FDR - Jean Edward Smith [105]
I communicated with many of my friends among Democratic leaders upstate suggesting to them that they should start an organized movement for the nomination of Alfred E. Smith.
FDR to Baker, October 24, 1938, Baker Papers, Library of Congress.
* By 1916 Franklin had shed whatever anti-Catholic bias he might have inherited. Not only had he formed strong bonds with the Irish politicians of New York City, but many of the clergy would become his close friends, including Francis Cardinal Spellman of New York, George Cardinal Mundelein of Chicago, and especially James Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore. Somewhat to Sara’s chagrin, the Roosevelts were in fact distantly related to James Roosevelt Bayley, an Episcopal convert to Catholicism who had been Gibbons’s predecessor as archbishop of Baltimore, and to Bayley’s aunt, Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton, America’s first Catholic saint. In later years FDR enjoyed recounting Cardinal Gibbons’s reply when asked whether he subscribed to the doctrine of papal infallibility. Gibbons acknowledged that he did, adding with a twinkle that he had met the Holy Father many times “and each time he called me ‘Jibbons.’ ”
One might note that except for his mother and Eleanor, the three women closest to FDR during most of his adult life were his secretaries Missy LeHand and Grace Tully, and Lucy Mercer, all of whom were Roman Catholics. For the Gibbons quote, see Nathan Miller, The Roosevelt Chronicles 137 (New York: Doubleday, 1979).
* As Alice Roosevelt Longworth recalled, “Most of my contemporaries were far too shy even to ask their doctors about such matters. I think most American doctors at the time would have been horrified, fearing lawsuits.… I still have a letter written to me shortly after I was married by my sister-in-law, Nan Wallingford, who was the mother of three. In it she begged me to send her ‘one of those cunning, labor-saving devices’ so that she might save her ‘tottering reason.’ ” Michael Teague, Mrs. L: Conversations with Alice Roosevelt Longworth 57 (New York: Doubleday, 1981).
* FDR accompanied Vice President Thomas R. Marshall to officially open the 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition at San Francisco. While on the West Coast he inspected Navy installations and took his first dive in a submarine. Shortly before, the American submarine F-4 had failed to surface after a dive off Pearl Harbor with the loss of all on board. The public was stunned, and FDR, who was worried about Navy morale, went aboard submarine K-7 in Los Angeles. Despite heavy seas he ordered it to dive and go through its paces. Roosevelt greeted the press afterward, elated: “It was fine and for the first time since we left Washington we feel perfectly at home.” Los Angeles Tribune, March 29, 1915; Josephus Daniels, Years of War and After 256; Robert F. Cross, Sailor in the White House: The Seafaring Life of FDR 204 (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 2003).
* Corcoran House, along with the Hay-Adams houses and Decatur House, was one of Washington’s most noted residences. Daniel Webster had lived there when he was secretary of state but found himself unable to support it afterward and sold it to W. W. Corcoran, founder of the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Eustis, a Corcoran grandson, was a fabled huntsman who preferred his estates in Leesburg, Virginia, and Aiken, South Carolina, to living in Washington. In 1920 he sold the house to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, whereupon it was demolished and a new headquarters building for the Chamber was erected on the site. Washington: City and Capital 655–656, Federal Writers’ Project, Works Progress Administration (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1937).
* Although deeply embarrassed, ER remained resolute in her determination to save food. Elliott reports that throughout the war his mother always had a spare place set at the table for “Mr. Hoover” (Food Administrator Herbert Hoover) to symbolize for the family their need