Kup's Chicago - Irv Kupcinet [67]
Few people realize, for example, that it was Roosevelt, and not Harry Truman, who first took note of the great number of White House matches that were carried off daily as souvenirs, and originated the now-famous imprint (which Truman also utilized on matchbooks): “Stolen from the White House.”
It also was Roosevelt who handed down this bit of sage advice to his son, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr., on the problem of how to smile spontaneously for the cameras:
“It’s easy,” said FDR. “Whenever you are about to be photographed by somebody, just imagine you see a chicken on his nose.”
No matter how heavy the pressure, Roosevelt never lost his capacity to joke with members of his staff. One man whom he took particular delight in teasing; was Mike Reilly, a Secret Service agent. Once, in Chicago, FDR told how a certain scene in the movie, Wilson, had made him think of Reilly. It was the scene in which Woodrow Wilson proposed to Mrs. Gait on the White House patio, against a cluttered background of trees and plants. “I couldn’t help thinking,” said FDR, as he winked at Reilly, “that there was a Secret Service agent behind every one of those trees.”
I first met Dwight D. Eisenhower when he was still a general. It was at an Army Day reception in Chicago shortly after World War II, and Ike and President Harry S. Truman were the guests of honor. Realizing that most of his friends hadn’t met America’s number one soldier, the President personally introduced the General to each guest. The man in front of me in the reception line remarked that he had met Ike a few years earlier. “I’ll never forget that day,” the man said. But if Ike was expecting to hear the usual compliment, he was as surprised as I was. Explained the man: “Yes, sir, the day we met I had four winners at the race track!”
I have many memories of Ike. One incident that I will not easily forget occurred just after his nomination at the 1952 Republican convention. The last volley had been fired in the complicated and sometimes bitter struggle between his backers and those of the late Senator Robert A. Taft. Ike had just received news of his victory in his suite at the Sheraton-Blackstone Hotel. Contrary to all protocol, Ike didn’t wait for Taft to make the traditional call on him. He picked up a phone and called Taft at the Conrad Hilton, “I want to come over and see you, Bob,” he said. And Ike and his bodyguard, Chicago policeman Lou Swee, pushed their way laboriously through the mob in the lobbies and on the street outside so that the General could publicly pay his respects to a gallant campaigner who was heartbroken at having lost his last chance to follow in the footsteps of his father, President William Howard Taft.
But the President I came to know best was the Man from Missouri who showed them, Harry S. Truman. We were first introduced by Russ Stewart, then managing editor of the old Chicago Times, in the days when Truman was still a leader in the United States Senate. Senator Truman’s office was a friendly spot that I visited often in Washington. During the 1944 convention he and I spent more time together. And when he was President the White House was always open sesame to me.
His modesty about his success is matched only by that of his family. One of his favorite stories is of the time when, immediately after his inauguration as Vice-President, he telephoned his mother and said, “You’re now talking to the Vice-President.” “I know,” she said, “I heard it on the radio.” And then, before hanging up, she scolded the nation’s number two public official, “Now, Harry, you behave yourself down there!”
His daughter Margaret, as unassuming as her father and far more charming than