System was saved, unemployment problems are adrift. They are still very severe, but theyre going to get better. The president , who sometimes you ask mr. Roosevelt what he does for a living and sometimes hell say, well, im the president of the United States and sometimes hell say, im a tree farmer from duchess county. So i think he rather prefers to be the tree farmer, to be honest, but one of the things he taught of was to create a tree army. Roosevelts tree army, the civilian conservation corps. As we speak young men by the thousands who are unemployed are going into the forest to plant trees, to build picnic shelters and roads, to create parks, its going to be a truly wonderful thing. And then theres that other very important thing that the president spearheaded, which was making it legal to drink beer and wine again for the First Time Since 1920. Yay . [applause] some of us, of course, never stopped. [laughter] anyway, let me tell you just a bit about me and i how i came to work for mr. Roosevelt. I am Irish Catholic. I was born know potsdam in upstate new york. My grandparent lehand, the grandparents from the lehand side ham over on what was known as a copper ship during the irish potato famine. So many people died on these ships, theyre called coffin ships. My grand parents got married as deans and had a baby, daniel. And my grandfather, daniel lehand my greatgrandfather was working on a Church Building in potsdam and a part fell on him and killed him. And my greatgrandmother never remarried. And thats why my father was an unusual creature, the only child in an Irish Catholic family. Im the youngest of four children i was born in potsdam in 18 i gave away my age, 1896. When i was a very small child we moved to summerville, a city within the city of boston and thats where i grew up. I went to the Public Schools there, and my education was going along well until i was diagnosed with rheumatic fever and i went two years in bed recovering. I did not finish high school until 1917 when our country entered the great war. Well, i was feeling very patriotic so i took the civil servi service exam. I had studied secretarial science and sent to washington to work at the department of navy and i never met that young charismatic assistant secretary to the Navy FranklinDelano Roosevelt at that time. In fact, my career at the navy was rather checkered. It was very boring. I was given i was in this area of top secrecy and i was given a sheet of squiggles of of stenography and i had to type it out and then they gave me another sheet that had nothing to do with the one before and so on and so on all day long. By the end of the day i was so tired, i didnt know what id done so my roommate felt the same way we were at a boarding house. So one day we decided to send word we were sick and play hooky and we went up to mt. Vernon and sightseeing. And had a marvellous time until we got home and there was a nurse sent from the department of the navy and she said you dont look sick to me. My roommate was not sick and she detected my heart murmur, and she said maybe you need a job not so stressful and i went home to boston. A few years later i got a letter from a man charles mccarthy, from the department of the navy. He was now the Campaign Manager for Franklin Delano roosevelt who was running for vicepresident and he needed help at the office. I didnt see a lot of mr. Roosevelt. He was on trains going all over the country, and he was speaking on behalf of the nominee james cox. It was not a good year for a democrat of any kind and they were destroyed by the republican ticket of Warren G Harding and calvin coolidge. Now, for my word, i would say that Warren G Harding was the worst president in american history. Most historians would say maybe one of the worst. I think he wasnt the very worst because he died in office and he was succeeded by calvin coolidge, better known as silent cal. They said that once mr. Coolidge got in office the only way you could recognize him from the furniture in the oval office was if he moved. [laughter] there was a woman sitting next to him at a dinner party at the white house one time and she said, mr. Coolidge, i have a bet with my girlfriend i can get you to say more than two words. He looked at her and said you lose. But, knowing it would be a while before we got the democrats back in the white house again, mr. Roosevelt decided to go work on wall street and he needed a good private secretary so he asked me to come work for him. And i said, i dont know, mr. Roosevelt. I find law work about the most boring thing in the world. There arent any lawyers in the rom, are there . [laughter] oh, i didnt think so. You all look very nice. So, at any rate, so, he said, dont worry, missy, by then he was calling me missy, because his children had started calling me that and before long, everyone did. Dont worry, missy, i find law work pretty boring myself. There will be lots of other things to do and he was right because he was involved in all sorts of causes, the boy scouts, the woodrow wilson, foundation and i went up to manhattan and stayed with a cousin and enjoying working with him there very, very much. Then in august, 1921, he went to camp obello island and there he was stricken with polio myelitis better known as infantile paralysis or infantile, a terrible disease for a man whos 39 years old and 6 foot 2, but thats what happened. Over the next four years, mr. Roosevelt tried everything he could to be able to walk again because he hoped to reenter public office. He said, if a mans going to run for office he has to be able to walk first. Well, he wasnt making a whole lot of headway until 1924, when he heard about a young man in warm springs, the tiny town of warm springs, georgia, who had exercised in the mineral pools this, who had poll polio and he was able to walk with just a cane. And that was mr. Roosevelts desire, crutches are a medical device, but a cane is an accessory. And he and mrs. Roosevelt and his valet went down to warm springs, it was a shock for us because wed not spent time in the rural south. Mr. Roosevelt got right in the pool and loved it, he could feel his toes move for the first time in three years. And soon, he could walk about in water up to his chest. Mrs. Roosevelt, not so much. One day she and i went to get some chicken for supper and she was horrified to learn that you had to buy the chickens on the hoof. We brought the chickens back to the cook, they were squawking in the yard and the cook strangled the chickens in front of mrs. Roosevelts eyes and after witnessing that she did not enjoy dinner very much. The next morning she said to me, perhaps franklin wants steak for dinner tonight. Whatever shall i do . Okay. He made that part up. [laughter]. She didnt say the part about the stake, but you know what president roosevelt says, never let the truth get in the way of a good story. At any rate mrs. Roosevelt went back on the train, they had the five children to look after and shes a busy lady then even then with her causes and i stayed with mrs. Roosevelt. Word got out that such a prominent man was hoping to swim his way to health. Before long others were coming there. Mr. Roosevelt turned it into a rehabilitation facility and in 1928 he was convince today run for governor of new york. He won by a whisker. We spent four years there in albany, in the mansion where i lived with the roosevelts and we began the process that is continued to this day, i could be the backup hostess, and she had causes. There was the exciting election, and he had the electoral votes, thats what i call a victory. Electoral and popular and we went to the white house taking office in march, 1933. Now, some dreadful, dreadful things happened before then, the serious which was the banking countries. Banks were failing and taking with them the life savings of americans and we mr. Roosevelt and his advisors were going to try to use an old world war ii era a great war era peace of banking legislation to close down the banks temporarily and reorganize them. And it would require an opinion for the new attorney general. Well, unfortunately, the man that mr. Roosevelt decided to appoint, senator walsh, was coming to the inauguration to be sworn in and he had just married a few days before, and mr. Walsh was in his mid 70s and he had married a much younger woman. They attractive widow from cuba. And he died on the train. [laughter] they said it was his heart, but when after all that, no one knew who to nominate for attorney general and i finally said, what about homer cummings . He said, oh, well, hes a lawyer. s been the Democratic Party chairman, what else do you need to do to become attorney general . Unfortunately, he was slated to become the governorgeneral of the philippines so they went to him and said homer, what would you rather do . And he thought malaria or a nice safe desk job in washington . I think id rather be attorney general. He took the job, the Banking System was saved and you can thank me in small part for that. [applause] thank you, thank you. Well, im going to let my biographer, kathryn smith, tell you the rest of my story. [applaus [applause]. Okay. Girls, how was the accent . Okay. Gin and barbara are missys great nieces and you all stand up, stand up, please. [applaus [applause] Barbara Jakes and jane scarboro and they were wonderful to work with and so generous in sharing their great aunts papers with me. The book could not have happened without them and ive been a little nervous doing the boston accent since obviously, im not from that part of the country. My husband leo is here in the front row and his father is, so i just kind of imitated all of his yankee relatives. Oh, is that a phone . It sounds just like the one on the desk at the white house. Anyway, missy, in 1933, of course, came in as the private secretary to fdr. She was part of a fourperson management team. Can you imagine the whole west wing being managed by four people, three men, louie howe, fdrs political advisor, steve early his able press secretary. Mcfire his appointment secretary and missy, who did everything else. Whats changed . And over time, as howes health declined, he was in an oxygen dent by 1935 and then they shipped him off to the Naval Hospital because he was causing so many problems, missy began taking over moron more of his duties and became what we would think of as white house chief of staff. Its a job title she did not have. In fact, no one had it until eisenhower became president in the 50s because he was a military guy and military guys like to have chief of staffs, so he had one in the white house, but she did all of those things. She lived in the white house, she was Eleanor Roosevelts backup whenever eleanor was off travelling as the eyes of the ears and the president and as we know Eleanor Roosevelt traveled so much her secret service name was rover. There were jokes youd never know when she would pop up, like in a coal mine. And so she would come back and report for the president , but she had so many of her very own causes and interests that she was very passionate about and she felt comfortable letting missy be her backup hostess. And they had such a good working relationship by that time, she didnt have to feel nervous that things were going to be done wrong or that missy would overstep her boundaries. Missy knew she was not first lady. Eleanor was first lady. But she lived in the white house, so of course, that also meant that she worked around the clock. She was on call around the clock, so she might work at her desk, which was, her office was the only one adjoining fdrs at the white house and she might work all day long at her desk and evening time would come, and she might have organized a poker party for fdr or brought in someone to do some musical entertainment or else she might spend the evening with him in his private study working on his stamp collection or listening to music and talking over the day. And since neither fdr nor messy kept journals, we have no idea what kind of conversations took place, but we can imagine. She was a very astute person politically, she had a very level head. Her High School Education was the only level of education she attained and sometimes people said despite having only a High School Education, Eleanor Roosevelt dropped out of high school, she didnt have anything beyond what we think of as a junior year. None of the people who were running the secretariat had more than a High School Education. It wasnt that unusual. It was what fdr, i think, treasured with the people who had roots with blue collar families and thats what missy had. Her family was had really struggled. Her father had been a gardner, he might have been an alcoholic irish gardner, but they had really struggled. Her sister worked in a Department Store as a sales clerk, that kind of thing. So she could bring that knowledge to the white house and say, this is whats going on in my Old Neighborhood in somerville. She was a very good talent scott for the president and one of the most important people she brought into his circle was a man named Tommy Corcoran. Tommy was an Irish Catholic and a graed of the harvard law school. And frankfurter had so many proteges around the capital that they were known as frankfurters happy hot dogs. [laughter] and tommy was a pretty happy hot dog, but frankfurter sent messy a letter of introduction, id like you to meet tommy, they hit it off great. She recognized his abilities soso she brought him into the white house one night to play the accordian after dinner. And fdr loved to sing around the piano or the accordian or the guitar at the white house and tommy had a fine irish tenor voice. Then he started showing up at missys offices in the morning and he would say, i was on capitol hill or at a cocktail party, yadda, yadda. And shed say let me go tell fd about that. And shed say tommy said this and that, and hed say let tommy in. He became the white house lobbyist on capitol hill. He worked for the federal government already so he was a federal employee, but the white house had not had a lobbyist and he was integral to pushing all the of this legislation going through after the first 100 days it got a lot harder because the crisis was over and even though they had an overwhelmingly democratic majority in congress, the democrats are pretty unruly coalition, kind of like republicans today. So it was not always easy to get things passed. So, that was on one of the many things that missy did. Eventually, she became so powerful in the white house that you could not wake fdr up after he went to bed without getting her permission. So, on the night, the early hours of september 1st, 1939, a phone call came to her bedside table and said, hitler has invaded poeland. Can we wake the president up . She said i think we can for that one so they went to put the call down to his bedroom. She ran downstairs and the two of them sat up through the night digesting and dealing with this terrible, terrible news. Fdr wrote out a little chit, a piece of paper, i think he wrote hundreds and hundreds of chits, telling people what to do and what to do about that and this little chit summarized what actions et taken and signed it fdr in be