The First Ladies

by Feather Schwartz Foster

  Grace’s Legacy

  None of the old First Ladies have gone down in history as being a barrel of laughs, but Grace Coolidge is the only one whose SENSE OF HUMOR has been noted time and again. Her broad grin became a spontaneous laugh. She was said to have a gift of mimicry and could imitate her husband’s twang and cadences to perfection. She told a good story. Many of the unnamed sources for Coolidge anecdotes were via Grace. A good sense of humor, either as the teller or tellee, stands everyone, First Lady or not, in good stead. It relieves strain, puts people at ease, and keeps things in proper perspective. Grace was pretty good at it.

  Being governor of Massachusetts had been the pinnacle of Coolidge’s ambition, but during a police strike at the end of World War I, he announced that “there is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time.” That one statement catapulted him into national prominence. He was seriously touted as presidential material. Grace, as usual, was still in the dark. When he told her he was being nominated as the Republican vice presidential candidate in 1920, she was stunned. “But you aren’t going to accept, are you?” she asked. He replied, “I think I have to.”

  No two people enjoyed the vice presidency more than the Coolidges. They were content with living in a Washington hotel suite. Presiding over the Senate was easy, particularly for a man who weathered boredom well. The rest of the job was devoted to ceremony: ribbon cutting, ground breaking, handshaking, and dining out. “Gotta eat somewhere,” the frugal Coolidge said, and they accepted all invitations that came their way. With Grace’s good looks and appealing personality coupled with the agonizingly dry wit that would make Silent Cal legendary, the Second Family were immensely popular. They were everybody’s guests of honor, and since they were not required to return invitations very often, it kept their grocery budget to a minimum.

  When Coolidge became president after the sudden death of Warren Harding, it coincided with two important events. First, Coolidge was the first president to benefit from a separate budget for entertaining. Previous presidents had to pay those expenses out of their own pocket. Second, the Roaring Twenties were in full swing, flooding the country with a spate of pop culture. With the inundation of movies, radio, vaudeville, sports teams, and flagpole sitters came an army of famous personalities—all of whom wanted to shake hands and be photographed with the president. It was a curious juxtaposition, since Calvin and Grace were the antithesis of that era. They neither roared nor flapped. But the celebrities came in droves. Calvin was happy to shake hands, accept their token gifts, and take a photo wearing a sombrero or Indian headdress, believing it humanized him. Grace was happy to invite them to stay to lunch or dinner. It was she who kept the conversation going at the table. She read their books and magazine stories, saw their movies and shows, listened to their radio programs, and checked the scorecards. She would ask pertinent questions and make suitable comments. Knowing her husband’s communication skills were nil, it would be her sole responsibility to make the White House table talk appealing. This she did time and again, and for that she was widely admired and well liked. So, for that matter, was he.

  “Don’t try anything new, Grace,” Coolidge had said at the start of his presidency, so she didn’t. She made no speeches nor held any press conferences. She was forbidden to wear trousers or smoke cigarettes. She was content to host tea parties and ladies’ luncheons and do whatever Calvin told her to do. When she had the temerity to ask for a copy of his daily schedule, he was shocked. “We don’t give that information out indiscriminately, Grace,” he said. It never occurred to him that it might be disrespectful to his wife, but she never seemed to consider his attitude demeaning. She kept her hat and purse handy in order to be ready at a moment’s notice whenever she was needed. And he took her everywhere. Her photograph, usually holding a ubiquitous bouquet, was seen everywhere. Only in her midforties, she presented a good-looking image for the newsreels.

  But popular or not, once retired from the White House, Grace was promptly forgotten. She would outlive her husband by a quarter century, and now she tried new things. She wrote some magazine articles of her own. During World War II she volunteered with the Red Cross and raised funds for refugee children. She flew in a plane and went to Europe. She became an active trustee for the School for the Deaf where she had once taught. She even kissed a Democrat. A youthful Jack Kennedy campaigned in her area, and the peck on the cheek made headlines.

  Postscript: HOWARD CHANDLER CHRISTY PAINTED GRACE’S OFFICIAL PORTRAIT WITH AN UNCHARACTERISTIC SERIOUS EXPRESSION. WHEN ASKED ABOUT IT, HE COMMENTED, “I THOUGHT I ONCE SAW A LOOK OF RESIGNATION ON HER FACE.”

  LOU HOOVER

  1874–1944

  FIRST LADY: 1929–33

  The Unsung Hero

  With only daughters in pioneer California of the 1880s, Charles Henry taught Lou, his tall, athletic oldest daughter, to camp, fish, ride, shoot, and build a fire. Since he was a well-to-do banker, he also provided her with the finer things, including a normal school education so the bright girl could become a teacher.

  After only a year of teaching, Lou chanced to attend a lecture on geology and was entranced. She persuaded her family to enroll her at Stanford University, where she met Herbert Hoover and changed her life’s direction. They were the same age, but he was a senior, she a freshman. Their attraction was immediate but more friendly than romantic, since the pathetically shy Bert was poor and had no money to conduct a proper courtship. Somehow Lou instinctively knew he was a man with promise and determined to “major in Herbert Hoover.” When he graduated, he embarked on a series of demanding mining engineering jobs in exotic lands, and they agreed to correspond. By the time Lou graduated, Bert was no longer poor, nor would he ever be again. Now earning $40,000 a year, he was well able to support a wife. It was 1899; they were both twenty-five.

  Their honeymoon took them to China, and for the next two decades, apart from brief visits home, they lived abroad, often in remote locations. As a degreed geologist herself, Lou helped her mining engineer husband compile his reports and catalog his samples. She also studied the culture of each of the lands where they lived. The Hoovers circumnavigated the globe twice. To pass the time on less-than-luxury liners, they translated a rare Renaissance mining treatise from its original Latin. In addition to being intelligent, curious, and rugged, Lou was also an excellent linguist. She became fluent in six languages, including two Chinese dialects. Their translated book would be a bestseller—in mining circles.

  By 1914 Hoover owned his own mining consultancy, with offices in six countries. At forty, he was a millionaire several times over and living in London’s posh Mayfair district. Lou had carved out a place for herself, raising two sons, managing a household awash in servants, entertaining nearly every night, and volunteering her time and services for various charitable causes. The beginning of World War I in Europe, however, altered their lives permanently. With more than one hundred thousand Americans stranded on the warring continent, London became the last stop and swarmed with Yanks desperate to get home. British officials recruited Hoover to help his fellow countrymen, and he immediately agreed. He had found his true calling, and Lou would find hers: humanitarianism on a massive scale. Herbert Hoover would never again work as a mining engineer, and Lou’s activities would forevermore have a larger purpose in mind.

  Both of them were blessed with high energy, good health, and extraordinary administrative talents. Independent wealth gave them latitude. While Bert assumed responsibilities for helping Americans return to the States, Lou undertook the task of alleviating their short-term needs. Soliciting help from dozens of well-to-do London women, she set up day nurseries at railroad stations, arranged for food, coffee, milk, and diapers, and made sure everything ran smoothly. She would be the only woman to have a seat on the executive board established for the overall repatriation project.

  Once the American emergency ended, the Hoovers faced an even larger crisis. The German army had overrun tiny Belgium
, laying waste to everything and leaving its starving population homeless, fuel-less, helpless, and hopeless. Now the Hoovers would undertake the gargantuan task of rescuing that beleaguered country. While Bert focused on arranging shiploads of humanitarian supplies and all the diplomatic finagling to permit those ships to pass unmolested by the German U-boats, Lou shuttled back and forth to America, making speeches to raise money, food, and clothing.

  Lou’s Legacy

  Lou Hoover is arguably the least known of the twentieth-century First Ladies despite a long list of serious and consequential achievements. It is said that both Hoovers were the victims of their innately shy personalities. Lou’s sense of propriety and MODESTY precluded any possibility of tooting her own horn, or even allowing someone else to toot it for her. The light of her intelligence, generosity, executive skills, and activism was always hidden under the proverbial bushel. Modesty aside, she deserves better.

  By the time America entered the war in 1917, Herbert Hoover was already famous. After his success in helping feed Belgium, President Wilson summoned him home to help make the United States the world’s breadbasket. Lou, now a practiced speaker, would also be a contributor to countless publications about how the war effort could be helped on the home front. When the urgencies abated by 1919, she turned her energies elsewhere.

  Lou Hoover had been familiar with the Girl Guides during her years in London. Once home, she decided her own outdoor upbringing was a natural fit for the recently formed American Girl Scouts. She volunteered as a scout leader but rose quickly in their executive ranks. She worked long and hard, helping to plan policies and programs, and using her established notoriety to generate publicity for the scouts. In short order she became its national president, and under her leadership, membership increased more than tenfold.

  Between Bert’s cabinet office during the Harding and Coolidge Administrations and her civic leadership throughout the 1920s, both Hoovers had become household words when he was elected president in 1928. No two people had higher expectations heaped on their shoulders. Where Calvin Coolidge had one secretary, Hoover brought three. Grace Coolidge needed no secretary, but Lou brought two, and one more would be added—all paid by the Hoovers personally. (Neither of them ever accepted compensation for their humanitarian or governmental positions.)

  When the dam of prosperity broke, the floodwaters of the Great Depression came in biblical proportions. The remarkable reputations of both Bert and Lou Hoover became mired in its sludge. Progressive in outlook but conservative in personality, magnanimous in practice but reticent by nature, neither of them were equipped to provide the dynamic leadership necessary for this crisis. Nor were they inclined to challenge years of accepted first family behavior, particularly Republican first family behavior. They would absorb the abuse, and if and when they fought back, theirs would be a weak, weaponless fight. They could never have behaved otherwise.

  As the Depression deepened, Lou began receiving hundreds of letters begging for her help. “Help my husband get a job.” “Help my children get shoes.” “The roof needs repair.” “We need warm coats.” “We have no food.” The list seemed endless. A third secretary was quietly engaged to help Lou review and respond to all the pressing needs. Many were referred, with Lou’s card, to government agencies, various charities, women’s clubs, and of course the Girl Scouts. Hundreds of requests were met with Lou’s personal check for a few dollars or packages of shoes and clothing or vouchers for food and fuel. When it was suggested that she make this effort public, both Hoovers were horrified at the notion of promoting their private generosity.

  The huge and unselfish contributions both Hoovers made to the country have long been unrecognized, eclipsed by the vibrant Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and their New Deal. It is only today, seventy-five years later, that historians have begun to realize the raw deal that befell such fine people.

  Postscript: LOU HOOVER DIED SUDDENLY, SHORTLY BEFORE HER SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY. WHEN HER HUSBAND SORTED THROUGH HER DESK, HE DISCOVERED HUNDREDS OF CHECKS FOR SMALL AMOUNTS SENT BY PRIVATE INDIVIDUALS TO REPAY HER FAVORS, KINDNESSES, AND SUPPORT. SOME HAD BEEN LYING AROUND FOR YEARS. LOU HAD NEVER CASHED THEM.

  ELEANOR ROOSEVELT

  1884–1962

  FIRST LADY: 1933–45

  The Incomparable Mrs. R.

  It is interesting to wonder how different the world might be had Eleanor Roosevelt looked like her mother. Young, beautiful, flamboyant New York socialite Anna Hall married Theodore Roosevelt’s younger brother, Elliott, but it would be a tragic union. Elliott was addicted to alcohol and laudanum. While he dearly loved his plain and very serious-looking daughter, who he called “little Nell,” he needed to live apart from the family. It would be a loveless and Dickensian childhood for the little girl. Anna Hall died when Eleanor was six. Her addicted father would die when she was ten, leaving her to be raised by her somewhat dotty Grandmother Hall and some equally dotty Hall aunts and uncles. Well-meaning hospitality from the rambunctious Roosevelt side made the timid child uncomfortable, and Eleanor seemed cocooned in an internal world, growing too tall, too gangly, and too plain, with a hopeless overbite.

  Nevertheless she was sent to a good finishing school in England, where she was an excellent student. To her surprise, the withdrawn young girl became popular with her classmates. These were the happiest three years of her youth. After being “finished,” Eleanor returned home to reluctantly make her obligatory debut into the fashionable society where she was temperamentally unsuited. Since her upbringing precluded actual employment, she joined the Junior League, whose activities were charitable and thus acceptable. She volunteered at the settlement houses on New York’s Lower East Side that teemed with old tenements and new immigrants and found her calling: being useful. She began making daily trips downtown.

  A chance meeting with her fifth cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt blossomed into romance, despite strong opposition from Franklin’s domineering mother. In Sara Delano’s eyes, no one was good enough for her son, especially someone as homely, unstylish, socially inept, and financially underwhelming as Eleanor. They married anyway, when Eleanor was twenty. She bore six children within ten years.

  Overpowered by her intimidating mother-in-law, Eleanor lived in the shadows. Granny ran the house and children. It would not be until she was nearly forty, and her husband had been stricken by polio, that Eleanor emerged to become Eleanor. Despite a marriage that had evolved into a pattern of separate lives, both Roosevelts maintained an exceptional working relationship and a genuine friendship. She discovered political talents she never knew she had. Combined with her innate intelligence and desire to help alleviate human suffering, she had developed into a powerful force in her own right more than a decade before she became First Lady. She would become her husband’s eyes and ears, a task she understood, relished, and made her own.

  Still, some things needed to be learned. If she were to be his eyes and ears, she would need to develop a sense of smell as well—that intangible sense of learning by experience. One story tells that shortly after FDR became Democratic governor of New York in 1929, he sent Eleanor to visit the prisons that came under his jurisdiction. She returned laden with charts and reports, but the governor wanted to hear her impressions—not look at paperwork. “Did you inspect the kitchens?” he asked. She said yes. “How was the food?” “Very good,” she replied and produced several weeks of menus. “Did you look in the pot, Eleanor? Did you taste it?” She hadn’t and thus learned what she considered a valuable lesson: anyone can write beef stew on a piece of paper; it does not mean they prepared it properly. Eleanor would develop a remarkable ability to smell it; to grasp the essence of a situation, learn from it, and apply that lesson elsewhere. She would also have seemingly endless opportunities to put those lessons into practice. The list of her accomplishments and activities could and have filled volumes.

  Eleanor’s Legacy

  Eleanor Roosevelt is of course a benchmark for all First Ladies. The list of her
achievements is a long one that may never be surpassed. But of all her considerable attributes, the only one that is hers alone among the “old” First Ladies is A VERY THICK HIDE. Mary Lincoln dissolved in tears, and Edith Wilson openly groused at criticism, but Eleanor was born for her role. No other First Lady was so harshly, consistently, and publicly reviled and ridiculed for her failure to behave according to traditional womanly standards. But none were as capable as Eleanor of withstanding the attacks with equanimity and moving ahead, doing whatever she had in mind anyway, without allowing it to upset her emotionally or interfere with her overall purpose. It is no small consideration.

  When FDR became president in 1933, the Depression was crippling the country. Thousands of Depression-burdened veterans from the Great War had descended on Washington. They set up shanty camps and demanded immediate payment of their promised bonuses. The problem was that the bonuses were not due for another decade. The Hoover administration had sent the army to disperse them, but Roosevelt had sent “His Missus.” Eleanor showed up with coffee and sandwiches and sympathy.

  Mrs. R. never inspired neutrality. For the millions who adored her, there were thousands of her countrymen and women who believed she was not only a traitor to her class but to women in general. Other First Ladies had behaved properly, knowing their place was in the respectable background. Eleanor was visible. She traveled constantly to rural areas, mines, sharecropping towns—wherever poverty had left its mark and help was needed. Once the United States entered World War II, she even traveled to the war zones. The military brass was adamantly opposed to her presence in the field hospitals, but they soon became her most ardent supporters. She was useful. The soldiers loved her. She faithfully wrote personal letters to the families of every soldier she met. There were hundreds. Not only did she go everywhere and do everything, she wrote a daily newspaper column about it. She gave press conferences with generous regularity. She had grown comfortable in the public spotlight and knew how to use it.