FDR - Jean Edward Smith [130]
Marguerite A. LeHand, twenty-five in the winter of 1924, stood five feet, seven inches tall. She was warm and attractive, with ink-blue eyes, black hair already turning gray, and an engaging, throaty voice. She was also modest, well mannered, exceptionally capable, and thoroughly organized—“a compound of cunning and innocence forever baffling,” in the words of the author and editor Fulton Oursler. A native of Potsdam, New York, Missy had grown up in Somerville, Massachusetts, the third child of an Irish gardener. It was at Eleanor’s suggestion in 1921 that she left her employment with the Democratic National Committee to work full-time for FDR, clearing up his correspondence after the vice presidential race. In the three years since, she had become indispensable, not only managing Roosevelt’s office, screening his visitors, and keeping track of his varied interests but doing so with such charm and courtesy that even those turned away felt placated. In New York, she stayed with a relative on the East Side so she could reach the Roosevelt home at any hour and became almost as ubiquitous as Louis Howe.74
Missy often accompanied FDR to Hyde Park for working weekends, and over the years she allowed her life to be taken over by his, assuming his likes and dislikes, his favorite drinks and games, even his turns of phrase. She called him “F.D.”—a name no one else dared use—and, like Louis Howe, she always leveled with him and said exactly what she thought. “She was one of the very, very few people who was not a yes-man,” remembered Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter. “She told [the president] not what she knew he wanted to hear, but what were, in fact, her true views and convictions.”75
What is most remarkable is that Eleanor was completely supportive and solicitous of Missy. As her friend and biographer, Joseph Lash, noted, ER “was grateful to the young woman. She knew that lack of mobility made the daily routines of life cumbersome and difficult for Franklin, and Missy’s presence freed him from housekeeping anxieties and enabled him to stay in touch with the political world through a vast political correspondence, while it eased Eleanor’s sense of guilt because she was unable to do more for him.”76
Aboard the Larooco, Missy served as combination hostess and secretary, doing her utmost to ensure Franklin enjoyed himself. That was not always easy. “There were days on the Larooco when it was noon before he could pull himself out of depression and greet his guests wearing his lighthearted façade,” she tearfully told Frances Perkins many years later.77 Missy entertained graciously, encouraged FDR to tell his favorite stories, went fishing with him—though she sunburned easily—and was accepted naturally by Roosevelt’s many acquaintances. Once that spring she was called away suddenly by the death of her father and was gone almost two weeks. When Missy returned, Eleanor wrote Franklin, “I haven’t told Mama that Missy is back because she has more peace of mind when she doesn’t know such things.”78
It was a unique arrangement.* Franklin, Missy, and LeRoy Jones went back again to the Larooco in the spring of 1925 and again in 1926, after which FDR decided he had had enough. “The sharks make it impossible to play around in the deep water for any length of time, and the sand beaches are few and far between.”79 After the 1926 cruise, Larooco was laid up at the Pilkington Yacht Basin on the Fort Lauderdale River while Roosevelt and Lawrence attempted to sell her. A September hurricane swept the boat upriver, where it came to rest high and dry at the edge of a pine forest, a mile from the nearest water. FDR tried to sell the boat as a hunting lodge, but there were no takers, and in 1927