alleviating things, then you are, indeed, a voyer and we shouldn't be and to an extent, many of us have become sort of voyers in the nation and i better leave it at that. folks, thank you so much. it was a pleasure talking to you. i hope i get to see you later today. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> we will continue now with author katherine smith, talks about and portray it is gatekeeper, fdr and untold story of the partnership that described the presidency. >> the author of the gatekeeper, untold story that defined the presidency. if you are not familiar with missie lahan, she was the gatekeeper and you had to get

through her, you were not get to go him if you did not get to missie. she's lived all her life in georgia, in south carolina, she has a degree in journalism at the university of georgia. she's been a daily newspaper reporter and editor, book columnist, she's been very involved through rotary international in the worldwide effort to eradicate polio. she's lectured and spoken on fdr's leadership in that arena. she has a new book out that i know you all would want to check out. it's out at her table and it is called, it is called a -- i am -- it's a mystery novel and it's called shirley temple is

missing, you have to check it out. i know i will pick it up. when katherine gets started, she's going to be in full character of maro -- so i am going to introduce you to the wonderful character of margaret lehand. [applause] >> thank you for that lovely

introduction and warm welcome you're giving me here today. president roosevelt was so thrilled that i had the opportunity to come down here to seivierville especially because of the tennessee valley authority which was part of first 100 days legislation and was interesting to see the progress being made and sends warmest greetings. it's a beautiful place to be today in your city and your area. i thought that i might start out by telling you a little bit about how i came to work for franklin roosevelt as private secretary. let me ask first, how many people in this room are of irish decent? quite a few i thought. well, i am also, my grandparents came over in the 1840's during the irish potato famine on what was called a coffinship and

theyed that the -- they had the names because people on the ship were sick and starving and died on the way over and got pitched overboard. my grandparents on the lehand were lucky in that they made it alive to the united states and they settled way up in up state new york and my father was born to then, well, my grandfather lehand was working on a construction project at the church and a hatchet fell on his head and killed him. my grandmother never remarried and left my child as only child in irish catholic family, but he married the daughter of another irish immigrant and i was the youngers of their four children, so i was born and when i was a very small child, we moved to summerville which is a city

within the great bison area which is where i got my accent. now, summerville is the blue-collar neighbor of cambridge in what is in cambridge? harvard, harvard university and who was a student in harvard when i was a little girl? franklin roosevelt, even though my mother took harvard students sometimes just to make ends meet in the family we never had roosevelt as boarder. i always wanted to have a career. i wanted to be a working woman. you could be a nurse or you could be a secretary and i've had fever and i was told that i needed to stay away from germs

and i couldn't stand the sight of blood anyway so i decided to become secretary. i went to my high school, summerville high school, took lots of courses in typing and stenography, making squiggles instead of words and in 1917 we had just joined in the great war, so wanting to do a bit for my country and i was sent to washington, d.c. well, at the time the department of the navy had a very charismatic secretary called franklin roosevelt, had short career at the department of the navy, i was working in this area of top secrecy and all day long they would give us girls a sheet

of paper that was in stenography and we translate the squiggles into words and type them out and they would give us another sheet that had nothing to do with the first and they would give us another sheet that had nothing to do with the other two and all day long and come home from boarding house exhausted, shoulders aching, head pounding and i had no idea what i had done all day. well, my roommate was in the same boat and one beautiful spring day we decided to send word in that we were sick. and we went to see mount vernon, home of george washington, the father of our country and we had a beautiful wonderful day till we got home and there on the steps of the boarding house sat a navy nurse and she said, you don't look sick to me, well, my roommate got in terrible trouble because she wasn't sick, we had to have physicals with the navy

doctor and the doctor noticed i had a heart murmur and suggested a less strenuous job. this very nice man at the department of navy mr. charles mccarthy found me a job in philadelphia at the emergency shipping board which was involved with the war effort as well. well, about the time that job was winding down in 1920, mr. cabbing car think wrote me a letter and said that he was the campaign secretary for franklin roosevelt who was running for vice president on the democratic party ticket with james m.cox, well, he needed a good girl to come down to manhattan and work at the office and was i interested and i knew it was going to be a very, very long campaign because i got the letter in august 1920 and the election wasn't until november, quite a long time for a presidential campaign, isn't it, so i came to manhattan and i didn't see much of mr. roosevelt, i did meet him because he was whistle stopping

across the country by train, he gave a thousand speeches during those three months. but it was all for nothing, it was a very, very bad year for the democrats, nobody wanted to hear about woodrow wilson, the great war, the league of nations and the democratic party ticket just had nothing to run on and they were dem olished by the republicans, imagine that, that's how we got president, there's a wonderful expression i heard in the south, bless his heart, if mr. harding hadn't died in office he would be remembered as worst president in time but he did and after his death all the things came to light, the scandals that were going on in his administration, oh, he had the most crooked people working for him and he thought they were friends, he

died conveniently and calvin coolidge who had been the governor of my state massachusetts took over and all the stuff came bubbling up and attorney general was indicted twice and interior secretary went to prison over scandal and coolidge avoided trouble by basically doing nothing. they said if you went to oval office and he did not move, you could not tell him from the furniture. [laughter] >> his mick name was silent cow, one time a woman was sitting next to him at dinner party and she said she had a bet to the friend that she could get him to say more than two words, he looked at those with eyes of his and said, you lose, i guess i shouldn't speak ill of the dead, he passed away last january, how they could tell i don't know, but mr. roosevelt knew it was

going to be quite some time before the democrats had another shot at the white house, so he decided that he would go to make some money for his family. he and mrs. roosevelt were well off family but they did have five children and all the boys were expected to go to harvard so he took a job as junior partner in law firm in wall str. are there any lawyers in the room or anyone who is related to a lawyer? just one. you look like a very nice young lady so i don't want you to take this personally but i said to mr. roosevelt when he asked to be private secretary, i wasn't sure i wanted to work for a lawyer, that i thought law work was really dull and he said to me, oh missy, let me explain about how i got the nickname missy, my name is margaret but the younger roosevelt children had a hard time saying

miss lehand. don't you worry they'll be lots of things to do. i took the job, went up to new york, stayed with a cousin in the bronx and took a 24-stop subway ride every morning. mrs. roosevelt he had it better, he had private car and chauffeur. i was doing so well with the law work i started getting letters but then that august of 1921 mr. roosevelt joined his family on campo bello island off the coast of canada and there he came down with polio, infantile parulis and what a bitter pill that was for a man that was 39 year's old and stood 6'3. he did everything he could to be

able to walk again and he wasn't having much success until the summer of 1924, he went to the democratic party convention and ran into an old harvard classmate, george peabody, he was from colombia and part of old resort in springs called the mary inn and told mr. roosevelt of a young man who had had polio and come in and exercised in the warm mineral springs at warm springs and had finally been able to walk with a cane. he often said to me and to others, if a man is going to run for office he has to be able to walk first. he had been using crutches, those were medical device, but a cane, that could be fashion accessory, that october he loaded me and wife eleanor and

valet roy jones who helped him get about and we went all the way from new york down to piney words of georgia and i must say, it was a bit of a shock, there was very little electricity and what there was was quite expensive. not much phone service, not much indoor plumbing, no paveed roads within 10 miles but for mrs. roosevelt i think the last straw was the day we went to get some chicken for super and found out that we had to buy the chicken on the hoof. [laughter] >> we brought the chickens back on the car and gave them to cook and she prepared the chickens for supper, mrs. roosevelt saw execution and didn't have much appetite that night.

the next morning having coffee, missy, supposeed franklin wants steak tonight, what ever should i do, okay, i made that part, the chicken is true but not the steak. but anyway, mrs. roosevelt did have plenty of things to occupy her in new york with the five children and her various political causes so she got back on the train and went back to new york. i have to tell you, she is a genius in so many ways but she got up to new york where her friend al smith was running for governor as a democrat against her cousin ted, the son of the late teddy roosevelt, the president who was her uncle. did everyone get all of that, a lot of family there, anyway, she campaigned against her cousin. he had worked in the harding

administration even though he had nothing to do with scandal. she and her friends had a paper mache and everywhere ted would speak they drove up in the giant teapot car and sat there letting it simmer and people would look at ted and look at the tea pod, i had no idea he had anything to do with tea pod dome, well he lost the election and he hasn't spoken to her yet. but any way, back down in ghoirnlg warm -- down in warm springs mr. roosevelt was swimming in mineral waters and felt toes move for the first time in three years, he could stand in water up to mid chest without support and could take a few steps if he hold onto rope in the pool and felt that he had stumbled on a great therapy for

polio that might enable him to walk again with just a cane, he gave an interview from the reporter from atlanta newspaper saying he plans to swim his way back to health. we all went back to new york for the holidays and the following spring when we return today warm springs, there were a bunch of polio patients waiting for us there. they'd read the article that had run in newspapers across the country and they we wanted to swim there way back to health too. well, there was no doctor there, no nurse, no physical therapist, didn't stop mrs. roosevelt, i became nurse lehand and we got in the pool with those patients and exercised with them and played games and did everything they could to help them strengthen the muscles that still worked and then in off hours we created what we called the warm springs spirit, we had a spirit of hope, optimism, we

had games, tournaments, we had card parties, we put on skits and dances in wheelchairs and ladies you have not laughed until you see a row of men in tutus do a leg brace together. it was just wonderful. mr. roosevelt bought the place and turned into a private foundation and with donations from his many wealthy friends it was -- he was able to hire real staff, wonderful physical therapist that is came from peabody college from nashville and doctors and nurses and people were getting better and he was getting better. i thought he was this close to being able to walk with just a cane and then the democrat party kept calling for him. they wanted him to run for governor of new york in 1928 because al smith, mrs. roosevelt's dear friend was running for president and they felt that that -- that he needed

new york to help him and it would be good to have a strong democrat running for governor of new york and no one was stronger than franklin roosevelt, so he was talked into it, i was not happy about that, but he was talked into it and he was elected by a wisker. mr. roosevelt took office on january 1st, 1929, that march mr. hoover took office promising a chicken in every pot, that didn't win him any votes from mrs. roosevelt and the prosperity was here to stay and the poverty was about to be wiped out in the united states and late that october the stock market crashed and we found ourselves in this great depression that we were mired in. mr. hoover did a few things here and there but he liked to appoint commissions, 64

different commissions to look into the causes to have great depression and how to address them and he ignored all of the advice he was given. he looked -- he pointed a commission to look into prohibition and whether it was time to repeal it or do something to make it work so we didn't have criminal shooting each other over their beer wagons and he ignored their recommendations. the people in america had just had enough by 1932. mr. roosevelt ran for office and won in historic landslide, he carried 42 of 28 states including tennessee and got all the 59 electoral votes. a new deal for the american people was what he promised. so he all went down to washington and we moved into the white house, that march, he took office telling us that the only thing we had to fear is fear itself and the first 100 days of his presidency he sent 15 major

pieces of legislation up to congress to address the ills of the great depression and just as a reminder 25% unemployment by then, almost every bank in the country had closed, there had been an assassination attempt on his life in miami that killed the mayor of chicago. but he took office 100 days full legislation being passed including the tennessee valley authority legislation which addressed local -- e e power and the beginning of great smoky mountains was born in that period. that was all just in the first 100 days, so we know that there's a lot more to do to address this great depression and that sometime before everyone will have happy days to hear again, mr. roosevelt is working very, very hard at the

white house and i'm right at his side helping him every step of the way. at this point i will take off my hat, let me hair down a bit, if i can get the clip out and let my biographer katherine smith tell the rest of my story. take off also. margaret lehand was an amazing person, she had a high school education as you've heard and some people, it's been written many times despite having only a high school education, well, hardly anyone had a education then, it was 10% of the population, eleanor roosevelt was a high school dropout, anyone knew that? she was educated woman for her time. she was very smart, very savvy, very discreet and she and fdr got along like a house of fire, she was the perfect confidential

secretary. she had worked with him at the governor's mansion in new york and she and eleanor and fdr worked out a system that served them well. eleanor was teaching school in manhattan and she we wanted to keep on doing that and keep up her other political causes so she installed missy in the governor's mansion and whenever eleanor was gone, missy was not only the private secretary she was also the backup hostess and she continued doing this in the white house and as we all know, eleanor traveled so much as the president eyes and ears she was gone a lot. her secret service name was rover. missy backed her up whenever she was gone and eleanor could count her doing things and then worked around the clock for franklin roosevelt. lived on the third house of the white house so she was on call all of the time. when missy came to the white house, there were four secretary

that is ran the place, now compare that to today when you have no idea what all these people in white house do and sometimes wonder if they have any idea either, but they had four secretaries, three men and a women and they were known jointly as the white house secretary, they had louis howe, fdr political adviser, the gur, steve bannon, so to speak and like steve bannon he was hideously ugly, sorry, steve, if you're watching this. but he was. [laughter] >> he was about -- he was under 5 feet tall, he had just a face just pinned with acne and scars, smoked like a chimney, just one cigarette off the other so he smelled awful and had cigarette ash all over the clothes all of the time, he was so filthy that his nickname was lousy louis.

he had two assistants, steve, press secretary and margaret mcintyre who handled appointments and missy who did everything else. she had office ajoining -- shouting distance between each other all day long and in the evenings very often they would spend the time together, she would arrange poker parties to help them relax, they would watch movies up in the study or work with stamp collection. she was just companion and fdr liked to process his thinking in the evenings and that was the time that he would suggest things and bounce them off missy and get her input and she was not afraid to say, you know, that's a terrible idea. she was not a yes woman, by the time the second term came around

louis had died and missy stepped up and she didn't have the title till eisenhower, that's how white house chief of staff came to being and she had the role. after the president went to bed at night, no one could wake him up without getting missy lehand's permission. in march 1939 when hitler invaded poland the telephone call came to switch board and patched to missy's phone, yeah, i think we can wake the old man for that one and ran downstairs to his room and they sat up through the night together dealing with this international crisis which was the beginning of world war ii. fdr didn't tweet, thank goodness, but he did write little -- little instructions on

pieces of scrap paper and that night he wrote out what he had done to address the -- the crisis in europe, signed it fdr in bed, september 1st, 1939, 3:30 a.m. and give it to missy and she kept it in her scrapbook, she had a collection, some of them were funny, one of them mal, where is $1 million for wildlife, i'm sure he found it. so missy's life went on but ended sadly. she had had fever and caused permanent heart damage, there was no real treatment for it at the time and when she was only 44 year's old she had a major stroke at the white house. she was partly paralyzed and robbed her of her speech. fdr sent every specialist to work with her, sent her to warm springs for rehabilitation and there really wasn't anything

that could be done, so she went home to massachusetts and lived the rest of her life which was three more years before she had another stroke and died at age 47. mr. roosevelt paid for all of the medical treatment, he also made sure that she had tickets to go to the movies and things like that that she enjoyed but he never came to see her again after her stroke. when she died, the roosevelt family paid for the funeral and to this day they are doing upkeep on her grave in cambridge at a beautiful cemetery there called mount a -- auburn. at this point i can answer questions, if anybody would like to walk up to the microphone, surely someone has a question. here we go. brave soul.

>> so this probably took you a lot of research to do. >> yes. >> can you explain the research process and how long it took you? >> yes, it took a lot of research, it was such a labor of love and had a wonderful time doing, i started out in warm springs which is -- i live in anderson, south carolina, y'all know the accent changed, right, yeah. i went down to warm springs and worked with archivists there and warm springs is a wonderful place to go, you feel like roosevelt just left. i stayed at the hotel warm springs which is where the press stayed during the stay which i thought was appropriate and just kind of got a feel for the place. i went up to the library in new york, the presidential library which missy was instrumental in helping him found by the way, worked with their archives, did online research, the most important thing was i found her family. she has two wonderful great

nieces who inherited all of missy's archives and papers and stuff and they just opened up their archives, their homes and their hearts to me and i know their southern cousin and that really helped flesh out her story. it took me about two and a half years to research and write the book and i was working on other things at the same time and then with all the dumb luck in the world i got a wonderful agent in new york, megathompson and she sold the book to touchstone and then it takes another year to get a book ready for publication, it's amazing all they do to be sure it's just perfect, so anyway. other questions? come on. okay. go ahead. thank you, brenda. >> when did your interest start

in franklin roosevelt and this missy lehand how did that happen? >> it was with my grandfather who was a democrat, y'all know what that is? it's a republican democrat. [inaudible] >> yellow dog than a republican. well, my grandfather was a radical, he was a dead yellow dog democrat and he had good reason, he had been a young father and husband at the beginning of the depression, my father was born in 1943, if you were born that year you were not planned, though you were loved and he felt that his life really took an upswing after fdr came into office. he was a newspaper printer, a lot of times he didn't get paid or paychecks bounce and just really lived on credit at the grocery store and sad times but

he adored fdr and that piqued my interest. i kept noticing this woman lehand, what a fabulous life she had, she worked for fdr and lived in the white house, and now i am, but then i found out she died when she was 47, well, maybe not so much, but i did want to read a book about her and no one had ever written one. so that's what got me going and so glad i took the journey and not disappointed on what i learned about missy. she was a good person. she was loyal, she was honest, she worked very hard and trajectory of her life with the tragedy at the end is just -- you can't make this stuff up, you really can't.

though i am making stuff up about her now. this new -- written a mystery book kelly durham, shirley temple is missing, we started that missy met shirley temple which was the top box office draw during tour of 20th century fox studios. she had a picture made with her and i thought, wouldn't it be fun to write a mystery around this meeting, so we have missy meeting shirley timle and inviting her and her mother to join in san francisco and on the way shirley is kidnapped and they have to recover her over the weekend because she's supposed to start filming a movie the next monday and they can't keep the story under wraps. we have a lot of real characters in the book.

jay edgar hoover is in it. missy's assistant grace but then we made up really good characters and i'm really proud to say that i made up a really nice boyfriend for missy because she never had a really nice boyfriend. she had a boyfriend who wasn't so nice, and he's a really cool fbi agent who is straight shooter and all that, so that book is just out. i do have it for sale at my table and we've got another one written and a third one on the board, so it's going to be a series, so missy will continue to live through my books. okay. yes, ma'am. >> have you ever thought -- >> can you come up to the mic so they can record your question? >> have you ever thought about other relationships with other presidents and their executive secretaries after you've written this book? >> you know, that's a really interesting thought. i guess the most famous one is

knicks open's rosemary woods and lyndon johnson had an amazing secretary too, but no, actually the next book i'm hope to go start -- hoping to start soon is about a woman born in 1902 and died in 2000 and lived almost the whole 20th century, she was a very wealthy heiress from new york, she was not a typical girl for her age. she was a big-game hunter and she captured all of the specimens for zoos and mounted them, had mounted for natural history museum, like the one in new york that's got the african hall, she captured antelopes there. she was a flapper in the rivie

riviera. she cent -- went skiing and in world war ii started she joined oss which was the spy agency as clerk, she was over the cable desk but then she went to france after france fell to the allies and accidentally got captured by the germans and was a pow for the last six months of the war, she escaped over the swiss border and went on and continued having amazing life. i have met, talk today her secretary who said that gurtrude was a feminist before anybody knew what it was and i will be working on that book next. she was quite a gal. okay. i see a gentleman coming up. oh, oh. he's going to ask the question. >> i'm laughing before i ask the question, in the current affairs in this country, was there any indication of any kind of

romantic relationships? >> i knew that would be -- [laughter] >> i'm so glad missy has left the room. i do address that in the gatekeeper. there's no reason to think there was but we really just don't know. fdr did not leave a dairy or missy did not leave a dairy, people speculated about it even then, they certainly had the opportunity all through the 1920's, they spent the winters together on a houseboat in the florida keys and a lot of people speculate that it happened but constantly had company so 90-foot boat that has people and they are sleeping everywhere, it could have happened, she did have a boyfriend. i mentioned she had a not so nice boyfriend but all through the time she was in the white house she was involved with william christian bullet who was an ambassador to soviet union

and paris, he was gone for long periods of time. she professed her love to him and whenever he came home he would buy her dinner and take her dancing but he was a real player. after the france fell to the nazis, he came home for good and she broke it off with him real quickly, i think he was a boyfriend you really wanted an ocean between. so kind of sad, so she never married, never had children but she did adore fdr and he adored her but whether it went in that direction, there's just no way to know. the people tend to focus on that and -- and that tends to overshadow her huge role in his administration, her influence, her prestige and her role as white house chief of staff, that's what we should remember her for, i think, but we can't help it, we are curious. okay. any other questions?

okay. well, thank you for your kind attention. i've enjoyed this. [applause] >> and now our final author program from rose glen literary festival in sevierville, tennessee, jennifer mcgaha with flat broke with two goats. >> welcome, everyone, we are so glad that you have joined us for the session at the rose glen literary festival. our speaker for this session is jennifer mcgaha, native of western, north carolina, jennifer lived with her husband, five dogs, numerous chickens, herd of dairy goats and one high maintenance cat in wooden