considered president roosevelt's personal and professional confidante. hello, good afternoon, everyone, welcome to the roosevelt museum and to the reading festival. we're excited you're here for today. this program is a special one, i'll tell, but it in just a moment. if you're familiar with the program at this point, about a 30 minute talk and ten minutes of questions and then a book signing. we're lucky enough to have c-span with us here today so if you're 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 you're a member and would he truly appreciate it. if you're 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 you'll 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, it's a remarkable book. i want you to take a deep breath and close your eyes, june 17th, 1933. and i'm 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 vice-president, 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. it's such a joy to be here at hyde park. you may know that the president is on his way up to campobellow and i'll be joining him with the other staff in our white house family. it's the first time he was there since he was stricken by polio, since 1920. it's a well deserved vacation. we've finish the first 100 days of our administration and june 16th. what 100 days, i don't 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 weren't 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 they're going to get better. the president, who sometimes you ask mr. roosevelt what he does for a living and sometimes he'll say, well, i'm the president of the united states and sometimes he'll say, i'm 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. roosevelt's 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, it's going to be a truly wonderful thing. and then there's 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, they're called coffin ships. my grand parents got married as deans and had a baby, daniel. and my grandfather, daniel lehand-- my great-grandfather was working on a church building in potsdam and a part fell on him and killed him. and my great-grandmother never remarried. and that's why my father was an unusual creature, the only child in an irish catholic family. i'm 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 that's 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 franklin delano 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 didn't know what i'd 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 don't 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 vice-president and he needed help at the office. i didn't 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 wasn't 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 don't know, mr. roosevelt. i find law work about the most boring thing in the world. there aren't any lawyers in the rom, are there? [laughter] >> oh, i didn't think so. you all look very nice. so, at any rate, so, he said, don't worry, missy, by then he was calling me missy, because his children had started calling me that and before long, everyone did. don't 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 who's 39 years old and 6 foot 2, but that's what happened. over the next four years, mr. roosevelt tried everything he could to be able to walk again because he hoped to re-enter public office. he said, if a man's going to run for office he has to be able to walk first. well, he wasn't 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. roosevelt's 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 we'd 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. roosevelt's 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 didn't 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 she's 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 roosevelt's 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, that's 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 70's 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, he's 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 governor-general 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 i'd 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, i'm 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 missy's 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 aunt's papers with me. the book could not have happened without them and i've been a little nervous doing the boston accent since obviously, i'm 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 four-person management team. can you imagine the whole west wing being managed by four people, three men, louie howe, fdr's political advisor, steve early his able press secretary. mcfire his appointment secretary and missy, who did everything else. what's changed? and over time, as howe's 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. it's a job title she did not have. in fact, no one had it until eisenhower became president in the 50's 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 roosevelt's 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 you'd 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 didn't 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 fdr's 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 didn't 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 wasn't that unusual. it was what fdr, i think, treasured with the people who had roots with blue collar families and that's 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 what's 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 frankfurter's happy hot dogs. [laughter] >> and tommy was a pretty happy hot dog, but frankfurter sent messy a letter of introduction, i'd like you to meet tommy, they hit it off great. she recognized his abilities so-so 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 missy's offices in the morning and he would say, i was on capitol hill or at a cocktail party, yadda, yadda. and she'd say let me go tell fd about that. and she'd say tommy said this and that, and he'd 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 bed, september 1st, 1939 and gave the time and gave it to missy and put it in her scrapbook. so missy's scrapbook held what paul has said it's one of his favorite documents in the whole collection because it's so personal. missy's story, like the story of so many people who slave over their jobs in the white house ended really sadly. we mentioned her rheumatic fever. over the years, she had more and more heart problems, got-- became more and more likely to have atrial fibrillation and things like that and in the june of 1941, after a spring when fdr had been sick all spring and she had spent countless hours sitting by his bedside doing the business in his bedroom, working around the clock, she-- he finally got better. there was a white house dinner party that night. she had a terrible spell that was probably a heart attack, eventually had a stroke, went to the hospital, had a very severe stroke and was incapacitated. she was 44 years old. i know. and when i started writing the book every time i got to that part i got so sad because it was just-- she had such a marvellous life town that point, but she had the stroke. she stayed for the summer at the hospital, a hospital in washington and then at fdr's suggestion she went down to warm springs for rehabilitation. she was paralyzed on one side, but even more seriously. she'd had problems with speaking and that sort of thing, so, she was there on december 7th when pearl harbor was bombed, was terribly upset about that. she called the white house and talked to grace tully her assistant new filling in for her. the president, she said, please i want to talk to the president. got the message as best she could and he never called her back. the next spring she was so depressed at warm springs and making so little progress they brought her back to the white house thinking it would cheer her up to be back in the bosom of her white house family. it had the opposite effect and from what i could determine from her-- the nurse's log, the nurse who was looking after her, she was just kind of drinking in bed and smoking and eventually she set her bed on fire. fdr famously said the only thing we have to fire is fear itself and he could have said fire. he was afraid of fire and it was like a tinder box. when she healed up she sent her to her family and that's where she lived the rest of her life. she died in 1944 and she had not seen fdr since leaving in 1942. a lot of people judge him harshly for this. ion they think i learned from working with jane and barbara, he had continued to stay in touch, sent lovely gifts, cards, he called. he paid all of her medical bills. and of course, it's been known for some time that he left half the income of his estate to eleanor and half to my friend, marguerite lehand for her medical care because he wanted to be sure that missy was taken care of. and even though he-- she died before he did, he didn't change the wording of his will. one of the really poignant things i learned from missy's great nieces is that to this day, missy's grave at new auburn cemetery in cambridge is kept up by the roosevelt family. so what a legacy of her importance. and when i went to see her grave there, it was the first time to me that she really, really seemed dead, but then i could start reading the book over again and she's back to life again. it's the nice thing about having a book. anyway, i came away-- i really feel story for people who start writing books about biographies and loathe the person they write about and how many books on hitler do we need? but you know, i came away from this one admiring missy, even more than when i started. when i came into this project i was just convinced i was going to find out that she was the great love of fdr's life. i came away know the at all convinced that they'd had any kind of romantic relationship, but thinking, god, what an incredible, powerful, important woman she was, and so i hope that's what readers take home from the book. let's see, can i answer-- take questions or okay. i think anyone who wants to walk over to the mic. if you have a question for missy, i'll try to-- i'll pull that accent out again. >> a quick question, would you talk a little about their time together on the-- >> yes, keiren chase is here the author of a wonderful work about fdr and his house boat. and i think let missy talk about that and she mention mentioned that, laroco, debating how you say it, in any interviews that she gave, but when fdr went down to the florida keys beginning in 1923 he rented a boat one winter and then he bought one with a friend, john lawrence, so that with as laroco. for three years, missy was his hostess on the boat. so she spent more time with him, really, than any other adult, as he was recovering from the polio. it was the boat, i love the way it was described. fdr said it was a fine little packet. such an optimist, who others said it was a floating tenement and keiren's boat makes it clear it was a floating tenement. it had things going wrong with it and crammed with people. lots of visitors, partying. prohibition was going on, who cares? and missy was the hostess and she loved the-- she loved fishing all of her life. she'd go on vacation and go fishing and again, she filled an important role that eleanor roosevelt was unable or unwilling to do and that was to be an emotional companion and support to fdr during this dark time. when they went on to warm springs, again, she became the hostess there at the cottage that he owned and eventually the little white house which he built. and she had her own bedroom and bath in the little white house, his was on the other side and there was a bedroom with a bath adjoining his, the little white house and that's where other guests could stay, if eleanor came, she could stay there. though i understand that she usually stayed in the guest house behind the house. i've got a cute story about the little white house. they were nice enough down there to let me go into missy's room and i went into the bathroom and noticed a role of that iky crepey toilet paper like they used to have in europe. it had a wire around it and i asked the ranger why. and we had to do that with both the roles of toilet paper left here in 1945 because people were sneaking in and stealing a sheet. what do you do, do you frame it? tp from the little white house, yeah. but she loved the little white house, loved her time at warm springs, though, i think the isolation during that really difficult few months when she was trying to have rehabilitation must have been just dreadful. because it's a little, little town in the middle of nowhere and she was used to being in the thick of things. she loved working at the white house and with the roosevelts. anyway. >> can you speak about the relationship between miss lehand, fdr and grace tully. we don't hear much about grace tully. >> yes, grace came to work for fdr's campaign for governor in 1928 as a fill-in for missy. she had a lot of atrial fibrillation, it could be a case of that. it could knock her down for a while. grace came down after the victory and met missy and she had been warned that missy was protective and that she'd have to tread lightly. the two women got along great. we were like two sisters who never argued and to all indications that was true. they took all of their vacations together, for example. there was kind of an evolution once fdr got back in private life, that he liked to kind of refer to his staff as the children, and he called himself papa or father, and all of that and that's kind of how he was with missy and grace and a lot of the women who worked there. i don't think he ever got louie howe to call him papa, but anyway. but after missy's stroke, grace tully moved in to her position as private secretary. though she never had the extent of the power and confidentiality that missy had. missy wrote all the checks. she had the power of attorney over his checkbook. she gave eleanor roosevelt's allowance every month. and grace was smart enough not to live in the white house and she had more of a life of her own. she lived with her aging mother and all that, but-- >> thank you. >> another important lady though. questions? >> was-- >> i think you've got to go-- >> was there another man in her life. >> yes, yes, there was. and that was another thing that had not been explored real thoroughly. missy was in love for a while with a man named william christian bullet. what a name for a diplomate. but he was the united states first ambassador to the soviet union in 1933. and then he became the ambassador to paris. and he began, you know, courting missy in 1933 and they had, whenever he was home, and he came home quite a bit, considering how far off it was and how hard travel was. he'd take her out and wine her and dine her and they'd spend time together, but i think from my reading of her letters she was happiest when he was on his side of the atlantic ocean. he was a real ladies man and she got wind of that. it's quite painful. and what was written in a number of books she went to europe in 1944 there were rumors that they would marry. but there were rumors that he was having an affair with a ballerina. >> and they continued to have this relationship until 1940 when the nazis came into paris and bullet was criticized for in the going to bordeaux with the french government, but actually he stayed behind, helped negotiate the peaceful surrender of the city so it wasn't destroyed and then he helped american citizens get home and then he came home himself and july of 1940, and it's obvious from their correspondence that he immediately started pressing her for getting him a better job. and just, just being too attentive and why haven't you called me and you didn't return my calls and she finally just had a big fight with him on a campaign train and said, you know, this is it. if you can't respect that i've got more important things to do, like be the private secretary and chief of staff of the president of the united states, to hell with you. and then that was it. so she broke it off with him. so, but he was the most-- she had lot of male friends. she and harry hopkins were great pals. lots-- she was a very social person. she loved to go dancing. she really enjoyed the celebrities she met. she loved to go to the theater. so she had a very full life beyond just being the white house chief of staff. you had a question. can you go to the mic? or-- oh, okay. would someone ask it for you? >> here we go. >>. [laughter] . don't we all? >> my question is, what was her relationship with sarah. >> with sarah. >> sarah seems to-- sometimes they tried to keep things from sarah, like that franklin was on this house boat with this nice young woman, but for the most part, she really cared a lot more missy, she called her sweet little missy as opposed to grace tully who she called tully. she liked grace, too, but kind of, just called her tully and when missy had her stroke, sarah roosevelt was in really poor health by then, too, and she wrote a really nice letter and wrote why doesn't you come up with me at hyde park and we'll just rest together. as it was, sarah roosevelt died that fall. so, fdr lost two of the most important women in his life at the same time. his mother dying and then losing missy's companionship and support. tough for him. >> thank you. >> yes. >> thank you for writing a most excellent book, i enjoyed reading it. >> thank you. >> you filled in a lot of gaps. >> thank you. >> missy was a critical player in roosevelt's life from basically from the 1920 vice-presidential campaign until she died in 4-1. so,my question to you is, if you could ask two questions, if you could ask fdr a single question, what would you ask and what do you think his answer would be. and the same question about missy lehand. maybe you want to start with messy. >> the thing with franklin, why didn't you see her after she went home and i think he'd probably say, if he was being honest, i couldn't handle it, but he was leading the allies in the fight of world war ii, so a little bit busy. [laughter] >> yeah, yeah, and his health was so poor, also. the question that i'd have for missy, was did i get it right? so, i don't know. i'm sure, you know, i all the like to say that history is a moving river and you dip your puckett r bucket in and you pull up whatever and you figure that out, but that keeps on moving. even with keiren's book that came out after mine, i caught mistakes, most i was able to correct in the paper book edition, which is good and-- . [laughter] >> actually, i think all you have is the hide hard book which is better, you want a hardback edition of the book. >> no one gets everything right, you know? and there are just so many details and the roosevelts were so secretive in their own way, but how much do any of us know about anybody else really. >> that's true. >> when it's a stranger, what about your parents, my mother died last year and i winter through her stuff cleaning out her houses and i learned about her and she was my mother, my best friend. when you're dealing with a stranger, someone, a historical figure like roosevelt, where there are so many documents anyway, what are there a million documents in his library. you can't expect to get everything right. i think you got -- i know a lot about fdr and i can't catch any mistakes in your book and i read the hard cover one. >> thank you, thank you, yeah, go ahead. >> hi. >> hi. >> one thing that people don't really know about and i'd like to expound about missy being the unofficial ambassador to the catholic church and yo kennedy and all of those people because it's so important. >> yes, and thank you, that's the author of fdr's deadly secret, which as real important source for me. as a catholic, the catholic voting block was tremendously important. he carried something like 89% of the catholic vote and keeping that relationship good and strong was really important. there were a lot of irish catholics in his inner circle, jim farley, who was his campaign secretary was one. what i wrote about jim farley, he was such a professional irishman, he always signed his name is green ink. [laughter]. yeah, but tommy corcoran was another. joseph p kennedy was a really important one and he and missy were good, close friend. you know, he-- kennedy loved being in that inner circle with fdr. they had a sort of tumultuous relationship which in the end broke down, but he leased this palatial mansion when he was working as chair of the sec and missy would arrange for him to have evenings out there and she'd bring all the irish cat athletics with her and they'd sit out there and sing irish songs and play the accordian and drink and have a big time and grace tully had been the secretary for a bishop and the state leaders would come in the white house at anytime and stayed with fdr. it was important, father cochran, the radio piece, he had a bigger audience than rush limbaugh, it was hard to counter act his hate speech. he was influential. [inaudible] >> yes, ma'am. >> i believe i read in goodwin's book, you mention that roosevelt left half of his estate to eleanor and half to missy lehand and he outlived her, but barely and i believe i read in doris kearns goodwin's book that in order to do that, he had to disinherent her children. >> it was not half the estate in her book, it's half the income. a lot of people make that same mistakes, it's half the income. it disinherited them until missy died and then it did revert. and as kids they could make a living and she could not. >> it did revert? >> it did revert. he told his son jimmy this on the day of the inauguration his fourth final and he said it's the least i could do for her. she served me so well for so long and asked for so little in return and i think that's one of the nicest things you can say about missy. >>. [applause] >> >> author geraldine hawkins is next from the roosevelt reading festival held annually in hyde park, new york. she recounts the life of elliott roosevelt and his relationship to his daughter eleanor. eleanor. >> good afternoon, and welcome, i am patrick fahey, a member of the archive staff here. on behalf of the fdr presidential library and museum.