on this topic, but also on empathy. and that's more of a it depends on what you like, right? i like an actual physical book, and i like library books because they smell like library books. but my kid is just fine reading off the computer. he gets the same information. writing, though, you need the actual physical act of writing in order for it to ever make it to your memory banks. if you type notes in a class, it doesn't actually get to your memory banks. >> that's exactly where i was going with my question, is letter writing different from e-mail? >> so this is interesting. there are a few things that e-mail does better than regular communication, and is we only have one minute, so i'm going to make this really quick. one of them is sending an attachment, for obvious reasons, another is sending a list or an agenda or a summation of a meeting. we had a phone call, here's what i heard, and the other thing we found is an e-mail is a perfect good replacement for what would have been a long letter that you

wrote. now, you don't get the benefits of physically writing except in microsoft one note where i can write on my tablet with my pen, and then i do get the benefit. other than that, there's no diminution of receiving a letter or reading it on e-mail. same thing. yeah. thank you all very much. [applause] >> thank you all. don't forget the little yellow buckets on the way out if you have any spare jewelry, car keys, excess money, what have you. thank you. [inaudible conversations]er davd

cameron testifies about global security. unfoldsn, where history daily. in 1979, c-span was created as a public service by america's cable television companies and today we continue to bring you unfiltered coverage of congress,

the white house, the supreme court, and public policy events aroundington, d.c., and the country. this is 40 minutes. >> i knew at the chamber of commerce and this is one of several traits that we have today, but this is a special lady that you are going to hear from. kathryn smith is the author of the gatekeeper, fdr and the untold story of the partnership that declined the presidency. if you are not familiar, she was

the gatekeeper and you have to go through her and you are not getting to him if you do not go through marguerite. the author is a journalist and writer with an interest in his entire circle. she's lived her life in georgia and south carolina and she has a degree in journalism at the university of georgia and has been a reporter and editor, columnist, she's been very involved through the international worldwide effort to eradicate polio. she's lectured and spokeshe hasn that leadership arena. she's got a new book out that i know you all want to check out at her table and it's called a

mystery novel shirley temple is missing. it's going to be great. so, you definitely want to check that out after this. i know i'm going to pick it up. i want to first set you up a little bit when catherine gets started she is going to be in full character of marguerite, and not for a while will she make somewhat of a transformation to the biography so i am going to introduce you to the wonderful character. [applause]

thank you for the introduction and a warm welcome that you are giving me here today. president roosevelt was so thrilled i had the opportunity to come down here to speak with you essentially because of the tennessee valley authority that was part of the first 100 days of gestation, quite interested to see the progress being made so he sends his warmest greetings. it's a beautiful place to be today in your city and in your area. i thought i might start off by telling you a little bit about how i came to work for franklin delano roosevelt as his department a of secretary. he asked first how many people in this room are of irish descent, quite a few i thought. well, i am also. my grandparents came over the

1840s during the irish potato famine on what was called a coffin ship and its name because so many of the people that came on board were very sick or starving. working on a construction project at the church and a hatchet fell on his head and killed him that led to the creatures only child and irish catholic family but married the daughter of another irish immigrant and i was the youngest of their four children so i was

born in pakistan and went it was a small child we moved to somerville, which is a city within the area i got my accent. now, somerville is the blue-collar neighborhood of cambridge and what is in cambridge, harvard university. and who is the student at harvard when i was a little girl girl? franklin and eleanor roosevelt. we never did have mr. roosevelt as a border at that time there were three careers open to women. you could be a teacher, nurse, secretary.

i decided to become secretary. i went to my somerville high school and took classes making squiggles instance of words, office practice management. and 1917 when i graduated, we just joined in the great war. to work at the department of the navy at that time the department of the navy had a very charismatic young assistant secretary named franklin and eleanor roosevelt but i never met him then either. in fact i have a rather spotty and embarrassing short career at the department of the navy.

i was working in this area of top secrecy and that they would get a sheet of paper in stenography and we would type them out and then they would give another sheet that has nothing to do with the first and then another that had nothing to do with the other two. and i would come home to the boarding house at night just exhausted, shoulders aching, head pounding and i had no idea what i had done all my day. we went to see mount vernon and had a beautiful wonderful day until we got home.

there was a heart murmur for my fever the job was in order so this nice man at the department of the navy foun can't be a jobn philadelphia at the emergency shipping board so by the time they were winding down in 1920, mr. mccarthy wrote me a letter for franklin delano roosevelt on the democratic party ticket. he needed a good girl to come down to manhattan and work at the office. i knew that he was going to be a very long campaign because i got the letter in 1920 and it wasn't until november, quite a long time for a presidential campai

campaign. i didn't see much of mr. roosevelt 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 bad year for the democrats. nobody wanted to hear about woodrow wilson, the league of nations and the democratic party ticket had nothing to run on and they were demolished by the republicans. imagine that. and then we got warren g. harding and calvin coolidge.

he had the most crooked people working for him and thought they were his friends. he did and governor of my state of massachusetts came bubbling up. they said if you went into the oval office and he did not move, you could not tell him from the furniture. [laughter] his nickname was silent cal. one time a woman was sitting next to him at a dinner party and had a bet with a friend she could get him to say more than two words. he looked at her with those beady little eyes 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 he knew that it was going to be quite some time before they had another shot at the white house, so he decided he would go to make money for his family they did have five children and all the boys were expected to go to harvard so he took a job as a junior partner in a law firm on wall street. are there any lawyers in the room or anyone who is related to a lawyer? you look like a nice young lady so i don't want you to take this personal grief when he asked if i would be his private secretary i wasn't sure i wanted to work for a lawyer i thought that it was. all and he said to me what we explain how meexplain how i gote missy. the younger roosevelt children

have a hard time saying ms ms. lehand he would say i find that the work pretty boring myself. don't worry there will be more things to do. so, i took the job, and to new york, stayed with a cousin and took a subway to work every morning. mr. roosevelt had better he had a car and a chauffeur. about august in 1921, mr. roosevelt joined off the coast of canada and their she came down with polio better known as infantile paralysis and what a bitter pill that was for a man that was 39-years-old and

stood 6-foot three. over the next few years he did everything he could to be able to walk again and he was not having much success until the summer of 1924. he went to the democratic party convention and ran into an old classmate from columbus georgia and was the owner of the result delete queries work. he had exercised on the warm mineral springs and had been finally able to walk with just a cane. this was his greatest wish he often said to me and others if a man is going to be able to run for office he has to be able to walk first. he had been using crutches.

so that october he loaded us up and his valet that helped him get it out onto a train and we went from new york down to the woods of georgia. and i must say that it was a bit of a shock. there was very little" there was was quite expensive, not much phone service or in your plumbing, no paved roads within 10 miles, but for mrs. roosevelt i think the last straw is when we went to get some chicken for supper and she discovered we had to buy it on the hoof. we brought them back and squawking at blocking and gave them to the head cook and she paired them for supper.

mrs. roosevelt noticed she didn't have much appetite for her dinner that night and as we were having coffee she said to me suppose he wants eight for dinner tonight whatever shall i do? okay i made that part up. mrs. roosevelt did have plenty of things to occupy her in new york in her various political causes so she got on the train and went back to new york. i have to tell you she is aging as in so many ways. she got up to new york where her friend was running for governor against her cousin the son of the late teddy roosevelt, did you get all that?

she campaigned against her cousin who had worked in the harding administration, even though he had nothing to do with the scandal she and her friends had a huge teapot made and put it on top of their car and then they put a brazier and site bris of explosives team and everywhere he went to speak they drove up in that giant car and sat there letting it simmer. people would look at them and say i have no ide had no idea hd anything to do with the teapot dome. anyway, back down in georgia, mr. roosevelt was exercising in the warm mineral waters and just loving it. he said he could feel his toes moving for the first time in three years. he could stand in water up to his chest with the support and take a few steps if he held onto

a rope in the pool and he felt he had studied onto the therapy that might enable him to walk again with just a cane. after a month we all went back up to new york for the holidays and the following spring when we returned to warm springs, there were a lot of patients waiting for us. they read the articles in the newspapers around the country and wanted to swim their way back to health. there was no doctor or nurse or physical therapist.

it's what we call the warm springs spirit of hope and fun and optimism. we had games, tournaments and we put on dances and wheelchairs. you haven't laughed until you have seen a row of men and tutus and leg braces do this together. it was wonderful and then mr. roosevelt off the place in 1926 and turned it into a private foundation and with donations from his wealthy friends he was able to hire wonderful therapists who came from the college in nashville and doctors and nurses and people were getting better. he was this close to being able to walk with a plain.

no one was stronger than franklin roosevelt, said he was talking and i wasn't happy about that. unfortunately, mr. smith lost to herbert hoover. mr. roosevelt took office on january 1, 1929 that march mr. hoover took office promising a chick and in every pot. we found ourselves in this great depression. mr. hoover did a few things here

and there but he liked to appoint conditions. he appointed 64 conditions to look into the causes of the great depression and how to address them and then he ignored all of the advice that he was given. he brought the commission to look at prohibition and whether it was time to repeal it or do something to make it work so we didn't have criminals shooting each other over their beer wagons. he ignored their recommendations. the people of america have had enough. mr. roosevelt ran for office and he won in the historical landslide carrying 42 of the 48 states including in tennessee and he got all of the 59 electoral votes. a new deal for the american people is what he promised. we moved into the white house that march and he took office

telling us the only thing we have to fear is fear itself and in the first 100 days of his presidency, he sent major pieces of legislation up to congress to address the ills of the great depression and just as a reminder 25% unemployment by by them every bank in the country had closed and killed the mayor of chicago. but he took office and including the tennessee valley authority legislation which addressed electrical power in your area and created dams on the tennessee river, the reforestation to address all the trees that have been cut down. that was all just in the first 100 days. as we know there's a lot more to do to address this great depression and before everyone

has happy days again mr. roosevelt is working very hard in the white house helping him every step of the way. i'm going to let my hair down a bit and let my biographer toe the rest of my story. marguerite was an amazing person. she had a high school education as you've heard. and it's been written many times despite the education, hardly anyone had a high school education there and it was about 10% of the population eleanor roosevelt was a high school dropout and so she was an educated woman for her time how she was very smart, savvy, very

discreet and got along like a house afire so she was a perfect confidential secretary. she had worked with him as the governor's mansion in new york and she and eleanor roosevelt and fdr worked out a system that served them well. she was teaching school in manhattan and wanted to keep doing that and keep up her other political causes. so she installed may see in the governor's mansion and whenever eleanor was gone, not only the private secretary but also the backup hostess. she continued doing this in the white house and traveled so much as the president's eyes and ears she was gone a lot. her secret service name was rover. whenever she was gone and eleanor could count on dc to do things the way she wanted without you usurping her role as the first lady and they lived on

the floor of the white house on call all the time. when you see came into the white house, there were four secretaries that ran the place. compare that to today when you have no idea what all these people do and sometimes wonder if they have any idea that they have four secretaries, three men and a woman and they were known jointly as the white house secretary at. they had the guru and he was hideously ugly, sorry if you were watching this, but he was. he was under 5 feet tall and had a face just full of acne scars. he smoked like a chimney so he smelled awful and had a cigarette ash all over his clothes and was so filthy that

he was a political genius and was totally devoted to franklin roosevelt. so he came in as the white house chief of staff and he had to assistance, the press secretary and marvin mcintyre that handle appointments. they had a little doorway that are joinejoins the two of them. they were at a shouting distance between each other all day long and in the evenings very often they would spend time together to help them relax relax, they h movies up in his study them adjust to the companion. and fdr liked to process his thinking in the evenings and that is the time he would suggest things and bounce them off and get input and she wasn't afraid to say that's a terrible idea.

by the time the second term came around, they see moved up to what you think of as th the chif of staff today but she didn't have that title. she was the general chief of staff and that is how the chief of staff came to be but she had a goal and after the president went to bed at night, no one could wake him up without getting permission. so september 1, 1939 when hitler invaded poland, the telephone pole came in and the attached it to bc's phone, not the president and said we can wake the old man up for that one. they ran to his room and sat up through the night together dealing with this international crisis which was the beginning of world war ii. fdr didn't meet thank goodness

but he did write inscriptions and things on scrap paper and that night he wrote out a chip about what he had done to address the crisis in europe &-and-sign date september 1, 1939 and she kept it in her scrap book and have a collection some of them were funny and one of them said where is $1 million for wildlife. i'm sure she found it. so her life went on but it ended very sadly. she had a fever that cause heart damage and there was no treatment at the time and when she was only 44-years-old she had a major stroke at the white house. she was partly paralyzed and that robbed her of her speech. fdr sent every specialist in the

country to work with her for the rehabilitation and there just wasn't anything that could be done. she also made sure she had tickets to go to the movies and things like that, but he never came to see her again after her stroke. when she died, the roosevelt family paid for her funeral and to this day they keep doing the upkeep on her grave in cambridge a beautiful cemetery. so, that is her story. i think at this point i could answer questions.

someone must have a question. here we go. this will probably take a lot of research to do. can you explain how long it took? >> it was such a labor of love i had a hard time doing it but he started out in warm springs. you won't know the accent changed. he worked with the archivists and it's a wonderful place to go. you feel like a roosevelt just left. i stayed at the hotel which is where the press stay and just kind of got the feel for the place. we went to the library in new york the presidential library where she was very instrumental, did a lot of online research for

the most important thing is i found her family. she has two wonderful great-nieces that we are to do with the papers and stuff and they just opened up their archives to be and i am now they are causing. that really helped flush out her story. it took me about two and a half years to research the book and i was working on other things at the same time. any other questions?

when did your interest start, how did that happen? >> it began with my father who was a yellow dog democrat. this is a republican county. my grandfather was a radical yellow dog democrat. he had good reason. he had been a father and husband. if you were born in here you were not planned, though you were loved. he felt his life took an upswing after fdr came into office.

he was a newspaper printer and often times didn't get paid for his checks bounced. he lived on credit at the grocery stores but he adored fdr and that piqued my interest he was my favorite. i kept noticing this woman and what a fabulous life she had, she worked for fdr and lived in the white house. i would have loved to have been hurt, there i am. i did want to read a book about her and no one had ever written one, so that is what got me going. and i am just so glad i took that journey and i was not at all disappointed what i learned. she was a good person and was legal, honest work very hard and

the trajectory at the end was you just cannot make this stuff up. we've code written a mystery book with a great writer of world war ii thrillers called shirley temple is missing. was missing. we started with a kernel of truth as the top box office in the country in 1935 during a 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 her meeting shirley temple and inviting her and her mother to invite them on a week to san francisco and on the way up she is kidnapped off the train and they have to recover her over that weekend because she is supposed to start filming a new movie the next monday they

cannot keep the story under wraps. so we have a lot of characters in the book. the head of 20th century fox is in it, the assistant, but then we made up some great characters and i'm proud to say i made up a nice boyfriend because she never had a nice boyfriend keith = fbi agent so that look is out. i do have it for sale at my table and we've got another one written so it's going to be a series. missy will continue to live through my books.

after writing this book? >> that is an interesting thought. the most famous one is rosemary was. you probably no one here has heard of. she was born in 1902, died in 500 shoe sealift almost the whole 20th century. she was a very wealthy heiress from new york. her father owned the carpet company that she wasn't a typical girl for her age. she was a game hunter and captor of the specimen for the zoo and have them mounted or natural history museums.

she was a flack from the riviea with fitzgerald and hemingway is. she went skiing in her evening gown and didn't fall off and get wet. then when world war ii started, she joined the spy agency as a clerk but then she went to france after france fell to analyze and accidentally got captured by the germans and then she went on and continue having this amazing life. i talked to her secretary who said she was a feminist before anyone knew what it was and did what she wanted. i will be working on that book next. she was quite a gal. i see a gentle man coming up.

>> occurrence appears in the country, was there any indication of any kind of a romantic relationship? >> i knew that was coming. [laughter] >> i am so glad that missy has left the room. i do address that. there is no reason to think it was. people speculated about it even then. they certainly have the opportunity all through the 1920s, they spend their years together on a houseboat in the florida keys and a lot of people speculate they constantly have the company said the 14 people off all the time and they are just sleeping everywhere. so, could have happened. she did have a boyfriend i mentioned not a nice boyfriend at all through the time she was

in the white house, she was involved with william christian who was an ambassador to the soviet union in paris so gone for long periods of time and she professed her love to him and when he came home he would take her out and biker dinner and buy jewelry that he was a real player. after france fell to the nazis he came home for good and she broke it off with him quickly. i think that he just was a boyfriend you really wanted an ocean between. so she never married or had children but she did adore fdr and he adored her but whether it went that direction there is no way to know. people tend to focus on that and got tends to overshadow their role in the administratio adminr influence, her prestige and role as the white house chief of staff. that is what we should remember

her for. any other questions? thank you for your attention. i have enjoyed this. plus, [applause]