>> can you give me your background? >> we are the oldest university press in the west established in 1878. next year will be the 140th anniversary. we have four divisions, books, journals, digital publishing and a fulfillment service. >> gene taft from the 2017 book expo convention in new york city we have the publicity manager of university press thank you so much. >> thank you. [inaudible conversations]

>> good afternoon everyone, welcome to the presidential 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. it's 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 it's 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 i'm 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. it's the first time that he's 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 don't 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. it's going to get better. the president who sometimes asks mr. roosevelt which he does for a living sometimes will say i'm the president of the united states and sometimes he will say i'm 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. it's going to be a truly wonderful thing and then there's 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 great-grandfather 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 that's 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 didn't 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 didn't 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 don't look sick to me so we were both sent to the doctor and my roommate wasn't sick but she detected my heart murmur and said maybe you need a job that isn't 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 didn't see a lot of mr. roosevelt because he was on trains going ove all over the country speaking on behalf of the presidential nominee. it wasn't 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 don't know mr. roosevelt, i'm fine at walberg about the most boring thing in the world. there are not any lawyers in the room, are there? i didn't think so. you all look very nice. ask any rate, he said don't worry. his children started calling him a cd and before that everyone did it. don't 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 39-years-old and 6-foot two, but that's 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 wasn't making headway until 1924 when he heard about a young man in the tiny town of warm springs georgia. that was mr. roosevelt's 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 didn't 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 she's 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. that's 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 would've 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 mid-70s, 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, he's 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 you'd 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. i'm 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 great-nieces. [applause]

they were so wonderful to work with it so generous in sharing the papers with me. the book couldn't have happened without them. missy came in as the private secretary to fdr and was part of a four-person 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 didn't 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 roosevelt's 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 didn't 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 didn't 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 wasn't that unusual. it was what they treasured as the roots with blue-collar families and that's what her family had. they have struggled, her father had been a gardener, i'd 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 protéges 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 that's how he got his influence and became the white house lobbyist on capitol hill. the white house hasn't had a lobbyist and she was in trouble to pushing all this legislation that was going through at the first 100 days it's 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 wasn't 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 couldn't 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 he'd taken and he signed it fdr in bed september 11939 and he gave it to missy and she put it on her scrapbook. so it's 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 44-years-old. 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 she's 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 didn't 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 that's 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 we had to do that with both of the rolls of toilet paper that were left in 1945 because people were sneaking in and stealing a sheep as a souvenir. i think the isolation is that difficult few months.

it is a little town in the middle of nowhere and wasn't used to being in the thick of things she loved working in the white house and working with the roosevelts. >> can you speak about the relationship with fdr and grace because we don't hear much about that. >> yes. grace came to work for the campaign for governor in 1928 as a fill-in because she had some sort of illness and that the relationfibfibrillation and it k her down for a while but grace came down after the victory and had been warned that missy was protective and had to tread lightly but they got along great and said we were like two sisters who never argued and to

all indications that was true they took all their vacations together for example and it was kind of an evolution elect to refer to all that and that is kind of how he was with missy and grace and a lot of the women that worked there. i don't think that he really ever got out. grace moved into her position as private secretary though she never had the extent of the power and confidentiality that missy had and wrote all the checks. grace didn't have that much power or influence and she was smart enough not to live in the white house so she has more of a life of her own and lived with her aging mother.

[inaudible] >> it hadn't been explored thoroughly. missy was in love with a man named william christian bolus, what a name for a diplomat, that he was the united states first ambassador to the soviet union in 1933 and then he became the ambassador to paris and began recording missy in 1933. he came home quite a bit considering how far off the travel was he would take her out and wine and dine her and they would spend time together. i think from my reading of the letters, she was happiest when he was on her side of the atlantic ocean.

because he was a real ladies man and she got wind of that, it's kind of painful. there would have been a number of books she went to europe in 1934 there were both these rumors that they were going to be married and she went to russia and found out they were having an affair with a ballerina and broke it off. until 1940 came to paris and was criticized for not going to bordeaux with the french government stayed behind to help negotiate the peaceful surrender of the city so it wasn't destroyed an and then help amern citizens get home and came home himself in july of 1940. and it's obvious from their correspondence that he immediately started pressing her for getting a better job and is

being attentive why haven't you called me, and she finally just had a big fight with him on the campaign trail and said this is it. she had lots of male friends and they were great pals. she was a very social person love to go dancing and really enjoyed the celebrities she back and had a very full life beyond just the white house chief of staff. >> you have a question. can you go to the microphone? >> will someone ask for you?

>> what was the relationship? >> sometimes they try to keep things from sarah like with this nice young woman but for the most part, she cared a lot for missy, called her sweet little missy as opposed to grace when she had her stroke, sarah roosevelt was in poor health and wrote a nice letter and said why don't you just come up with being at hyde park and we will just rest together. it was tough for him. >> think you.

>> thank you for writing an excellent book. i enjoyed reading it. you filled in a lot of gas. missy was a critical player in the life from basically the 1920s vice presidential campaign until when she died and 41, so my question to you is if you could ask two questions a single question what would you ask and what do you think his answer would be, and the same thing about missy. >> if being honest i just couldn't handle it, though but it was a little bit busy.

>> i don't know. i'm sure i always like to say history is a moving river and you pull out whatever and figured that out but it keeps moving so even karen's book that came out after my nikon's mistakes that i made which most of them i was able to correct in the paperback edition which is good. but i hope -- i think that you have the high backs which is better because you really want a good addition of the buck. >> no one gets everything right. there are so many details and they were so secretive in their own way. how much do we know about everyone else and what about your parents? my mother died last year he and i went through her stuff cleaning out her house is. she was my mother and best friend

>> the historical figure where there were so many documents you can't expect to get everything right. i didn't catch any mistakes in your book him in the hardcover one. [applause] >> something people don't know that i would like to expand upon his being the unofficial ambassador. >> the author of fdr deadly secret which was an important source for me. tremendously important he carries 98% of the catholic vote, and keeping that relationship good and strong was important. there were a lot of irish

catholics in his inner circle. the campaign secretary he was such a professional he always signed his name in green ink. [laughter] joseph kennedy was important and they were close friends. kennedy loved being in that circle and if they had that tht of tumultuous relationship which broke down but he unleashed this mountain in maryland when he was working as the secretary of the sec. missy would arrange for him to have evenings out and would bring all the irish catholics with her and they would sit out there and sing songs and just have a good old time. she then the secretary of the

bishops are they made sure all the catholic leaders could come into the white house at any time and keep that relationship strong. the radio hate priest had a bigger audience than rush limbaugh and when it was a populist place it was important to counteract his hate speech because he was very influential. you mentioned the estate and of course he outlived her but just barely. i believe i read in the book that in order to do that, they disinherited all the children. >> it wasn't half es state. estate. that was an error in the buck, half the income.

it disinherited them until missy died and said she could not. she told his son about this on the day of the inauguration's fourth time and said it is the least i can do and served me so well for so long in return and that is one of the nicest things i can say. [applause] ..

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