Good afternoon everyone, welcome to the president ial Library Museum an in the 14th annual roosevelts reading festival. We are excited that you are here today. This program is a very special one i will tell you about in just a moment. We would ask if you ask questions to use the microphone on the other side. Its made possible because of the support of our trustees and members. We have a trustee today, thank you very much for your support. [applause] raise your hand if you are a member. There we go. I love our members. Your support makes the program possible and we truly appreciate it. If you are not a member this gives you free admission and we hope that you will go over and visit. We have a temporary exhibit right now on the japanese internment with photographs and i do hope you will see it. This program is very special because we are not going to be hearing from an author, we are going to be hearing from a principle. We simply a fantastic book was called the bookkeeper written by Kathryn Smith who did an enormous amount of research about one of the least understood and most important players in the roosevelt legacy. The book was called the gatekeeper fdr and the untold story of the partnership that defined the presidency and its a truly remarkable book, but i want you to take a deep breath and close your eye and we are going to transport you back to june 171933 im going to introduce you to a woman that was the most powerful in washington during this period. She knew Franklin Roosevelt when he first ran from Vice President it was almost a defect of chief ochiefof staff. If you wanted to see the president , so, this was a very sexist time in washington and it was difficult for women to be acknowledged for the role they played breaking bounds by her exercise redefining what it means to be a first lady and what it meant to be the president s assistant so please give a warm hand. [applause] you may know the president is on his way back up for vacation. Its the first time that hes been there since he was stricken with polio in 1920, so we just finished the 100 days of our administration it ended yesterday on june 16, and bought a 100 days. I dont think there will ever be another one like it. [applause] marvelous, this is an audience full of democrats. I heard there were not that many in duchess county. [laughter] at any rate, it makes your head spin to think that all that happened in that 100 days, but the Banking System was saved, unemployment problems were addressed but they are still severe. Its going to get better. The president who sometimes asks mr. Roosevelt which he does for a living sometimes will say im the president of the United States and sometimes he will say im a tree farmer from duchess county, so i think that he rather prefers the tree farmer to be honest but one of the things he thought of was to create the tree army of civilian conservation corps, so as we speak, young men by the thousands are going into the forest to plant trees, to build picnic shelters, create parks. Its going to be a truly wonderful thing and then theres that other important thing that the president spearheaded which was making it illegal to drink beer and wine again for the First Time Since 1920. [applause] some of us of course never stopped. But anyway, let me tell you just a bit about me and how i came to work with mr. Roosevelt. I. E. An Irish Catholic. I was born in upstate new york. My grandparent came over on what is known as the ship during the famine. So many people died along the way. My grandparents got here safely, they were quite young and got married as teens and they had a baby and my grandfather was working, my greatgrandfather was working on a Church Building and a hack fell on his head. My poor grandmother never got remarried and was a very unusual creature in a only child in an Irish Catholic family. But i am the youngest of four children. I was born in 1890s okay i gave away my age from 1896 and when i was a small child we moved to somerville which is a city within the city of boston and thats where i grew up. I went to Public Schools they are and my education was going along well until i was diagnosed with manic fever as a young teenager and i spent about two years in bed recovering. So i didnt finish high school until 1917 when the country entered the great war. I was feeling very patriotic so i took the Civil Service exam as i studie studied at somerville h school and i was sent to washington to work at the department of the navy and i never met a charismatic young assistant secretary o secretaryy franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt at the time. In fact, my career at the navy was rather checkered. It was very boring. I was in this area of top secrecy and i was given a sheet of squiggles of stenography and i had to type it out and then they gave me another but have nothing to do with the one before and so on and so on and by the end of the day i was so tired and i didnt know what i had done so my roommate felt the same way at as a boarding housd one day we decided we were sick and would play hooky. As a nurse from the department of the navy and she said you dont look sick to me so we were both sent to the doctor and my roommate wasnt sick but she detected my heart murmur and said maybe you need a job that isnt so stressful so i went to boston. Boston. A few years later i got a letter from a man named charles mccarthy, who i met at the department of the navy and was now the Campaign Manager for one franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, who was running for Vice President and needed some help at the campaign office. So i went to manhattan to work there and i didnt see a lot of mr. Roosevelt because he was on trains going ove all over the country speaking on behalf of the president ial nominee. It wasnt a good year for the democrats of any kind into vapor destroyed by the republican ticket of warren g. Harding and calvin coolidge. Now i would say warren g. Harding was the worst president in history. 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. There was a woman sitting next to him in a dinner party. Knowing it would be a while before we got the democrats back at the white house again mr. Roosevelt decided to go work on wall street and he needed a good secretary, so he asked me to come work for him and i said i dont know mr. Roosevelt, im fine at walberg about the most boring thing in the world. There are not any lawyers in the room, are there . I didnt think so. You all look very nice. Ask any rate, he said dont worry. His children started calling him a cd and before that everyone did it. Dont worry i find the wall worked very boring myself. There will be other things to do there will be all sorts of causes. In 21 he went to the island and the bear, he was stricken with polio perhaps better known as infantile paralysis, which is a terrible disease for a man who is 39yearsold and 6foot two, but thats what happened. And over the next four years, mr. Roosevelt tried everything he could to be able to walk again because he hoped to reenter public office. To run for office he had to be able to walk first say he wasnt making headway until 1924 when he heard about a young man in the tiny town of warm springs georgia. That was mr. Roosevelts great desire to cause crotche hee s roosevelt they went down to warm springs and i must say that it was a bit of a shock for us because we have not spent time in the rural south before. Welcome to mr. Roosevelt got right into the pool and he loved that he said 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. After witnessing the execution she didnt enjoy her dinner very much. And then the next morning she said to me he wants steak for dinner tonight. Whatever shall i do . Okay, i made that part up. But you know what president roosevelt says never let the truth get in the way of a good story. They went back and had the five children to look after her and shes a very busy leedy even then with all of her calls of interest. Word got out that such a famous man, such a famous polio survivor was going to swim to health and others were coming. They bought the place and turned it into a very fine rehabilitation facility which it is today still and in 1928 he was convinced to run for governor of new york and he spent four years there in the albany at the mansion where i lived with the roosevelt and we began the practice which continues to this day being the backup to mrs. Roosevelt to continue to be his eyes and ears to do the other causes of interest. So, the election of 1932 he carried 42 of the 48 states and all but 59 electoral votes. Thats what i call a victory. [applause] electoral and popular. And we went to the white house taking office in march 33. Some dreadful things happened before then the most serious of which was the banking crisis. Banks all over the country were failing and taking the life savings of america and mr. Roosevelt and his advisers were going to try to use an old world war ii era piece of thinking legislation to close down the banks temporarily and reorganize them. And it wouldve required an opinion for the new attorney general. Unfortunately, the man is roosevelt decided to appoint, senator walsh, was coming to the inauguration to be sworn in coming and he had just married a few days before. Mr. Walsh was in his mid70s, and he had married a much younger woman, very attractive widow from cuba, and he died on the train. [laughter] they said it was his heart but after all that, no one knew who to nominate for the attorney general and i finally said what about cummings and he said he is a lawyer, hes been a Democratic Party chairman. Chairman. Lebowski you need to do to become the attorney general, and unfortunately he was slated to become the general governor so he went to him and said that was what youd rather do and he said no area, i think i would rather be attorney general. So he took the job and you can thank me in small part for that. Im going to let my biographer Kathryn Smith tell you the rest of my story. [applause] okay, girls, that was the exit. [applause] jane and barbara are her greatnieces. [applause] they were so wonderful to work with it so generous in sharing the papers with me. The book couldnt have happened without them. Missy came in as the private secretary to fdr and was part of a fourperson management team. Can you imagine them being managed by four people, three men and the very able press secretary who was the appointment secretary and an missy did everything else. Over time, the health declined and he was in an oxygen tent by 335 and they shifted him over to the hospital because he was causing so many problems. Missy began taking over more of the duties for what he would thinwe wouldthink of as the whie chief of staff is a job title she didnt have and no one had until eisenhower became president in the 50s because he was a military guy and they like to have chiefs of staff. But she did all those things, lived in the white house, was Eleanor Roosevelts backup never eleanor was off traveling as the eyes and ears of the president and we know that he travels so much. There were jokes but yo that yor knew and would pop up like in a coal mine. She had so many of her very own causes and interests that she was passionate about and felt comfortable letting missy d. 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. She knew she was not first lady. Eleanor was first lady but she was in the white house so that also meant she worked on called around the clock so she might forget her desk which her office was the only one joining fdr. She might just spend the evening with him in his private study working on a stamp collection or music or talking over the day so since neither kept. The High School Education was the only level of education she obtained. Eleanor roosevelt dropped out of high school and didnt have anything beyond what we think of as the junior year. None of the people who were running the secretariat had more than a High School Education, saisothat wasnt that unusual. It was what they treasured as the roots with bluecollar families and thats what her family had. They have struggled, her father had been a gardener, id have been an alcoholic irish governor, but they have 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 is going on in my own neighborhood in somerville. She was also a good talent scout for the president , and one of the most important people she brought into the circle was a man named tommy who was also Irish Catholic but was a graduate of harvard law school. He was a student of the celebrated law professor Felix Frankfurter and he had so many proteges around the capital that they were known as frankfurters happy half looks. [laughter] and tommy was a pretty happy half blog. But they sent a letter of introduction that said i would like you to meet my friend i think that he could do president a lot of good. So they hit it off great and she recognized his ability. They played the accordion after dinner and fdr loved to sing around the piano or the accordion or the guitar, the white house. Let me go in and tell fd about that so they said such and such. More often than not fdr would say send tommy in and thats how he got his influence and became the white house lobbyist on capitol hill. The white house hasnt had a lobbyist and she was in trouble to pushing all this legislation that was going through at the first 100 days its got a lot harder because the crisis was over and there was an overwhelming majority in congress. Democrats were an unrulydemocray coalition kind of like republicans today. It wasnt always easy to get things passed so that was one of the many things miss the data. Unfortunately, she became so powerful in the white house but you couldnt wait fdr up after he went to bed without getting her permission. A phone call came to her bedside table and said hitler has invaded poland, can we wake the president up and she said yeah i think we can for that one so they put the call down to the bedroom and she ran downstairs and got two of them sat up through the night digesting and dealing with this terrible news. They were making notes about this or that and this little chap summarized what actions hed taken and he signed it fdr in bed september 11939 and he gave it to missy and she put it on her scrapbook. So its held as one of the favorite document in the collection because it is so personal. So many people slaves over their jobs in the white house and it ended really sadly. We mentioned the fever over the years she had more and more heart problems and more likely to have Atrial Fibrillation and things like that. In june of 1941, fdr had been sick all spring and spent countless hours sitting by his bedside working around the clock she had a stroke and was 44yearsold. Every time i get to that part i would be sad because she had a marvelous life up to that point. She had a stroke and stayed for the summer at the hospital in washington and then went down to warm springs and was paralyzed on one side. When pearl harbor was bombed and upset about that she called the white house and talked to her assistant who was now filling in for her. She said i want to talk to the president or at least she got the message across as best she could but he never called her back. The next spring she was so depressed making so little progress that they brought her back to the white house thinking it would cheer her up to be back with the white house family but it had the opposite effect. From what i can determine from the nurses looking after her she was drinking in bed and smoking and eventually set the bed on fire. Fdr famously said the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. He could have added and fire because he was terrified and it was very much a tinderbox. A lot of people judge him harshly for this. One thing he had continued to stay in touch and send lovely gifts and paid all the medical bills and of course has been known for some time left half the income of the estate to eleanor for the medical care because he wanted to be sure mr. Was taken care of. One of the really poignant things i learned from the great niece is to this day as New Auburn Cemetery in cambridge was a legacy of things and when i went to see her there it was the first time she seemed dead but then i could start reading the book over again and shes back to life again that is the worst thing about having a book. Anyway, i feel sorry for people who start writing these biographies and was the person they are writing about. How many books on hitler do we need . [laughter] that i came away from this one admiring her even when i started and i came into this then she was and so i hope that is what the readers will take him from the book. Karen is the author of this wonderful book of the houseboat and i didnt le i did and what k about she never mentioned it. We are still debating. Then he bought one with a friend, john lawrence. For three years she spent more time with him really than any other adult as he was recovering from polio. Fdr said it was a fine little packet. It was a floating panama and. [laughter] it makes it pretty clear they always have things going wrong with it and it was just crammed with people almost all the time. Lots of visitors and partying and prohibition was going on. Missy was the hostess. Again she filled an Important Role they were not able 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 to the cottage and eventually the white house was built there was a bedroom with a bath adjoining his and thats where they could stay if eleanor came. She usually stayed in the guesthouse behind the house. I have a cute story about the white house nice enough down there to let me go into the room. Went into the bathroom and noticed there was a roll of that toilet paper they used to have in europe that they had a wire around it and i asked why and she said