As you read through all this wonderful information on our first
ladies you will see that the first ladies from the past were not in
public eye, they did take part helping their husband in one way or
another with making law and aiding him in social events.
But
they did not make speeches and put themselves out there for all public
to scrutinize. The past ten years the first lady has come to be more in
the public eye, from assisting in elections, making speeches at
colleges, media, etc. They are assisting in making a better America.
The
current first lady has gone out of her way to try to help all ameicans
be more healthy, she is tying to stamp out obesity, with her appearances
on Disney Channel fit for change as well as herself participating in
marathons. I think this is something we will see more and more of with
each new president it is looked at more positivly now than it was in the
past where it was believed that women were best behind seens than right
up front.
Bibliography-
All information on first ladies was gotten from http://www.firstladies.org/biographies/
Friday, November 30, 2012
Laura Bush and Michelle Obama
MICHELLE LAVAUGHN ROBINSON OBAMA
Birth:
Chicago, Illinois
17 January, 1964
*Michelle Obama is the third First Lady born in Chicago, Illinois, after Betty Ford (1918) and Hillary Clinton (1947).
Presidential Campaign and Inauguration:
Through the latter months of 2007 leading up to the state primaries and caucuses of the 2008 presidential campaign, Michelle Obama continued to work, reducing her hours at the University of Chicago Medical Center while increasing the days she spent speaking to groups throughout the country. She initially limited her absences from home to day trips and then eventually to trips involving one-overnight away from home per week, in order to maintain her responsibilities as mother to her two young daughters. In October 2007, she participated in the first forum ever held which gathered nearly all the spouses of both Democratic and Republican candidates running for the presidency, at the Women’s Conference in Long Beach, California, hosted by California’s First Lady Maria Shriver.
As the primaries ensued during the winter and spring of 2008, Michelle Obama took an increasingly active role, speaking to voters in different states about her husband but also drawing experiences from her own life that spoke directly to the goals of her husband’s potential presidency, finding a personal link to her audiences. Spontaneous remarks she made at Wisconsin campaign event in February 2008, about being proud of her country “for the first time” were interpreted negatively by some Republican media commentators and Cindy McCain, wife of the Republican candidate. Five months later, however, incumbent First Lady Laura Bush defended Mrs. Obama, stating, “I think she probably meant I'm 'more proud,' you know, is what she really meant. I mean, I know that, and that's one of the things you learn and that's one of the really difficult parts both of running for president and for being the spouse of the president, and that is, everything you say is looked at and in many cases misconstrued.” The incident had no significant affect on the election.
Michelle Obama also delivered a stirring speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, which won overwhelming praise from the media and public, as reflected in polls. Although she offered her opinion at times on the campaign strategy, she emphasized that she was not a policy advisor. When Barack Obama was elected president in November of 2008, he thanked his wife for her sacrifices to his career and his reliance on her support. Through the campaign, he frequently referred to her as “the rock” which grounded him and their family.
Tremendous media attention and public interest increased on Michelle Obama’s clothing as the weeks from Election Day approached Inauguration Day, with sometimes hyperbolic predictions of how she would seek to set a new national style.
More importantly would be the symbolism of her statements about making clothing purchases from popular stores of items at reasonable prices; this conveyed the new First Lady’s sense of conscientiousness about, and empathy for the increasing number of American citizens who found their home ownership threatened with bank foreclosures, loss of job or job security, decreased or lost health care and retirement benefits, and plummeting retirement savings.
During the swearing-in ceremony of her husband, Michelle Obama held the historic and fragile Bible which had been used by President Abraham Lincoln for his presidential oath. Most significant of all the events, in terms of Michelle Obama’s intentions, was her foregoing a traditional women’s event at which an incoming First Lady was traditionally honored the day before the Inauguration; instead, she and the president-elect hosted “a day of service,” encouraging the millions of visitors to Washington for the Inaugural, as well as around the nation, to commit to volunteer service in their community. Forecasting her own agenda as First Lady to create a national voluntary service program, she emphasized in her videotaped message about the day that it was her hope such commitments would continue past January 19th and be ongoing.
First Lady:
2009, January 20 - current incumbency
45 years old
In her first weeks as First Lady, Michelle Obama has affirmed that her personal priority is the care of her two daughters. Although both are enrolled in school locally and live full-time at the White House with their parents, they are in a new city with new friends, and suddenly living a life where the most routine aspects of childhood are scrutinized by the press and public. The first manifestation of this public interest was a toy company which created dolls named after her daughters. After the First Lady expressed her dismay, the company decided to discontinue the line.
In terms of the areas of public issues she intends to focus her attention, Michelle Obama has identified three: helping working mothers find balance between family and employment commitments, providing necessary support for American military families, and encouraging voluntarism in community service.
In her first weeks, the First Lady also made good on her promise to fully learn and integrate herself into her new community of Washington, D.C. She began with a working lunch with the city’s mayor and his wife, visits to schools and drop-bys and speeches at the Department of Education and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Coming to the Cabinet Department headquarters were the first of her intended visits to all of the other executive branch divisions. She is making these trips to introduce herself as a personal representative of the new Administration and provide a sense of connection to the thousands of civil service federal employees, emphasizing that they work in concert for the common goals. This is an unprecedented effort by a First Lady. Not since the 1940’s when Eleanor Roosevelt hosted several large receptions for women federal workers has a First Lady reached out in such a manner. In her remarks at HHS, Mrs. Obama emphasized that she was there to listen and interact; this recalls the “eyes and ears” role played by Eleanor Roosevelt, Lady Bird Johnson, Pat Nixon, and Rosalynn Carter as they made frequent trips throughout the country meeting and speaking with citizens, hearing their concerns and problems directly and reporting their reactions from such fact-finding missions back to the President.
Birth:Chicago, Illinois
17 January, 1964
*Michelle Obama is the third First Lady born in Chicago, Illinois, after Betty Ford (1918) and Hillary Clinton (1947).
Marriage:
28 years old, married 3 October, 1992 to Barack Obama, 31 years old, (born 4 August, 1961, Honolulu, Hawaii, lawyer and community organizer) at Trinity United Church of Christ, Chicago, Illinois.
Michelle Robinson first met Barack Obama when he came to work as a summer associate in June of 1989 at Sidley & Austin, where she was already working as an attorney. When he returned to Cambridge, Massachusetts to complete Harvard Law School (graduated 1990), they continue to correspond and date. They became engaged in 1991. Their first home was an apartment in the Hyde Park section of Chicago. Barack Obama taught at the University of Chicago law school and worked at a small civil rights law firm.
28 years old, married 3 October, 1992 to Barack Obama, 31 years old, (born 4 August, 1961, Honolulu, Hawaii, lawyer and community organizer) at Trinity United Church of Christ, Chicago, Illinois.
Michelle Robinson first met Barack Obama when he came to work as a summer associate in June of 1989 at Sidley & Austin, where she was already working as an attorney. When he returned to Cambridge, Massachusetts to complete Harvard Law School (graduated 1990), they continue to correspond and date. They became engaged in 1991. Their first home was an apartment in the Hyde Park section of Chicago. Barack Obama taught at the University of Chicago law school and worked at a small civil rights law firm.
Presidential Campaign and Inauguration:
Through the latter months of 2007 leading up to the state primaries and caucuses of the 2008 presidential campaign, Michelle Obama continued to work, reducing her hours at the University of Chicago Medical Center while increasing the days she spent speaking to groups throughout the country. She initially limited her absences from home to day trips and then eventually to trips involving one-overnight away from home per week, in order to maintain her responsibilities as mother to her two young daughters. In October 2007, she participated in the first forum ever held which gathered nearly all the spouses of both Democratic and Republican candidates running for the presidency, at the Women’s Conference in Long Beach, California, hosted by California’s First Lady Maria Shriver.
As the primaries ensued during the winter and spring of 2008, Michelle Obama took an increasingly active role, speaking to voters in different states about her husband but also drawing experiences from her own life that spoke directly to the goals of her husband’s potential presidency, finding a personal link to her audiences. Spontaneous remarks she made at Wisconsin campaign event in February 2008, about being proud of her country “for the first time” were interpreted negatively by some Republican media commentators and Cindy McCain, wife of the Republican candidate. Five months later, however, incumbent First Lady Laura Bush defended Mrs. Obama, stating, “I think she probably meant I'm 'more proud,' you know, is what she really meant. I mean, I know that, and that's one of the things you learn and that's one of the really difficult parts both of running for president and for being the spouse of the president, and that is, everything you say is looked at and in many cases misconstrued.” The incident had no significant affect on the election.
Michelle Obama also delivered a stirring speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, which won overwhelming praise from the media and public, as reflected in polls. Although she offered her opinion at times on the campaign strategy, she emphasized that she was not a policy advisor. When Barack Obama was elected president in November of 2008, he thanked his wife for her sacrifices to his career and his reliance on her support. Through the campaign, he frequently referred to her as “the rock” which grounded him and their family.
Tremendous media attention and public interest increased on Michelle Obama’s clothing as the weeks from Election Day approached Inauguration Day, with sometimes hyperbolic predictions of how she would seek to set a new national style.
More importantly would be the symbolism of her statements about making clothing purchases from popular stores of items at reasonable prices; this conveyed the new First Lady’s sense of conscientiousness about, and empathy for the increasing number of American citizens who found their home ownership threatened with bank foreclosures, loss of job or job security, decreased or lost health care and retirement benefits, and plummeting retirement savings.
During the swearing-in ceremony of her husband, Michelle Obama held the historic and fragile Bible which had been used by President Abraham Lincoln for his presidential oath. Most significant of all the events, in terms of Michelle Obama’s intentions, was her foregoing a traditional women’s event at which an incoming First Lady was traditionally honored the day before the Inauguration; instead, she and the president-elect hosted “a day of service,” encouraging the millions of visitors to Washington for the Inaugural, as well as around the nation, to commit to volunteer service in their community. Forecasting her own agenda as First Lady to create a national voluntary service program, she emphasized in her videotaped message about the day that it was her hope such commitments would continue past January 19th and be ongoing.
First Lady:
2009, January 20 - current incumbency
45 years old
In her first weeks as First Lady, Michelle Obama has affirmed that her personal priority is the care of her two daughters. Although both are enrolled in school locally and live full-time at the White House with their parents, they are in a new city with new friends, and suddenly living a life where the most routine aspects of childhood are scrutinized by the press and public. The first manifestation of this public interest was a toy company which created dolls named after her daughters. After the First Lady expressed her dismay, the company decided to discontinue the line.
In terms of the areas of public issues she intends to focus her attention, Michelle Obama has identified three: helping working mothers find balance between family and employment commitments, providing necessary support for American military families, and encouraging voluntarism in community service.
In her first weeks, the First Lady also made good on her promise to fully learn and integrate herself into her new community of Washington, D.C. She began with a working lunch with the city’s mayor and his wife, visits to schools and drop-bys and speeches at the Department of Education and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Coming to the Cabinet Department headquarters were the first of her intended visits to all of the other executive branch divisions. She is making these trips to introduce herself as a personal representative of the new Administration and provide a sense of connection to the thousands of civil service federal employees, emphasizing that they work in concert for the common goals. This is an unprecedented effort by a First Lady. Not since the 1940’s when Eleanor Roosevelt hosted several large receptions for women federal workers has a First Lady reached out in such a manner. In her remarks at HHS, Mrs. Obama emphasized that she was there to listen and interact; this recalls the “eyes and ears” role played by Eleanor Roosevelt, Lady Bird Johnson, Pat Nixon, and Rosalynn Carter as they made frequent trips throughout the country meeting and speaking with citizens, hearing their concerns and problems directly and reporting their reactions from such fact-finding missions back to the President.
LAURA LANE WELCH BUSH
Birth:Midland, Texas
1946, November 4
Marriage:
married 1977, November 5 to George W. Bush, born 1946, July 6, New Haven, Connecticut, oil businessman, at Glass Memorial Chapel, First United Memorial Church, Midland, Texas
Presidential Campaign and Inauguration:
Through the 2000 campaign, Laura Bush avoided any controversy with remarks that were inconsistent with those of her husband, but she broke precedent by becoming the first presidential candidate's wife (who was not already First Lady) to address the convention that was nominating her husband. During the 2004 campaign, Laura Bush dramatically increased her role, delivering a policy-oriented speech at the Republican National Convention, making hundreds of stump speeches in which she addressed substantive policy accomplishments and goals of the Administration in economics, homeland security and the Iraqi War. At the 2001 inaugural she presided over a newly created event honoring American authors.
First Lady:
2001, January 20 - 2009, January 20
54 years old
With the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, less than nine months after assuming the First Lady role, Laura Bush found her visibility much higher and with more demands made upon it than she had initially assumed it would be. Scheduled that day to become the first incumbent Republican First Lady to deliver Congressional testimony to a Senate Education Committee, in the weeks and months that followed, she frequently spoke in public forums on techniques that adults could use to comfort children who were traumatized by the changes wrought by the attacks. As the U.S. undertook an invasion of Afghanistan to free it of the extremist Taliban that had overtaken it, Laura Bush met with Afghani women to hear their stories of the harsh repression the women of their country suffered. She discussed their plight as the topic of her radio address on November 17, 2001. It was the first time a First Lady spoke in lieu of the President during one of the weekly radio addresses usually made by the Chief Executive.
Education has been the primary focus of Laura Bush's tenure as First Lady and the issue that has bound all the various efforts she has spearheaded. When she eventually was able to deliver testimony before the Senate Education Committee on January 23, 2002, Laura Bush called for higher teacher salaries and better training for Head Start and day care workers. In the nine month of her tenure introduced a National Book Festival in Washington, D.C. based on the model of the one she had created in Texas. Within two years, this festival had inspired the Russian First Lady Ludmilla Putin to host an October 1, 2003 book festival in her nation that Laura Bush attended in Moscow, along with several American authors.
Along these lines, Laura Bush has supported numerous government and private sector efforts to promote reading and education. She has been a strong advocate and defender against critics of the Administration's No Child Left Behind Act signed by the President in January 2002, providing federal funds to the local level to recruit new teachers, improve teacher training, or raise teacher pay. She also served as a spokesperson and promoter of three programs that sought to build the ranks of the teaching profession: the New Teacher Project, which draws from different professional backgrounds; the Troops to Teachers, which seeks those in or leaving the military; and Transition to Teaching that cultivates mid-career professionals and recent college graduates. In March of 2002, she held a White House Conference on Preparing Tomorrow’s Teachers, bringing together university and business leaders, education advocates, teachers’ unions, public policy organizations, and foundations to consider teacher preparation at colleges of education and professional development for experienced teachers. Laura Bush had earlier hosted a July 2001 White House Summit on Early Childhood Cognitive Development, along with Education Secretary Rod Paige and Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson. She created a national initiative, "Ready to Read, Ready to Learn," to inform parents and policy makers about early childhood education and the importance of reading aloud to and with children from their earliest days and helped to develop a series of magazines called "Healthy Start, Grow Smart," to inform parents about infant cognitive development and health.
Barbara Bush and Hillary Clinton
HILLARY DIANE RODHAM CLINTON
Birth:
Place: Chicago, Illinois
Date: 1947, October 26
Place: Chicago, Illinois
Date: 1947, October 26
Marriage:27 years old, married 1975, October 11,
Fayetteville, Arkansas to William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton, born 1946,
August 19, Hope, Arkansas, professor of law, at their home; before he
proposed marriage to Hillary Rodham, Bill Clinton secretly purchased a
small house in Fayetteville that she had noticed and remarked that she
had liked. When he proposed marriage to her and she accepted, he
revealed that they owned the house. They married and lived here,
briefly, before relocating to the state capital of Little Rock,
Arkansas, from which he conducted his first campaign, for U.S. Congress.
First Lady:1993, January 20 - 2001, January 20
45 years old
Within the first five days of becoming First Lady, Hillary Clinton was named by her husband to head the President's Task Force on Health Care Reform, overseeing research, investigatory trips, financial reports, numerous committees composed of medical and insurance professionals, lawmakers and other government officials, public service leaders, and consumer rights advocates. In this capacity, she became the third First Lady to testify before Congress, appearing to the House committee on health insurance reform in September 1993. When the plan devised was attacked as too complicated or an intention leading to "socialized medicine" the Administration decided not to push for a vote and it never came to a vote in the Senate or House, abandoned in September, 1994. Hillary Clinton's interest in the subject, however, had helped raise national consciousness about the problem of citizens who lived without any medical insurance and she began to address an assortment of other medical problems facing many citizens. Perhaps the most successful component of her accomplishments as First Lady was initiating the Children's Health Insurance Program in 1997, a federal effort that provided state support for those children whose parents were unable to provide them with health coverage. She also successfully sought to increase the research funding for illnesses such as prostate cancer and childhood asthma at the National Institute of Health. The First Lady also gave voice to the illnesses that were affecting veterans of the Gulf War, with the possibility of their suffering the toxic side effects of chemical "Agent Orange" used in warfare.
Although she assumed a less open political role after the failure of the health care reform plan, the efforts on behalf of which she focused were fully public. She cited the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 as the achievement she initiated and shepherded that provide her with the greatest satisfaction. Beginning with an article she wrote on orphaned children in 1995, through a series of public events on the issue, policy meetings with Health and Human Service officials, private foundation leaders, the drafting of policy recommendations, and eventually lobbying with legislators led to its passage. The First Lady led a second effort, the Foster Care Independence bill, to help older, unadopted children transition to adulthood. She also hosted numerous White House conferences that related to children's health, including early childhood development (1997) and school violence (1999). She lent her support to programs ranging from "Prescription for Reading," in which pediatricians provided free books for new mothers to read to their infants as their brains were rapidly developing, to nationwide immunization against childhood illnesses. She also supported an annual drive to encourage older women to seek a mammography to prevent breast cancer, coverage of the cost being provided by Medicare.
Hillary Clinton was the only First Lady to keep an office in the West Wing among those of the president's senior staff. While her familiarity with the intricate political issues and decisions faced by the President, she openly discussed his work with him, yet stated that ultimately she was but one of several individuals he consulted before making a decision. They were known to disagree. Regarding his 1993 passage of welfare reform, the First Lady had reservations about federally supported childcare and Medicaid. When issues that she was working on were under discussion at the morning senior staff meetings, the First Lady often attended. Aides kept her informed of all pending legislation and oftentimes sought her reaction to issues as a way of gauging the President's potential response. Weighing in on his Cabinet appointments and knowing many of the individuals he named, she had working relationships with many of them. She persuaded Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin to convene a meeting of corporate CEOs for their advice on how companies could be persuaded to adopt better child care measures for working families. With Attorney General Janet Reno, the First Lady helped to create the Department of Justice's Violence Against Women office. One of her closest Cabinet allies was Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Following her international trips, Hillary Clinton wrote a report of her observations for Albright. A primary effort they shared was globally advocating gender equity in economics, employment, health care and education. During her trips to Africa (1997), Asia (1995), South America (1995, 1997) and the Central European former Soviet satellite nations (1997, 1998), Hillary Clinton emphasized "a civil society," of human rights as a road to democracy and capitalism. The First Lady was also one of the few international figures at the time who spoke out against the treatment of Afghani women by Islamist fundamentalist Taliban that had seized control of Afghanistan. One of the programs she helped create was Vital Voices, a U.S.-sponsored initiative to promote the participation of international women in their nation's political process. One result of the group's meetings, in Northern Ireland, was drawing together women leaders of various political factions that supported the Good Friday peace agreement that brought peace to that nation long at civil war. Hillary Clinton was also an active supporter of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), often awarding its micro-loans to small enterprises begun by women in developing nations that aided the economic growth in their impoverished communities. Certainly one of her more important speeches as First Lady addressing the need for equal rights for women was international in scope and created controversy in the nation where it was made: the September 1995 United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China.
BARBARA PIERCE BUSH
Born:
Place: New York City, New York
Date: 8 June, 1925
Place: New York City, New York
Date: 8 June, 1925
Marriage:
19 years old to George Herbert Walker Bush (born 12 June, 1924) Navy Lieutenant Pilot (junior grade), Yale freshman student, on 6 January, 1945 at First Presbyterian Church, Rye, New York; after a honeymoon in New York City where they saw Meet Me in St. Louis at Radio city Music Hall and then Sea Island, Georgia. For the first eight months of their marriage, Barbara Bush moved from Michigan to Maine to Virginia as her husband's new squadron training and formation required his presence at different naval bases in those states.
19 years old to George Herbert Walker Bush (born 12 June, 1924) Navy Lieutenant Pilot (junior grade), Yale freshman student, on 6 January, 1945 at First Presbyterian Church, Rye, New York; after a honeymoon in New York City where they saw Meet Me in St. Louis at Radio city Music Hall and then Sea Island, Georgia. For the first eight months of their marriage, Barbara Bush moved from Michigan to Maine to Virginia as her husband's new squadron training and formation required his presence at different naval bases in those states.
Presidential Campaign and Inauguration:
Barbara Bush had the knowledge and experience of two presidential campaigns as a vice presidential candidate's wife by the time her husband was nominated for the presidency at the 1988 Republican Convention. She broke precedent by becoming the first candidate's spouse to address the convention that nominated her husband, focusing on the candidate as a family man. The Bush campaign made generous use of the large Bush clan, including television commercials that showed George and Barbara Bush with some of their twelve grandchildren. The message underscored an unspoken difference with the Reagans, whose family members were sometimes in discord with them. Also contrasting with Nancy Reagan was the image of Barbara Bush that only emphasized her domestic interests in gardening, family life and church. She herself became adept at drawing attention to unthreatening full head of white hair, matronly figure and disinterest in wearing designer clothing. She also avoided discussion of political issues and controversy throughout the campaign, claiming she did not know enough to discuss anything except to repeat and defend her husband's views. She would express her views on some issues, such as support of the death penalty for hardened criminals, if they concurred with those of the candidate. There has been ample evidence from those who interacted with her during the campaign, however, to suggest that she was actively involved in the practical political moves, responses and directives of the campaign strategy. Publicly, she would either joke about or vigorously deny the printed but unproven rumors that her husband had once had a relationship with a woman member of his staff.
Following his 1989 swearing-in ceremony, George and Barbara Bush revived the Inauguration Day tradition begun by Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter of walking part of the parade route back to the White House. She and President Bush revived a second, more ancient Inaugural tradition - the first open house Inaugural reception since Taft. On the morning following the swearing-in ceremony, once the Bushes were installed in their new home, a stream of citizens that had waited through the night, were greeted by the new President and First Lady and toured through the mansion. There is also some suggestion that Barbara Bush may have influenced a portion of her husband's Inaugural Address, specifically addressing social issues that she would admit were "important to me" but would only say her influence was one of "osmosis."
At the 1992 Republican Convention which renominated her husband for a second term, Barbara Bush was a popular speaker who seemed to be one of the few prominent figures there who were able to bring the gap between the two wings of the party, moderates and conservatives, remarking that "however you define family, that's what we mean by family values." Just prior to the convention, she had also stated empathically that she did not believe the issue of abortion should be addressed in its platform and that it was "a private matter," suggesting she was "pro-choice" and against the overturning of Roe vs. Wade, a fact she confirmed afterwards in her post-White House memoirs. She also criticized the Republican National Committee chairman Rich Bond for permitting campaign attacks on the views of the spouse of the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. On the campaign trail, she was a vigorous and personal defender of George Bush's personal qualities, presidential record and professional qualifications. Despite her own enormous appeal to many citizens, it was not enough to affect a re-election for her husband.
First Lady:
63 years old
20 January 1989 - 20 January, 1993
The hallmark of Barbara Bush's tenure as First Lady was her focused campaign to bring national attention to, and help eradicate illiteracy in America. Having been involved in the issue for eight previous years as the Vice President's wife, she was not only able to immediately begin her efforts following the Inauguration, but had already a national network of support in place, consisting of experts, publishers, financial supporters, volunteers, school administrators, and national, state and local civic leaders. Early in the administration, Barbara founded the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy, a private organization that solicited grants from public and private institutions to support literacy programs. "I'm talking about the big, bouncy kind [of family], the single parent, extended families, divorced, homeless and migrant," she clarified. At the time of her tenure, statistics showed that 35 million adults could not read above the eight-grade level and that 23 million were not beyond a fourth-grade level. She appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show addressing the issue, and made regular broadcasts on Mrs. Bush's Story Time, a national radio program that stressed the importance of reading aloud to children. One aspect of adopting literacy as an issue that provided Barbara Bush with an opportunity to address a wide variety of topical issues was, as she pointed out, that a person's inability to read or fully comprehend what they might be able to partially read could have a devastating impact on all elements of their lives: education, employment, housing, safety, health, parenthood, crime, travel. She did go on record as stating that she did not believe there should be a law that established English as the official language of the United States because she felt it had "racial overtones." Thus she was able to address many social problems that were unique to the era of her husband's presidency of the early 1990's like homelessness, AIDS, and teenage pregnancy.
During her first week in the White House, Barbara Bush brought national attention to the needs of indigent and homeless families by making a visit to "Martha's Table" an inner-city center providing meals for poor families and daytime and after-school activities for homeless children, and also running a mobile soup-and-sandwich kitchen through the streets of Washington. She donated her family's used clothing to thrift stores which raised money for charitable organizations and also offered low-cost resale to the needy. Often visiting homeless family shelters, Barbara Bush also publicly raised an issue that was rarely considered in coping with the problem - abandoned, single, unmarried mothers, many of them teenagers, who were receiving no help from the fathers of the children. Although she assumed the traditional view of the Republican Party that social programs were best funded and administered by private charities and organizations rather than by the government, she was not averse to claiming government responsibility in some cases, once remarking at a center for homeless children, "forget about government cutbacks."
Barbara Bush made the front page of many global newspapers when, during a visit to "Grandma's House," a pediatric AIDS care center, she held a baby infected with the virus and posed for photographers to record what was then an act that was often misunderstood as making one susceptible to contracting it. She then went to hug an adult with AIDS as well. She took the President to the National Institute of Health to meet with male patients who had AIDS, and attended the funeral of the heroic teenager Ryan White who succumbed to AIDS after leading a long public education campaign on the issue. When there was an AIDS memorial vigil where gatherers held candles, she placed candles in all the White House windows and asked several family members of those who had died of the illness to bring to her in the White House parts of a national AIDS quilt that was then on display on the national mall. Although she told the press that because of the federal deficit, increased funding was an issue the President would have to decide, Time magazine credited Barbara Bush's concern for those with AIDS for influencing the President to propose increased research and treatment funding. She was further credited as being the inside advocate for the President's signing of the Hate Crimes Statistics Act and invited the first openly gay and lesbian citizens to the presidential signing ceremony. She wrote to the president of the Federation of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, "I firmly believe we cannot tolerate discrimination against any individuals or groups… [it] always brings with it pain and perpetuates hate and intolerance."
The first First Lady to hire an African-American as her press secretary, Barbara Bush made numerous gestures to illustrate the long personal commitment that she and her husband held regarding civil rights of African Americans. Throughout her four years in the White House, she headlined numerous Martin Luther King Day programs in local grammar schools. She also gave particular attention to traditionally black colleges, having once served on the board of Morehouse College, a medical school largely attended by African-Americans. Washington Post reporter David Broder credited Barbara Bush with being behind the appointment of Louis Sullivan as the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the only African-American member of the Bush Cabinet. Among those she listed as heroines were the liberal Democratic Texas Congresswoman Barbara Jordan and Dorothy Height, the civil rights leaders and friend of Eleanor Roosevelt, and named Frederick Douglass as the historic figure who most inspired her. Among the thousands of graduation ceremonies she was invited to address in the spring of 1989, Barbara Bush chose a relatively obscure black woman's college, Bennett College. She encouraged a group of black Muslims to patrol an inner-city neighborhood plagued by drug crime. In an extensive interview with a leading African-American publication, Ebony, Barbara Bush bluntly addressed the realities of racial bigotry as she witnessed it from her unique perspective. She also emphasized that her influence as a "white-haired white lady" was limited within minority communities and that the primary role she could play was to speak out on prejudice.
Barbara Bush had the knowledge and experience of two presidential campaigns as a vice presidential candidate's wife by the time her husband was nominated for the presidency at the 1988 Republican Convention. She broke precedent by becoming the first candidate's spouse to address the convention that nominated her husband, focusing on the candidate as a family man. The Bush campaign made generous use of the large Bush clan, including television commercials that showed George and Barbara Bush with some of their twelve grandchildren. The message underscored an unspoken difference with the Reagans, whose family members were sometimes in discord with them. Also contrasting with Nancy Reagan was the image of Barbara Bush that only emphasized her domestic interests in gardening, family life and church. She herself became adept at drawing attention to unthreatening full head of white hair, matronly figure and disinterest in wearing designer clothing. She also avoided discussion of political issues and controversy throughout the campaign, claiming she did not know enough to discuss anything except to repeat and defend her husband's views. She would express her views on some issues, such as support of the death penalty for hardened criminals, if they concurred with those of the candidate. There has been ample evidence from those who interacted with her during the campaign, however, to suggest that she was actively involved in the practical political moves, responses and directives of the campaign strategy. Publicly, she would either joke about or vigorously deny the printed but unproven rumors that her husband had once had a relationship with a woman member of his staff.
Following his 1989 swearing-in ceremony, George and Barbara Bush revived the Inauguration Day tradition begun by Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter of walking part of the parade route back to the White House. She and President Bush revived a second, more ancient Inaugural tradition - the first open house Inaugural reception since Taft. On the morning following the swearing-in ceremony, once the Bushes were installed in their new home, a stream of citizens that had waited through the night, were greeted by the new President and First Lady and toured through the mansion. There is also some suggestion that Barbara Bush may have influenced a portion of her husband's Inaugural Address, specifically addressing social issues that she would admit were "important to me" but would only say her influence was one of "osmosis."
At the 1992 Republican Convention which renominated her husband for a second term, Barbara Bush was a popular speaker who seemed to be one of the few prominent figures there who were able to bring the gap between the two wings of the party, moderates and conservatives, remarking that "however you define family, that's what we mean by family values." Just prior to the convention, she had also stated empathically that she did not believe the issue of abortion should be addressed in its platform and that it was "a private matter," suggesting she was "pro-choice" and against the overturning of Roe vs. Wade, a fact she confirmed afterwards in her post-White House memoirs. She also criticized the Republican National Committee chairman Rich Bond for permitting campaign attacks on the views of the spouse of the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. On the campaign trail, she was a vigorous and personal defender of George Bush's personal qualities, presidential record and professional qualifications. Despite her own enormous appeal to many citizens, it was not enough to affect a re-election for her husband.
First Lady:
63 years old
20 January 1989 - 20 January, 1993
The hallmark of Barbara Bush's tenure as First Lady was her focused campaign to bring national attention to, and help eradicate illiteracy in America. Having been involved in the issue for eight previous years as the Vice President's wife, she was not only able to immediately begin her efforts following the Inauguration, but had already a national network of support in place, consisting of experts, publishers, financial supporters, volunteers, school administrators, and national, state and local civic leaders. Early in the administration, Barbara founded the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy, a private organization that solicited grants from public and private institutions to support literacy programs. "I'm talking about the big, bouncy kind [of family], the single parent, extended families, divorced, homeless and migrant," she clarified. At the time of her tenure, statistics showed that 35 million adults could not read above the eight-grade level and that 23 million were not beyond a fourth-grade level. She appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show addressing the issue, and made regular broadcasts on Mrs. Bush's Story Time, a national radio program that stressed the importance of reading aloud to children. One aspect of adopting literacy as an issue that provided Barbara Bush with an opportunity to address a wide variety of topical issues was, as she pointed out, that a person's inability to read or fully comprehend what they might be able to partially read could have a devastating impact on all elements of their lives: education, employment, housing, safety, health, parenthood, crime, travel. She did go on record as stating that she did not believe there should be a law that established English as the official language of the United States because she felt it had "racial overtones." Thus she was able to address many social problems that were unique to the era of her husband's presidency of the early 1990's like homelessness, AIDS, and teenage pregnancy.
During her first week in the White House, Barbara Bush brought national attention to the needs of indigent and homeless families by making a visit to "Martha's Table" an inner-city center providing meals for poor families and daytime and after-school activities for homeless children, and also running a mobile soup-and-sandwich kitchen through the streets of Washington. She donated her family's used clothing to thrift stores which raised money for charitable organizations and also offered low-cost resale to the needy. Often visiting homeless family shelters, Barbara Bush also publicly raised an issue that was rarely considered in coping with the problem - abandoned, single, unmarried mothers, many of them teenagers, who were receiving no help from the fathers of the children. Although she assumed the traditional view of the Republican Party that social programs were best funded and administered by private charities and organizations rather than by the government, she was not averse to claiming government responsibility in some cases, once remarking at a center for homeless children, "forget about government cutbacks."
Barbara Bush made the front page of many global newspapers when, during a visit to "Grandma's House," a pediatric AIDS care center, she held a baby infected with the virus and posed for photographers to record what was then an act that was often misunderstood as making one susceptible to contracting it. She then went to hug an adult with AIDS as well. She took the President to the National Institute of Health to meet with male patients who had AIDS, and attended the funeral of the heroic teenager Ryan White who succumbed to AIDS after leading a long public education campaign on the issue. When there was an AIDS memorial vigil where gatherers held candles, she placed candles in all the White House windows and asked several family members of those who had died of the illness to bring to her in the White House parts of a national AIDS quilt that was then on display on the national mall. Although she told the press that because of the federal deficit, increased funding was an issue the President would have to decide, Time magazine credited Barbara Bush's concern for those with AIDS for influencing the President to propose increased research and treatment funding. She was further credited as being the inside advocate for the President's signing of the Hate Crimes Statistics Act and invited the first openly gay and lesbian citizens to the presidential signing ceremony. She wrote to the president of the Federation of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, "I firmly believe we cannot tolerate discrimination against any individuals or groups… [it] always brings with it pain and perpetuates hate and intolerance."
The first First Lady to hire an African-American as her press secretary, Barbara Bush made numerous gestures to illustrate the long personal commitment that she and her husband held regarding civil rights of African Americans. Throughout her four years in the White House, she headlined numerous Martin Luther King Day programs in local grammar schools. She also gave particular attention to traditionally black colleges, having once served on the board of Morehouse College, a medical school largely attended by African-Americans. Washington Post reporter David Broder credited Barbara Bush with being behind the appointment of Louis Sullivan as the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the only African-American member of the Bush Cabinet. Among those she listed as heroines were the liberal Democratic Texas Congresswoman Barbara Jordan and Dorothy Height, the civil rights leaders and friend of Eleanor Roosevelt, and named Frederick Douglass as the historic figure who most inspired her. Among the thousands of graduation ceremonies she was invited to address in the spring of 1989, Barbara Bush chose a relatively obscure black woman's college, Bennett College. She encouraged a group of black Muslims to patrol an inner-city neighborhood plagued by drug crime. In an extensive interview with a leading African-American publication, Ebony, Barbara Bush bluntly addressed the realities of racial bigotry as she witnessed it from her unique perspective. She also emphasized that her influence as a "white-haired white lady" was limited within minority communities and that the primary role she could play was to speak out on prejudice.
Rosalynn Carter and Nancy Reagan
ELEANOR ROSALYNN SMITH CARTER
Born:
Plains, Georgia
1927, August 18
Plains, Georgia
1927, August 18
Marriage:
18 years old; on July 7, 1946 at the Plains Methodist Church, Plains, Georgia, to James Earl "Jimmy" Carter (born October 1, 1924, Plains, Georgia), recent Annapolis Naval Academy graduate; Rosalynn Smith and Jimmy Carter met through her friend, his sister, Ruth Carter; Rosalynn Smith refused Carter's initial marriage proposal of December 1945, considering it too soon in their dating, but accepted his second proposal two months later; as a navy engineer and commissioned officer, Carter's career dictated the life and location of his new wife and their subsequent children, who followed him from base to base; for the first seven years of the marriage, they lived in Norfolk, Virginia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, New London, Connecticut, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, San Diego, California, and Provincetown, Massachusetts.
Presidential Campaign and Inauguration:Few presidential candidates' spouses had the level of familiarity with the domestic and international issues and problems that shaped a national campaign as did Rosalynn Carter in 1976, when her husband won the Democratic nomination. For about two years prior to his candidacy, along with other members of their family, Rosalynn Carter traveled throughout the United States to help raise the public profile of her husband. Sometimes traveling alone or with just one companion, she actively sought media coverage for her husband's candidacy, sometimes appearing unannounced at local radio or television stations to speak about his views on the issues. She also became the first candidate's wife to declare a campaign promise of her own: if she became First Lady, she would assume the responsibility for guiding legislative reform on behalf of the nation's mentally ill.
At the 1977 Inauguration, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter revived an Inaugural precedent performed only by Thomas Jefferson in 1801; after the swearing-in ceremony at the U.S. Capitol Building, they walked down Pennsylvania Avenue back to the White House. Wishing to make the Inaugural Ball a more populist celebration, they also reduced the cost of tickets. She later disclosed that she had influenced Carter to include a paragraph on American families in his Inaugural Address.
Perhaps no First Lady had a more overtly political role during a presidential campaign than did Rosalynn Carter as the incumbent during her husband's 1980 re-election. With the President confined to the White House during the Iranian Hostage Crisis, the First Lady registered his candidacy in the New Hampshire primary and made policy stump speeches as his representative throughout the winter and spring 1980 primary season. She organized her effort as the convention approached by keeping information cards on undeclared delegates whom she sought to persuade to support Carter over his challenger, Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy. In the general election, the First Lady spoke at large rallies against the Republican candidate Ronald Reagan, who defeated Carter on election day.
First Lady:January 20, 1977 - January 20, 1981
49 years old
Rosalynn Carter was a political activist First Lady who publicly disclosed the fact that the President consulted her and sought her advice on his domestic and foreign affairs decisions, speeches and appointments. Traveling the nation at length, Rosalynn Carter also served as a liaison of current information between the President and the American public she encountered, providing him with reaction to Administration policy from the citizenry and providing them with explanations of that policy. A consequence of this was her unprecedented attendance at Cabinet meetings where she heard policy discussion first-hand and took notes on issues that she would subsequently carry to the public. She and the President maintained a Wednesday business lunch in the Oval Office to discuss Administration policy on issues that she had taken on as a spokesperson or on legislative matters of concern to her. She was also not averse to disagreeing with the President's final decisions; most often her bone of contention was that Carter did not make decisions or announcements with a sense of timing that always served the Administration's political purposes including issues such as New York City budget cuts, the Panama Canal treaties, and Middle East negotiations.
18 years old; on July 7, 1946 at the Plains Methodist Church, Plains, Georgia, to James Earl "Jimmy" Carter (born October 1, 1924, Plains, Georgia), recent Annapolis Naval Academy graduate; Rosalynn Smith and Jimmy Carter met through her friend, his sister, Ruth Carter; Rosalynn Smith refused Carter's initial marriage proposal of December 1945, considering it too soon in their dating, but accepted his second proposal two months later; as a navy engineer and commissioned officer, Carter's career dictated the life and location of his new wife and their subsequent children, who followed him from base to base; for the first seven years of the marriage, they lived in Norfolk, Virginia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, New London, Connecticut, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, San Diego, California, and Provincetown, Massachusetts.
Presidential Campaign and Inauguration:Few presidential candidates' spouses had the level of familiarity with the domestic and international issues and problems that shaped a national campaign as did Rosalynn Carter in 1976, when her husband won the Democratic nomination. For about two years prior to his candidacy, along with other members of their family, Rosalynn Carter traveled throughout the United States to help raise the public profile of her husband. Sometimes traveling alone or with just one companion, she actively sought media coverage for her husband's candidacy, sometimes appearing unannounced at local radio or television stations to speak about his views on the issues. She also became the first candidate's wife to declare a campaign promise of her own: if she became First Lady, she would assume the responsibility for guiding legislative reform on behalf of the nation's mentally ill.
At the 1977 Inauguration, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter revived an Inaugural precedent performed only by Thomas Jefferson in 1801; after the swearing-in ceremony at the U.S. Capitol Building, they walked down Pennsylvania Avenue back to the White House. Wishing to make the Inaugural Ball a more populist celebration, they also reduced the cost of tickets. She later disclosed that she had influenced Carter to include a paragraph on American families in his Inaugural Address.
Perhaps no First Lady had a more overtly political role during a presidential campaign than did Rosalynn Carter as the incumbent during her husband's 1980 re-election. With the President confined to the White House during the Iranian Hostage Crisis, the First Lady registered his candidacy in the New Hampshire primary and made policy stump speeches as his representative throughout the winter and spring 1980 primary season. She organized her effort as the convention approached by keeping information cards on undeclared delegates whom she sought to persuade to support Carter over his challenger, Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy. In the general election, the First Lady spoke at large rallies against the Republican candidate Ronald Reagan, who defeated Carter on election day.
First Lady:January 20, 1977 - January 20, 1981
49 years old
Rosalynn Carter was a political activist First Lady who publicly disclosed the fact that the President consulted her and sought her advice on his domestic and foreign affairs decisions, speeches and appointments. Traveling the nation at length, Rosalynn Carter also served as a liaison of current information between the President and the American public she encountered, providing him with reaction to Administration policy from the citizenry and providing them with explanations of that policy. A consequence of this was her unprecedented attendance at Cabinet meetings where she heard policy discussion first-hand and took notes on issues that she would subsequently carry to the public. She and the President maintained a Wednesday business lunch in the Oval Office to discuss Administration policy on issues that she had taken on as a spokesperson or on legislative matters of concern to her. She was also not averse to disagreeing with the President's final decisions; most often her bone of contention was that Carter did not make decisions or announcements with a sense of timing that always served the Administration's political purposes including issues such as New York City budget cuts, the Panama Canal treaties, and Middle East negotiations.
ANNE FRANCES "NANCY" ROBBINS DAVIS REAGAN
Born: 6 July 1921
Sloane Hospital, Flushing, Queens, New York
*Nancy Reagan was the ninth of ten First Ladies born in New York, the "mother state" of presidential wives; the others were Elizabeth Monroe, Hannah Van Buren, Julia Tyler, Abigail Fillmore, Rose Elizabeth Cleveland, Frances Cleveland, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jacqueline Kennedy and Barbara Bush.
Sloane Hospital, Flushing, Queens, New York
*Nancy Reagan was the ninth of ten First Ladies born in New York, the "mother state" of presidential wives; the others were Elizabeth Monroe, Hannah Van Buren, Julia Tyler, Abigail Fillmore, Rose Elizabeth Cleveland, Frances Cleveland, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jacqueline Kennedy and Barbara Bush.
Marriage:30 years old, married 6 March 1952
to Ronald Reagan (born 6 February 1911, Tampico, Illinois, died 5 June
2004, Los Angeles, California), Screen Actors Guild president, film and
television actor, former radio sports announcer at the Little Brown
Church, North Hollywood. After a honeymoon at the Mission Inn, in
Riverside, California and Phoenix, Arizona, the Reagans lived in a
series of homes, settling in a modern home in the Pacific Palisades
section of Los Angeles, built and provided for by General Electric, the
company for whom Ronald Reagan served as a national spokesman. The GE
house was outfitted with all of the company's state-of-the-art
technology.
Husband's First Marriage:
Ronald Reagan first married on 26 January 1940, January 26 to Sarah Jane Mayfield, known professionally as "Jane Wyman" ( born 5 January 1917, died 10 September 2007)
Husband's First Marriage:
Ronald Reagan first married on 26 January 1940, January 26 to Sarah Jane Mayfield, known professionally as "Jane Wyman" ( born 5 January 1917, died 10 September 2007)
Presidential Campaign and Inauguration:Although
Nancy Reagan preferred to campaign with her husband rather than on her
own, during the 1980 primaries she began to make her own appearances and
make remarks that reflected her husband's views on issues; it reflected
a growing role of candidates' spouses and was similar to the one
Rosalynn Carter was simultaneously playing in the primaries. In the 1984
presidential campaign, Nancy Reagan was especially helpful during the
last of a several televised debates. After concluding that the President
had done poorly in a previous debate, she urged his advisors to no ask
him to memorize endless statistics. They did as she suggested and he
proved more effective in the ensuing debate.
Inauguration day 1981 was the first one held on the west front of the Capitol Building, a decision favored by the Reagans since it meant the ceremony was facing the rest of the nation, as opposed to those of the past which faced towards the Atlantic Ocean. Media attention focused on the high cost of tickets to attend the 1981 Inauguration Ball and other invitation-only events, contrasting it with the 1977 Carter Inaugural which had more public events than any in previous history and Inaugural Ball tickets selling for $25 to guests. However, tickets to the 1981 Reagan Inaugural Ball were of comparative cost to those before the 1977 Carter Inaugural Ball.
Inauguration day 1984 marked two swearing-in ceremonies, neither of which were held on the Capitol Building steps; the first was traditionally considered "private" since it fell on a Sunday was held in the Grand Foyer of the White House and the "public" one held the following day was forced inside the Capitol Building Rotunda due to extremely cold temperatures, the first ever held at that site. Although the Reagans did not follow the Carter precedent of walking down Pennsylvania Avenue in 1981 or 1985, it was a tradition that was resumed by their successors.
Inauguration day 1981 was the first one held on the west front of the Capitol Building, a decision favored by the Reagans since it meant the ceremony was facing the rest of the nation, as opposed to those of the past which faced towards the Atlantic Ocean. Media attention focused on the high cost of tickets to attend the 1981 Inauguration Ball and other invitation-only events, contrasting it with the 1977 Carter Inaugural which had more public events than any in previous history and Inaugural Ball tickets selling for $25 to guests. However, tickets to the 1981 Reagan Inaugural Ball were of comparative cost to those before the 1977 Carter Inaugural Ball.
Inauguration day 1984 marked two swearing-in ceremonies, neither of which were held on the Capitol Building steps; the first was traditionally considered "private" since it fell on a Sunday was held in the Grand Foyer of the White House and the "public" one held the following day was forced inside the Capitol Building Rotunda due to extremely cold temperatures, the first ever held at that site. Although the Reagans did not follow the Carter precedent of walking down Pennsylvania Avenue in 1981 or 1985, it was a tradition that was resumed by their successors.
First Lady:1981, January 20 - 1989, January 20
59 years old
When Nancy Reagan first became First Lady, her focus was on creating a home in the White House; rather than use government funds to redecorate as well as renovate the floors, doors and other hardware, she sought private funds to underwrite the work. In preparation for the required entertaining, she also carefully tested the meals that were to be served and also told U.S. New & World Report that she hoped to have new china ordered since there had been much breakage in the fifteen years since the Johnson set had been inaugurated. Rather than being purchased with federal appropriations, the cost of the new china set was entirely underwritten by the private Knapp Foundation. The combination of the redecorating, new china set, more formalized entertaining style than the Carters, in addition to her attendance of the royal wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana of England in 1981, and her acceptance of free clothing from designers (thus unwittingly violating the new Ethics in Government Act of 1978) led to the creation of a public relations dilemma. Contrasted in print and broadcast news with the 1981 economic recession, high unemployment and homeless families, the so-called "Queen Nancy" caricature was created and even occasionally invoked by Democrats as a means of criticizing the Administration. In addition, much as there had been some suggestion of a regional bias against the LBJ's Texan background and the Carters' rural background in the national media, primarily generated from the eastern seaboard, there was suggestion of one against the Reagans' southern California ties and entertainment industry careers.
With her intended work on the house and the patterns set for entertaining completed, Nancy Reagan began to focus in mid-1982 on the public issues and projects about which she intended to raise consciousness. Although she continued her support of the Foster Grandparents program, Nancy Reagan’s primary project was promotion of drug education and prevention programs for children and young adults. To this end, she traveled nearly 250,000 miles throughout the U.S. and several nations to visit prevention programs and rehabilitation centers to talk with young people and their parents, appeared on television talk shows, taped public service announcements, and wrote guest articles. At one California school, when Nancy Reagan had asked the children what the best and most immediate response should be when they were offered drugs, there were shouts of "just say no." The catch-phrase "just say no" soon proliferated through the popular culture of the 1980's, eventually adopted as the name of a loose organization of clubs formed in grammar, middle and high schools in which young people pledged not to experiment with the harmful drugs. In April 1985 Mrs. Reagan expanded her drug awareness campaign to an international level by inviting the wives of world leaders to attend a White House conference she hosted on youth drug abuse. In October of that year, during the U.N.'s 40th anniversary, she hosted thirty international First Ladies for a second such gathering. When President Reagan signed the October 27, 1986 "National Crusade for a Drug Free America" anti-drug abuse bill into law, she considered it a personal victory and made an unprecedented joint address to the nation with him on the problem. In October 1988, she became the first First Lady to address the U.N. General Assembly, speaking on international drug interdiction and trafficking laws.
Perhaps Nancy Reagan's largest and most important work as First Lady, however, was her role as the President's personal protector. Part of this role grew out of the March 30, 1981 assassination attempt on his life. Forever afterwards, Nancy Reagan made it her concern to know his schedule: in what public venues would he be speaking, before what groups, at what time, as well as with whom he would be privately meeting. In time, her concern to protect her husband's personal well-being led her to consult an astrologer to attempt to discern precisely what days and at what times would be optimum for safety and success, and which slots were to be avoided because potential dangers as reflected in the astrological readings. Both Reagans admitted that the President had a tendency to trust all those who worked for him, while the First Lady tended to perceive those who, in her words, might "end run him," essentially using their positions to further their personal careers or agendas rather than that of the President and the Administration. The President's long-time aide Michael Deaver also served as a trusted and important advisor to Nancy Reagan and he often approached her when he felt a problem might be developing. To this end, Nancy Reagan effectively supported decisions to replace various personnel, including the likes of National Security Council member William P. Clark, and the hiring of others such as Secretary of State George Schultz.
59 years old
When Nancy Reagan first became First Lady, her focus was on creating a home in the White House; rather than use government funds to redecorate as well as renovate the floors, doors and other hardware, she sought private funds to underwrite the work. In preparation for the required entertaining, she also carefully tested the meals that were to be served and also told U.S. New & World Report that she hoped to have new china ordered since there had been much breakage in the fifteen years since the Johnson set had been inaugurated. Rather than being purchased with federal appropriations, the cost of the new china set was entirely underwritten by the private Knapp Foundation. The combination of the redecorating, new china set, more formalized entertaining style than the Carters, in addition to her attendance of the royal wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana of England in 1981, and her acceptance of free clothing from designers (thus unwittingly violating the new Ethics in Government Act of 1978) led to the creation of a public relations dilemma. Contrasted in print and broadcast news with the 1981 economic recession, high unemployment and homeless families, the so-called "Queen Nancy" caricature was created and even occasionally invoked by Democrats as a means of criticizing the Administration. In addition, much as there had been some suggestion of a regional bias against the LBJ's Texan background and the Carters' rural background in the national media, primarily generated from the eastern seaboard, there was suggestion of one against the Reagans' southern California ties and entertainment industry careers.
With her intended work on the house and the patterns set for entertaining completed, Nancy Reagan began to focus in mid-1982 on the public issues and projects about which she intended to raise consciousness. Although she continued her support of the Foster Grandparents program, Nancy Reagan’s primary project was promotion of drug education and prevention programs for children and young adults. To this end, she traveled nearly 250,000 miles throughout the U.S. and several nations to visit prevention programs and rehabilitation centers to talk with young people and their parents, appeared on television talk shows, taped public service announcements, and wrote guest articles. At one California school, when Nancy Reagan had asked the children what the best and most immediate response should be when they were offered drugs, there were shouts of "just say no." The catch-phrase "just say no" soon proliferated through the popular culture of the 1980's, eventually adopted as the name of a loose organization of clubs formed in grammar, middle and high schools in which young people pledged not to experiment with the harmful drugs. In April 1985 Mrs. Reagan expanded her drug awareness campaign to an international level by inviting the wives of world leaders to attend a White House conference she hosted on youth drug abuse. In October of that year, during the U.N.'s 40th anniversary, she hosted thirty international First Ladies for a second such gathering. When President Reagan signed the October 27, 1986 "National Crusade for a Drug Free America" anti-drug abuse bill into law, she considered it a personal victory and made an unprecedented joint address to the nation with him on the problem. In October 1988, she became the first First Lady to address the U.N. General Assembly, speaking on international drug interdiction and trafficking laws.
Perhaps Nancy Reagan's largest and most important work as First Lady, however, was her role as the President's personal protector. Part of this role grew out of the March 30, 1981 assassination attempt on his life. Forever afterwards, Nancy Reagan made it her concern to know his schedule: in what public venues would he be speaking, before what groups, at what time, as well as with whom he would be privately meeting. In time, her concern to protect her husband's personal well-being led her to consult an astrologer to attempt to discern precisely what days and at what times would be optimum for safety and success, and which slots were to be avoided because potential dangers as reflected in the astrological readings. Both Reagans admitted that the President had a tendency to trust all those who worked for him, while the First Lady tended to perceive those who, in her words, might "end run him," essentially using their positions to further their personal careers or agendas rather than that of the President and the Administration. The President's long-time aide Michael Deaver also served as a trusted and important advisor to Nancy Reagan and he often approached her when he felt a problem might be developing. To this end, Nancy Reagan effectively supported decisions to replace various personnel, including the likes of National Security Council member William P. Clark, and the hiring of others such as Secretary of State George Schultz.
Pat Nixon and Betty Ford
THELMA CATHERINE "PAT" RYAN NIXON
Born: Ely, Nevada
16 March, 1912
*Although she was born as Thelma Catherine Ryan Nixon, she assumed the name of "Patricia," or "Pat" upon the death of her father; of Irish parentage, he had first called her "St. Patrick's babe in the morn," because she was born at night, just hours before St. Patrick's Day
16 March, 1912
*Although she was born as Thelma Catherine Ryan Nixon, she assumed the name of "Patricia," or "Pat" upon the death of her father; of Irish parentage, he had first called her "St. Patrick's babe in the morn," because she was born at night, just hours before St. Patrick's Day
Marriage:21 June, 1940 at Mission Inn, Riverside,
California to Richard Milhous Nixon (born 13 January 1913, Yorba Linda,
California, lawyer, died 23 April, 1994, New York, New York); they had
met while both were performing in a production of The Dark Tower
staged by the Whittier Community Players, a local theater group; after a
honeymoon to Laredo and Mexico City, Mexico, they settled in an
apartment in Whittier.
Presidential Campaign and Inauguration:Vice President Nixon's 1960 race for the presidency drew upon Pat Nixon's public recognition. An entire ad campaign was built around the slogan of "Pat For First Lady," a message carried on buttons, bumper stickers and antenna, all marketed to the demographic of housewives - like Pat Nixon - who were heavily courted by the Republican Party during the 1950's. She also publicly advocated that women should become more involved in the political process as volunteers for their parties. The press briefly attempted to create a "race" for First Lady between her and the Democratic candidate's wife Jacqueline Kennedy based on their clothing costs and styles.
The razor-thin loss for her husband and the disputed win by Kennedy permanently dimmed Pat Nixon's view of politics. Thus she was less eager when Nixon ran again in 1968. Her responses to the media were more rote and controlled as a means of protecting her privacy. Her role in the President's re-election campaign was more enthused as she made thousands of appearances on her own by jet plane, often flying from one corner of the nation to the other in a day. She addressed controversial and substantive questions when the press posed them to her.
If the public expects a First Lady to reflect the "average" American woman, Pat Nixon faced a challenge when she assumed the post in 1969 - a time when the role of women in American society was being dramatically redefined in both perception and reality. Pat Nixon became the first incumbent First Lady to endorse the Equal Rights Amendment. She was the first to disclose publicly her pro-choice view on abortion in reaction to questions on the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision. Before she even began unrelentingly to lobby her husband to name a woman to the Supreme Court, she called for such an appointment publicly. She even became the first First Lady to appear publicly in pants and model them for a national magazine, reflecting the radical change in women's attire that critics derided as masculine. Still, Pat Nixon valued her identity as a middle-class homemaker, supportive wife and devoted mother and was often depicted as the quintessential traditionalist in relief to the popular persona of the "liberated woman."
ELIZABETH ANN BETTY* BLOOMER WARREN FORD
8 April 1918
Chicago, Illinois
Husband and Marriage:
first marriage
24 years old, to William Gustavas Warren, insurance and furniture salesman, (born March 1917, Sullivan County, Missouri) on 23 April 1942, Grand Rapids, Michigan; divorced 15 December 1947. Much of the Bloomer-Warren marriage was spent in a variety of cities, occurring during and after World War II. Warren suffered from diabetes and was ineligible for the draft. Just as she was intending to file for divorce from Warren, she received word that he had suffered a coma in Boston, Massachusetts, where he was working at the time. Living there to care for him as he began to recover, the couple would then relocate to his parents’ home in Grand Rapids. For two years, Betty Warren would live in the home of her in-laws in an upstairs room while her semi-invalid husband was cared for on a lower floor. Once he was able to recover and return to full employment, the divorce proceeded, granted to her on the grounds of “extensive repeated cruelty.” In a 1987 interview, Mrs. Ford reflected that the period would prove an instructive one for her as it was her first full recognition of the inequitable salaries between the genders who performed the same work (she had continued to work and support him through his convalescence) and the unfair burdens that could then legally be placed upon a wife supporting her spouse. Warren was also alcoholic, a reality that only later Betty Ford confronted while seeking her own recovery from the disease later in life.
*Betty Ford is the third presidential wife whose first marriage had ended in divorce, following Rachel Donelson Jackson’s 1793 divorce from Lewis Robards, and Florence Kling Harding’s 1886 divorce from Henry DeWolfe.
second marriage
30 years old to Gerald Rudolph. Ford, Jr., lawyer and congressional candidate (born as Leslie Lynch King, Jr. after his birth father, but renamed after his adoptive father, his mother’s second husband) 14 July 1913, Omaha, Nebraska, died 26 December 2006,* Rancho Mirage, California) on 15, October 1948, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Before her divorce was finalized, in August of 1947, mutual friends introduced Betty Warren Bloomer to Gerald Ford. “Jerry” was a fellow Grand Rapids resident, a young attorney who had served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, and who had achieved fame in college football. Once she was single they began dating. According to Mrs. Ford, he proposed marriage to her that fall (he said he did so in February of 1948) but told her they could not marry until the fall because he had a secret regarding something he “had to do first.” She accepted, only to soon be told by him that, he was planning to run for the Republican nomination for the local seat to the U.S. Congress, and then the general election. Ford had practical concerns that the morally conservative district might not support his marriage to a divorced woman who had a career in modern dance. The wedding was announced in June of that year – after he had won the Republican nomination. They married just two weeks before Election Day in 1948. Ford had to exit the rehearsal dinner early in order to deliver a previously scheduled campaign speech. When he arrived late at the church for the wedding ceremony, right from a campaign rally, Ford was wearing dusty shoes in the color brown, which didn’t match his wedding suit. She wore a simple dress that cost fifty dollars. The honeymoon was spent attending a campaign rally, University of Michigan football game and a speech given by the 1948 Republican presidential candidate Thomas Dewey. On 2 November 1948, Ford was elected to the first of twelve consecutive terms as a U.S. Congressman.
*To date, Gerald Ford lived longer than any U.S. President, dying at the age of 93 years old.
Campaign and Inauguration:
With the resignation of Richard Nixon from the presidency, Gerald Ford was sworn in as Chief Executive in the East Room of the White House on 9 August 1974, his wife holding the Bible as he repeated the oath. In his Inaugural Address, Ford became the first president to ever make reference to his wife: “I am indebted to no man and only one woman, my dear wife, Betty, as I begin this very difficult job."
Betty Ford became First Lady under the unique circumstances in presidential history. She was the wife of a Vice President who had not been elected but rather appointed to the position when his incumbent-predecessor resigned, who then inherited the presidency upon the resignation of the incumbent President. Thus she did not endure an initial presidential campaign for her husband’s presidency or vice-presidency, nor a traditional inauguration which followed a presidential election.
Jackie Kennedy and Lady Bird Johnson
JACQUELINE LEE BOUVIER KENNEDY ONASSIS
Birth: Place: Southampton Hospital, Southampton, New York
Date: 1929, July 28
Marriage:
First: 1953, September 12, to John F. Kennedy, born 1917, May 29, in Brookline, Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States Senator (D-Massachusetts), former U.S. Congressman (D-Massachusetts), at St. Mary's Church, Newport, Rhode Island. John F. Kennedy died 1963, November 22, Dallas, Texas.
Second:
1968, October 20, to Aristotle Socrates Onassis, born 1906, June 15, in Smyrna, Turkey, international shipping magnate, airline owner, at Skorpios Island, Greece. He died 1975, March 15, The American Hospital, Paris, France. His first marriage was to Athina Tina Livanos (1926- 1973), in 1946 in New York City, New York.
First: 1953, September 12, to John F. Kennedy, born 1917, May 29, in Brookline, Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States Senator (D-Massachusetts), former U.S. Congressman (D-Massachusetts), at St. Mary's Church, Newport, Rhode Island. John F. Kennedy died 1963, November 22, Dallas, Texas.
Second:
1968, October 20, to Aristotle Socrates Onassis, born 1906, June 15, in Smyrna, Turkey, international shipping magnate, airline owner, at Skorpios Island, Greece. He died 1975, March 15, The American Hospital, Paris, France. His first marriage was to Athina Tina Livanos (1926- 1973), in 1946 in New York City, New York.
Presidential Campaign and Inauguration:Since she was
pregnant for most of the 1960 presidential campaign, Jacqueline Kennedy
played a limited public role in it; she wrote a column "Campaign Wife,"
mixing personal stories with Democratic Party policy views on the aged
and education that was distributed by the national party; she
participated in television and newspaper interviews; she taped campaign
radio commercials in foreign languages. Privately, she supplied her
husband with numerous literary and historical examples and quotations
that he used in his speeches. Jacqueline Kennedy influenced her husband
to invite numerous artists in all disciplines to his 1961 inaugural
ceremony as a symbol of the new Administration's intended support of the
arts. Her appearance in a large pillbox hat for the swearing-in
ceremony, however, eclipsed this news and began a popular millinery
style.
First Lady:
1961, January 20 - 1963, November 22
31 years old
Jacqueline Kennedy entered the role of First Lady by declaring that her priorities were her young children and maintaining her family's privacy. Nevertheless, during the weeks before the inauguration, she began her plans to not only redecorate the family quarters of the White House but to historically restore the public rooms. She created a committee of advisors led by Americana expert Henry Dupont, with sub-committees led by experts on painting, furniture and books. By March 1961, Jacqueline Kennedy was scouring government warehouses in search of displaced White House furnishings, and soliciting the nation to donate important historical and artistic items. As part of this effort, she successfully pressed Senator Clint Anderson and the 87th Congress to pass what became Public Law 87286 that would make such donated items the inalienable property of the White House. Since the restoration project was privately funded, she helped to create a White House Historical Association, an entity which was able to raise funds through the sale to the public of a book she conceived, The White House: An Historic Guide. She also successfully pressed for the creation of the federal position of White House Curator to permanently continue the effort of protecting the historical integrity of the mansion. Her legacy of fostering an national interest in historic preservation extended to her own "neighborhood," when she reversed a previous federal plan to destroy the historic Lafayette Square across from the White House and helped to negotiate not only a restoration of old buildings there, but a reasonable construction of new buildings with modern use.
Jacqueline Kennedy also sought to use the White House to "showcase" the arts. She became the most prominent proponent for the establishment of the National Cultural Center in the nation's capital, eventually to be named for her husband. At the White House she hosted performances of opera, ballet, Shakespeare and modern jazz, all performed by American companies. After her meeting with French Minister of Culture Andre Malraux in May of 1961, he made a loan to the U.S. from France of the Louvre Museum's famous Mona Lisa painting, and Jacqueline Kennedy presided over the unveiling. From Malraux, she developed ideas on the eventual creation of a U.S. Department of the Arts and Humanities, an undertaking she discussed with Rhode Island Senator Claiborne Pell and one that she anticipated would emerge with the creation of a presidential arts advisor and advisory board in 1961. The eventual creation of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Arts achieved her goal, she later reflected.
Birth:
22 December, 1912
**Karnack, Texas
*Despite her legal name of "Claudia," Mrs. Johnson has been known as "Lady Bird" since childhood, when her nursemaid Alice Tittle commented that she was "as purty as a lady bird." It is unclear what kind of reference this may have been.
**The two-story brick southern plantation mansion, with traditional balcony where she was born is still standing and a registered national landmark.
Marriage:
21 years old, on 17 November, 1934 to Lyndon Baines "LBJ" Johnson (born 27 August, 1908, near Stonewall, Texas, died, "LBJ Ranch" Stonewall, Texas, 22 January, 1973), former teacher, congressional aide, National Youth Administration Director, at Saint Mark's Episcopal Church, San Antonio, Texas. LBJ gave Lady Bird Taylor a $2.50 wedding ring bought at Sears. The couple honeymooned in Mexico and then made their home in Washington, D.C. during most of the year, with visits home to Texas.
Campaign and Inauguration:
Lady Bird Johnson was involved in numerous aspects of her husband's run for president in 1964 for a full term of his own. Before he had committed to running, she drafted a nine-page memo outlining what she saw as the reasons why he must run. She did not want to be a "scapegoat" for the frustration she saw him having if he did not run, and feared "[y]ou may drink too much - for lack of a higher calling." She added that, "I can't carry any of the burdens," but believed he would find "achievement amidst all the pain."
In the midst of the race, LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act. Mrs. Johnson's support of this was so strong that she sat in the front row as he took pen to paper, the only woman present. Despite being First Lady for only several months, she had already established a record as being supportive of civil rights. Even the small symbolic act of touring with an African-American congressional wife arm-in-arm through the White House living quarters earned her praise in the national black daily newspaper Chicago Defender. The traditionally pro-segregationist Democratic South was wary of the direction the Johnsons were taking the party and it was again the First Lady who expressed her understanding of the resistance. Without denigrating their traditions, she emphasized how racial integration would benefit southerners of all races in a "new South." The issue arose sharply at the Democratic Convention in Atlantic City when Mississippi African-Americans, declaring they had been purposely barred from their state's all-white delegation, formed the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and demanded that LBJ recognize, and permit them to be seated in the hall. LBJ asked his wife to draft his potential response to this. The First Lady penned a statement, affirming that the legal delegation should be seated but that the "steady progress" on racial equality that LBJ had initiated would stand and continue under him as president "within the framework of justice." Ultimately, a compromise was achieved.
Civil rights remained the primary campaign focus of Lady Bird Johnson as she undertook an unprecedented role, a schedule of speeches and appearances independent of her husband, targeted to a specific demographic. On a train the "Lady Bird Special," she led women supporters and press through eight southern states for four days, delivering stump speeches from the caboose. The endeavor was well-organized, with "hostesses" in uniform clothing as aides. Buttons, badges and ribbons were produced to mark the occasion. Before the trip, the First Lady telephoned political leaders of the states she was visiting. Many were pro-segregation but nevertheless felt it would be rude not to greet her at a depot in their districts. She and her close friend and press secretary, Liz Carpenter drew on their experiences of the 1960 campaign. While there were threats made against the First Lady's life and some picket signs protested the message of her speeches, Mrs. Johnson remained politely steadfast in her message: "It would be a bottomless tragedy for our country to be racially divided…" An effort by segregationists to suggest that she was an indifferent landlord who provided no utilities to African-Americans on her inherited property proved false and had none of the intended impact.
First Lady:
51 years old
22 November, 1963 - 20 January, 1969
Moving into the White House on 8 December, 1963, Lady Bird Johnson's first months as First Lady were overshadowed by the mourning for President Kennedy and a groundswell of sympathy and interest in Jacqueline Kennedy. In consideration of this, Mrs. Johnson did not undertake a fully-blown public role. She did identify those projects and programs that her predecessor had begun which also interested her, and continued them, most especially efforts on behalf of White House history. She corresponded with Mrs. Kennedy, welcoming her advice on matters such as the placement of portraits or the purchase of china. President Johnson, by executive order, permanently established the Committee for the Preservation of the White House begun as an informal organization by the widow.
What marked Lady Bird Johnson as unique among her predecessors was her own interest and study of the First Ladies. She had become familiar with many of their biographies through her numerous visits since the 1930's to the Smithsonian Institution exhibit of their gowns. She also would visit several presidential homes during her tenure and show as much interest in the objects associated with First Ladies as she did with those of Presidents. This had the effect of making her perhaps one of the few women to assume the position with a highly conscious sense of the public expectations, the limitations and the opportunities that came with it. "She's not elected," she reflected in 1987, "he is elected, and they are there as a team. And it's much more appropriate for her to work on projects that are a part of his Administration, a part of his aims and hopes for America."
First Lady:
1961, January 20 - 1963, November 22
31 years old
Jacqueline Kennedy entered the role of First Lady by declaring that her priorities were her young children and maintaining her family's privacy. Nevertheless, during the weeks before the inauguration, she began her plans to not only redecorate the family quarters of the White House but to historically restore the public rooms. She created a committee of advisors led by Americana expert Henry Dupont, with sub-committees led by experts on painting, furniture and books. By March 1961, Jacqueline Kennedy was scouring government warehouses in search of displaced White House furnishings, and soliciting the nation to donate important historical and artistic items. As part of this effort, she successfully pressed Senator Clint Anderson and the 87th Congress to pass what became Public Law 87286 that would make such donated items the inalienable property of the White House. Since the restoration project was privately funded, she helped to create a White House Historical Association, an entity which was able to raise funds through the sale to the public of a book she conceived, The White House: An Historic Guide. She also successfully pressed for the creation of the federal position of White House Curator to permanently continue the effort of protecting the historical integrity of the mansion. Her legacy of fostering an national interest in historic preservation extended to her own "neighborhood," when she reversed a previous federal plan to destroy the historic Lafayette Square across from the White House and helped to negotiate not only a restoration of old buildings there, but a reasonable construction of new buildings with modern use.
Jacqueline Kennedy also sought to use the White House to "showcase" the arts. She became the most prominent proponent for the establishment of the National Cultural Center in the nation's capital, eventually to be named for her husband. At the White House she hosted performances of opera, ballet, Shakespeare and modern jazz, all performed by American companies. After her meeting with French Minister of Culture Andre Malraux in May of 1961, he made a loan to the U.S. from France of the Louvre Museum's famous Mona Lisa painting, and Jacqueline Kennedy presided over the unveiling. From Malraux, she developed ideas on the eventual creation of a U.S. Department of the Arts and Humanities, an undertaking she discussed with Rhode Island Senator Claiborne Pell and one that she anticipated would emerge with the creation of a presidential arts advisor and advisory board in 1961. The eventual creation of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Arts achieved her goal, she later reflected.
LADY BIRD [CLAUDIA ALTA] TAYLOR JOHNSON
22 December, 1912
**Karnack, Texas
*Despite her legal name of "Claudia," Mrs. Johnson has been known as "Lady Bird" since childhood, when her nursemaid Alice Tittle commented that she was "as purty as a lady bird." It is unclear what kind of reference this may have been.
**The two-story brick southern plantation mansion, with traditional balcony where she was born is still standing and a registered national landmark.
Marriage:
21 years old, on 17 November, 1934 to Lyndon Baines "LBJ" Johnson (born 27 August, 1908, near Stonewall, Texas, died, "LBJ Ranch" Stonewall, Texas, 22 January, 1973), former teacher, congressional aide, National Youth Administration Director, at Saint Mark's Episcopal Church, San Antonio, Texas. LBJ gave Lady Bird Taylor a $2.50 wedding ring bought at Sears. The couple honeymooned in Mexico and then made their home in Washington, D.C. during most of the year, with visits home to Texas.
Campaign and Inauguration:
Lady Bird Johnson was involved in numerous aspects of her husband's run for president in 1964 for a full term of his own. Before he had committed to running, she drafted a nine-page memo outlining what she saw as the reasons why he must run. She did not want to be a "scapegoat" for the frustration she saw him having if he did not run, and feared "[y]ou may drink too much - for lack of a higher calling." She added that, "I can't carry any of the burdens," but believed he would find "achievement amidst all the pain."
In the midst of the race, LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act. Mrs. Johnson's support of this was so strong that she sat in the front row as he took pen to paper, the only woman present. Despite being First Lady for only several months, she had already established a record as being supportive of civil rights. Even the small symbolic act of touring with an African-American congressional wife arm-in-arm through the White House living quarters earned her praise in the national black daily newspaper Chicago Defender. The traditionally pro-segregationist Democratic South was wary of the direction the Johnsons were taking the party and it was again the First Lady who expressed her understanding of the resistance. Without denigrating their traditions, she emphasized how racial integration would benefit southerners of all races in a "new South." The issue arose sharply at the Democratic Convention in Atlantic City when Mississippi African-Americans, declaring they had been purposely barred from their state's all-white delegation, formed the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and demanded that LBJ recognize, and permit them to be seated in the hall. LBJ asked his wife to draft his potential response to this. The First Lady penned a statement, affirming that the legal delegation should be seated but that the "steady progress" on racial equality that LBJ had initiated would stand and continue under him as president "within the framework of justice." Ultimately, a compromise was achieved.
Civil rights remained the primary campaign focus of Lady Bird Johnson as she undertook an unprecedented role, a schedule of speeches and appearances independent of her husband, targeted to a specific demographic. On a train the "Lady Bird Special," she led women supporters and press through eight southern states for four days, delivering stump speeches from the caboose. The endeavor was well-organized, with "hostesses" in uniform clothing as aides. Buttons, badges and ribbons were produced to mark the occasion. Before the trip, the First Lady telephoned political leaders of the states she was visiting. Many were pro-segregation but nevertheless felt it would be rude not to greet her at a depot in their districts. She and her close friend and press secretary, Liz Carpenter drew on their experiences of the 1960 campaign. While there were threats made against the First Lady's life and some picket signs protested the message of her speeches, Mrs. Johnson remained politely steadfast in her message: "It would be a bottomless tragedy for our country to be racially divided…" An effort by segregationists to suggest that she was an indifferent landlord who provided no utilities to African-Americans on her inherited property proved false and had none of the intended impact.
First Lady:
51 years old
22 November, 1963 - 20 January, 1969
Moving into the White House on 8 December, 1963, Lady Bird Johnson's first months as First Lady were overshadowed by the mourning for President Kennedy and a groundswell of sympathy and interest in Jacqueline Kennedy. In consideration of this, Mrs. Johnson did not undertake a fully-blown public role. She did identify those projects and programs that her predecessor had begun which also interested her, and continued them, most especially efforts on behalf of White House history. She corresponded with Mrs. Kennedy, welcoming her advice on matters such as the placement of portraits or the purchase of china. President Johnson, by executive order, permanently established the Committee for the Preservation of the White House begun as an informal organization by the widow.
What marked Lady Bird Johnson as unique among her predecessors was her own interest and study of the First Ladies. She had become familiar with many of their biographies through her numerous visits since the 1930's to the Smithsonian Institution exhibit of their gowns. She also would visit several presidential homes during her tenure and show as much interest in the objects associated with First Ladies as she did with those of Presidents. This had the effect of making her perhaps one of the few women to assume the position with a highly conscious sense of the public expectations, the limitations and the opportunities that came with it. "She's not elected," she reflected in 1987, "he is elected, and they are there as a team. And it's much more appropriate for her to work on projects that are a part of his Administration, a part of his aims and hopes for America."
Bess Truman and Mamie Eisenhower
ELIZABETH VIRGINIA "BESS" TRUMAN
13 February 1885
Independence, Missouri
34 years old, on 28 June, 1919, Independence, Missouri, to Harry S. Truman, veteran, haberdasher, (born 8 May 1884, Lamar, Missouri, died 26 December 1972, Kansas City, Missouri)
In attendance at the 1944 Democratic National Convention with her husband and daughter, Bess Truman was angry when she learned that her husband had accepted the offer of President Franklin Roosevelt to run as his vice-presidential running mate. "What if he should die?" she asked him. "Then you would be President." Despite her misgivings, she supported her husband, even participating in a rare radio interview. When Roosevelt died less than three months after the January 1945 Inauguration, she was overcome not only with grief but fear of what her new role would entail. She and her daughter rushed down to the White House on 12 April, several hours after FDR's death to witness Truman's swearing-in as president, in the Cabinet Room.
When Harry Truman ran for re-election in 1948, Bess Truman viewed his chances with pessimism. She accompanied him on his famous whistlestop tour, and he developed a routine of introducing her as "the Boss" at the conclusion of his speeches from the back platform. She was known to keep at least one governor from joining the train because of his earlier criticism of Truman. Bess Truman was also known to reprimand her husband when he made what she considered strong language, often spoken in a heated moment.
At the 1949 Inaugural Parade, when Truman friend, the actress Tallulah Bankhead booed South Carolina's U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond, who had bolted the Democratic Party to oppose Truman as a Dixiecrat candidate, Bess Truman cheered on her friend.
First Lady: 60 years old
12 April 1945 - 20 January 1953 Bess Truman had never wanted to be the Vice President's wife, let alone the President's wife. According to her daughter, Bess Truman's fear of public knowledge of her father's suicide was one reason she insisted on maintaining a low public profile. As she returned with the President and Cabinet to Washington from the funeral of President Roosevelt, she asked Labor Secretary Frances Perkins if it was necessary for her to conduct press conferences as Eleanor Roosevelt had; in fact, her predecessor had already scheduled one for them both to appear, as a way of introducing Bess Truman to the reporters. Assured that she could do as she wished, Bess Truman cancelled the press conference and never held one. Nor did she ever grant an interview to a newspaper or magazine, although she did respond to written questions from the press and she would answer questions when she was approached in a spontaneous moment.
MAMIE
GENEVA
DOUD EISENHOWER
Born:
14 November, 1896
Boone
, Iowa
Marriage:
19 years old to Dwight David
Eisenhower
(14 October, 1890 - 28 March, 1969), West Point graduate, second
Lieutenant U.S. Army, on 1 July, 1916, Doud home, Denver, Colorado. The
couple met during the winter when the Douds lived in San Antonio, Texas
and Eisenhower was stationed at nearby Fort Sam Houston. Following their
wedding, they lived in the
officers’ barracks there, the first of 33 homes that they lived in
during the next 37 years of Eisenhower's military career assignments
Presidential Campaign and Inauguration:
The
1952 marked the first presidential
campaign in which the spouses of a presidential ticket were consciously
marketed to women voters as part of a larger effort. Thus along with the
Republican effort to enlist housewives as supporters and party
volunteer workers by translating political issues into those most women
of the era could relate to such as grocery bills or having their sons,
husbands sent to the Korean War front, there were also "Mamie for First
Lady," "We Want Mamie," and "I Like Mamie Too" buttons (the last one a
play on the popular "I Like Ike" slogan). Mamie Eisenhower was an
energetic and enthusiastic figure on her husband's 77-stop train tour of
the nation, the candidate often finishing a speech by asking a crowd,
"How'd you like to meet my Mamie?" a cue for her to appear and wave. On
the whistlestop, she even willingly restaged a scene of waving to
reporters and photographers in her bathrobe and slippers. Behind the
scenes, she often listened to him rehearse his speeches and sometimes
gave suggestions to edit them in a way that spoke more directly to the
common citizen, in simple and direct language. She also maintained a
degree of control over who came onto the campaign train, into their
personal car to meet the candidate. During their layovers in hotels,
when the campaign manager assigned her rooms that were apart from her
husband's suite, she overruled him. In both the 1952 and the 1956
presidential campaigns of her husband, Mamie Eisenhower also made brief
appearances on television commercials and live broadcasts with him.
Mamie
Eisenhower
was the first president's wife known to
be kissed openly in public by her husband following his Inaugural
ceremony. She encouraged her husband to compose an Inaugural prayer
which he recited at the ceremony and also strongly approved the decision
to invite African-American opera singer Marian Anderson to sing at the
ceremony. She also arranged for the accommodations of her
African-American maids to stay in Washington, still segregated at the
time, and attend all the Inaugural events.
First Lady:
20 January, 1953 – 20 January, 1961
56 years old
Mamie
Eisenhower
viewed her role as First Lady without
complication as being simply the wife of the president and the hostess
of the White House. Indeed, few First Ladies seemed to better reflect
the general role, priorities and values of most middle-aged middle class
American women during her White House tenure than did MamieEisenhower
in the 1950's: family, home, entertaining, and personal appearance.
Lou Henry Hoover and Eleanor Roosevelt
LOU HENRY HOOVER
Birth: 29 March 1874
Waterloo, Iowa
Marriage:
24 years old, to Herbert Clark Hoover (born 10 August 1874, West Branch, Iowa, died 26 October 1964, New York, New York) geologist, mining engineer and executive, on 10 February 1899 at the Monterey, California home of her parents.
During her first year at Stanford, Lou Henry was introduced to Herbert Hoover by her professor, J.C. Branner, to his assistant, a senior. They not only shared an Iowa origin but a love of geology and fishing. After graduating, Hoover went to Australia as a gold miner for a British mining company. Beginning with that position, Hoover earned increasingly larger salaries, becoming a millionaire at a young age. It was from Australian that he sent Lou Henry a telegram asking her to marry him, an offer which she accepted. With neither a Quaker nor Episcopalian minister available to perform their marriage, the Hoovers were married in a civil ceremony by Roman Catholic priest, Father Ramon Mestres, of the San Carlos Borromeo Mission. Following her graduation, in the interim, Hoover accepted the offer of the young Chinese Emperor to be Director General of the Department of Mines of the Chinese Government. Later in the day, they took the train to San Francisco. The following day, 11 February 1899, they sailed for China.
24 years old, to Herbert Clark Hoover (born 10 August 1874, West Branch, Iowa, died 26 October 1964, New York, New York) geologist, mining engineer and executive, on 10 February 1899 at the Monterey, California home of her parents.
During her first year at Stanford, Lou Henry was introduced to Herbert Hoover by her professor, J.C. Branner, to his assistant, a senior. They not only shared an Iowa origin but a love of geology and fishing. After graduating, Hoover went to Australia as a gold miner for a British mining company. Beginning with that position, Hoover earned increasingly larger salaries, becoming a millionaire at a young age. It was from Australian that he sent Lou Henry a telegram asking her to marry him, an offer which she accepted. With neither a Quaker nor Episcopalian minister available to perform their marriage, the Hoovers were married in a civil ceremony by Roman Catholic priest, Father Ramon Mestres, of the San Carlos Borromeo Mission. Following her graduation, in the interim, Hoover accepted the offer of the young Chinese Emperor to be Director General of the Department of Mines of the Chinese Government. Later in the day, they took the train to San Francisco. The following day, 11 February 1899, they sailed for China.
Campaign and Inauguration:
Despite her experience as a professional speaker to large audiences who addressed public issues, Lou Hoover assumed no such role in her husband’s 1928 and 1932 presidential campaigns. She joined him in a post-election, pre-inauguration goodwill trip to Honduras, San Salvador, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Chile, Peru, Argentina, Latin America. Immediately preceding the 1929 swearing-in ceremony of her husband as President in the U.S. Capitol Building, Lou Hoover and the outgoing First Lady Grace Coolidge were not escorted and lost their way in the labyrinth of hallways that led to the West Front, where the ceremonies were to take place; their delay inadvertently delayed the ceremony. Following the tradition since the 1913 Inauguration of Woodrow Wilson, there was no Inaugural Ball.
First Lady:
54 years old
4 March 1929 – 4 March 1933
Despite her enormous record of activism, public speaking, fundraising, and professionalism in all that she did, Lou Hoover decided to restrict the degree of her activism once she assumed what she believed to a be a public duty which required a more subdued traditionalism.
Nevertheless, she made one immediate innovation that set a precedent which her successors followed or were criticized for not doing: she continued to deliver speeches not only in auditoriums but to also give public addresses over the radio. Just over a month after becoming First Lady, her brief 19 April 1929 speech to the Daughters of the American Revolution was carried on the radio. Others soon followed: 22 June 1929 to the 4-H Clubs; 23 March 1931 as a representative of the Women’s Division of the President’s Emergency Committee for Employment; 6 May 1931 to the New York Maternity Center Association – along with former First Lady Edith Roosevelt making her first public remarks to be recorded – on the subject of infant and new-mother mortality in America; 7 November 1931, again to the 4-H Clubs; 27 November 1932 on behalf of the National Women’s Committee of the Welfare and Relief Mobilization of 1932, on the topic of “The Woman’s Place in the Present Emergency.” She took her “talkie voice” seriously enough that she had a recording system set up in the White House enabling her to replay her recordings and test the pitch, tone and pacing of her voice. With a great interest in the popular films of her era, Lou Hoover had equipment placed in the oval room of the family quarters to screen sound motion pictures for her guests, the equipment and installation donated by a Hollywood studio. She also used her own silent movie camera in her private life. On another, more tragic aspect of her era’s popular culture, the 1932 kidnapping of aviator Charles Lindbergh’s baby son, Lou Hoover kept in close touch with the child’s mother, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, a personal friend.
Unfortunately, Lou Hoover’s radio addresses were the extent of her use of the modern media. Following a traditional tact of First Ladies, she refused to grant any formal interviews to print or broadcast journalists during her tenure, though she would answer to impromptu questions that reporters might be able to pose to her. Despite her long life in the public eye, she had a growing mistrust of the media, especially as the Great Depression worsened and she read accounts involving the President which she felt had been distorted and thus failed to serve the public with truth
Under the Woodrow Wilson Administration, FDR was appointed Assistant Navy Secretary (1913-1920). Eleanor Roosevelt fulfilled the social obligations then incumbent upon officials’ spouses, including the making and hosting of social calls among each other on specified days at specified times. She also joined some spouses in accepting the invitation of First Lady Ellen Wilson to tour the so-called alley dwellings of deplorable housing conditions of the capital city’s largely African-American underclass, the intention of which, to demolish the dangerous and unsanitary living spaces, was achieved by a congressional bill. Efforts to relocate the displaced individuals into permanent housing were usurped by US entry into World War I
First Lady:
48 years old
4 March 1933 - 12 April 1945
No presidential wife served as First Lady for a period longer than did Eleanor Roosevelt – twelve years, one month, one week and one day. No First Lady served through two nationally traumatic events such as did Eleanor Roosevelt, presiding at the White House during the Great Depression and World War II. Unique to her tenure was the fact that the President was physically limited by his then-hidden condition of polio. Thus apart from finding a way to integrate her own professional interests and experiences into the public role of First Lady and assume the traditional management of the mansion’s functioning as a political-social arena, Eleanor Roosevelt worked closely with the President and his staff as an unofficial Administration representative and on policy-related issues. Despite this being an outgrowth of her own progressive reform work, it was now conducted within a public realm, making both her, personally, and the Administration, generally, vulnerable to political attack and criticism, the charge being that she was neither elected nor appointed to carry out such tasks as it related to the American people. Generally, Eleanor Roosevelt ignored the frequent criticism to help achieve her goals or those Administration objectives with which she concurred.
Unlike her three immediate predecessors (Florence Harding, Grace Coolidge, Lou Hoover), Eleanor Roosevelt did not enter into the role of First Lady with specific plans to continue previous support for a constituency (Harding and animal rights and WWI veterans, Coolidge and the hearing-impaired, Hoover and the Girl Scouts). All she knew for certain was that she would be active in word and deed, especially in light of the devastation the Great Depression was continuing to have on the lives of millions of Americans.. Her extraordinary history of experience and work in progressive advocacy policy, the media, education, and women’s issues, however, greatly informed her as she found her direction, established her agenda and relied on professional contacts. In terms of her life experiences and her evolving vision as First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt was unprecedented in comparison to others who had or would assume the role.
Despite her experience as a professional speaker to large audiences who addressed public issues, Lou Hoover assumed no such role in her husband’s 1928 and 1932 presidential campaigns. She joined him in a post-election, pre-inauguration goodwill trip to Honduras, San Salvador, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Chile, Peru, Argentina, Latin America. Immediately preceding the 1929 swearing-in ceremony of her husband as President in the U.S. Capitol Building, Lou Hoover and the outgoing First Lady Grace Coolidge were not escorted and lost their way in the labyrinth of hallways that led to the West Front, where the ceremonies were to take place; their delay inadvertently delayed the ceremony. Following the tradition since the 1913 Inauguration of Woodrow Wilson, there was no Inaugural Ball.
First Lady:
54 years old
4 March 1929 – 4 March 1933
Despite her enormous record of activism, public speaking, fundraising, and professionalism in all that she did, Lou Hoover decided to restrict the degree of her activism once she assumed what she believed to a be a public duty which required a more subdued traditionalism.
Nevertheless, she made one immediate innovation that set a precedent which her successors followed or were criticized for not doing: she continued to deliver speeches not only in auditoriums but to also give public addresses over the radio. Just over a month after becoming First Lady, her brief 19 April 1929 speech to the Daughters of the American Revolution was carried on the radio. Others soon followed: 22 June 1929 to the 4-H Clubs; 23 March 1931 as a representative of the Women’s Division of the President’s Emergency Committee for Employment; 6 May 1931 to the New York Maternity Center Association – along with former First Lady Edith Roosevelt making her first public remarks to be recorded – on the subject of infant and new-mother mortality in America; 7 November 1931, again to the 4-H Clubs; 27 November 1932 on behalf of the National Women’s Committee of the Welfare and Relief Mobilization of 1932, on the topic of “The Woman’s Place in the Present Emergency.” She took her “talkie voice” seriously enough that she had a recording system set up in the White House enabling her to replay her recordings and test the pitch, tone and pacing of her voice. With a great interest in the popular films of her era, Lou Hoover had equipment placed in the oval room of the family quarters to screen sound motion pictures for her guests, the equipment and installation donated by a Hollywood studio. She also used her own silent movie camera in her private life. On another, more tragic aspect of her era’s popular culture, the 1932 kidnapping of aviator Charles Lindbergh’s baby son, Lou Hoover kept in close touch with the child’s mother, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, a personal friend.
Unfortunately, Lou Hoover’s radio addresses were the extent of her use of the modern media. Following a traditional tact of First Ladies, she refused to grant any formal interviews to print or broadcast journalists during her tenure, though she would answer to impromptu questions that reporters might be able to pose to her. Despite her long life in the public eye, she had a growing mistrust of the media, especially as the Great Depression worsened and she read accounts involving the President which she felt had been distorted and thus failed to serve the public with truth
ANNA ELEANOR ROOSEVELT ROOSEVELT
Birth: 11 October 1884
New York City, New York
New York City, New York
Marriage and Husband:20 years old on 17 March 1905,
adjoining homes of her maternal aunts, New York City, New York, to
Franklin Delano Roosevelt [“FDR”], 22 years old, Harvard University
undergraduate student (born 30 January 1882, Hyde Park, New York; died
12 April, 1945, Warm Springs, Georgia)
*President Theodore Roosevelt attended his orphaned niece down the aisle during her wedding ceremony, having previously been scheduled to be in New York City to participate in the city’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade
The genealogical relationship between Eleanor Roosevelt and FDR is fifth cousin, once removed. They share a mutual ancestor in Claes Martenszen van Rosenvelt (the translation of which means son of Marten of the rose field), who immigrated to America from Holland to the then-named New Amsterdam colony [New York] in approximately 1649. His son Nicholas Roosevelt (1658-1742) is the last common ancestor of FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt. FDR’s great-great-great grandfather (Jacobus Roosevelt, son of Nicholas) and Eleanor Roosevelt’s great-great-great-great grandfather (Johannes Roosevelt, son of Nicholas) were brothers.
*President Theodore Roosevelt attended his orphaned niece down the aisle during her wedding ceremony, having previously been scheduled to be in New York City to participate in the city’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade
The genealogical relationship between Eleanor Roosevelt and FDR is fifth cousin, once removed. They share a mutual ancestor in Claes Martenszen van Rosenvelt (the translation of which means son of Marten of the rose field), who immigrated to America from Holland to the then-named New Amsterdam colony [New York] in approximately 1649. His son Nicholas Roosevelt (1658-1742) is the last common ancestor of FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt. FDR’s great-great-great grandfather (Jacobus Roosevelt, son of Nicholas) and Eleanor Roosevelt’s great-great-great-great grandfather (Johannes Roosevelt, son of Nicholas) were brothers.
Under the Woodrow Wilson Administration, FDR was appointed Assistant Navy Secretary (1913-1920). Eleanor Roosevelt fulfilled the social obligations then incumbent upon officials’ spouses, including the making and hosting of social calls among each other on specified days at specified times. She also joined some spouses in accepting the invitation of First Lady Ellen Wilson to tour the so-called alley dwellings of deplorable housing conditions of the capital city’s largely African-American underclass, the intention of which, to demolish the dangerous and unsanitary living spaces, was achieved by a congressional bill. Efforts to relocate the displaced individuals into permanent housing were usurped by US entry into World War I
Presidential Campaign and Inauguration:
Having known personally the constrictions placed on her aunt Edith Roosevelt, when she became First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt had a tremendous ambivalence throughout the course of FDR’s first presidential campaign. She believed he was the ideal leader to guide the nation through the Great Depression, but feared the loss of her own independent life. Nevertheless, in 1931, in anticipation of the campaign, she organized the women’s division of “Friends For Roosevelt,” the exploratory committee that would launch his candidacy, and also wrote and edited much of the literature about him. As far as public campaigning, however, Eleanor Roosevelt was more visible on behalf of Herbert Lehman, the Democrat hoping to succeed her husband as New York Governor. She continued her role as intermediary between Farley and Howe, and reviewed the publicity of the National Democratic Committee’s Women’s Division, which were printed on colored-paper "rainbow fliers" – which were intended to appeal to women’s femininity. She attended the 1932 convention which nominated FDR, and also become the fourth woman in history to successfully vote for her husband’s election as president.
Having known personally the constrictions placed on her aunt Edith Roosevelt, when she became First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt had a tremendous ambivalence throughout the course of FDR’s first presidential campaign. She believed he was the ideal leader to guide the nation through the Great Depression, but feared the loss of her own independent life. Nevertheless, in 1931, in anticipation of the campaign, she organized the women’s division of “Friends For Roosevelt,” the exploratory committee that would launch his candidacy, and also wrote and edited much of the literature about him. As far as public campaigning, however, Eleanor Roosevelt was more visible on behalf of Herbert Lehman, the Democrat hoping to succeed her husband as New York Governor. She continued her role as intermediary between Farley and Howe, and reviewed the publicity of the National Democratic Committee’s Women’s Division, which were printed on colored-paper "rainbow fliers" – which were intended to appeal to women’s femininity. She attended the 1932 convention which nominated FDR, and also become the fourth woman in history to successfully vote for her husband’s election as president.
48 years old
4 March 1933 - 12 April 1945
No presidential wife served as First Lady for a period longer than did Eleanor Roosevelt – twelve years, one month, one week and one day. No First Lady served through two nationally traumatic events such as did Eleanor Roosevelt, presiding at the White House during the Great Depression and World War II. Unique to her tenure was the fact that the President was physically limited by his then-hidden condition of polio. Thus apart from finding a way to integrate her own professional interests and experiences into the public role of First Lady and assume the traditional management of the mansion’s functioning as a political-social arena, Eleanor Roosevelt worked closely with the President and his staff as an unofficial Administration representative and on policy-related issues. Despite this being an outgrowth of her own progressive reform work, it was now conducted within a public realm, making both her, personally, and the Administration, generally, vulnerable to political attack and criticism, the charge being that she was neither elected nor appointed to carry out such tasks as it related to the American people. Generally, Eleanor Roosevelt ignored the frequent criticism to help achieve her goals or those Administration objectives with which she concurred.
Unlike her three immediate predecessors (Florence Harding, Grace Coolidge, Lou Hoover), Eleanor Roosevelt did not enter into the role of First Lady with specific plans to continue previous support for a constituency (Harding and animal rights and WWI veterans, Coolidge and the hearing-impaired, Hoover and the Girl Scouts). All she knew for certain was that she would be active in word and deed, especially in light of the devastation the Great Depression was continuing to have on the lives of millions of Americans.. Her extraordinary history of experience and work in progressive advocacy policy, the media, education, and women’s issues, however, greatly informed her as she found her direction, established her agenda and relied on professional contacts. In terms of her life experiences and her evolving vision as First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt was unprecedented in comparison to others who had or would assume the role.
Ellen Wilson and Grace Coolidge
Ellen Louise Axson Wilson
Born: May 15, 1860 in Savannah, Georgia
Died: August 6, 1914 in Washington, D.C., in the White House
Courtship
and Marriage: In the summer of 1883, Ellen met Thomas Woodrow Wilson
at her father’s church and fell in love. Both were highly principled,
motivated and widely read people who had deeply passionate and romantic
hearts. Both Woodrow and Ellen were religious, she more open minded
than he and both were to be deeply dependent on one another. Their
early courtship was made more difficult due to Rev. Axson’s collapse and
later commitment to an insane asylum, which was a drain on Ellen’s
emotions and physical strength. Axson’s death on May 28, 1884, a
probable suicide, saddened Ellen and made her question her desirability
as a wife, but Woodrow overcame her fears. Using some of the money left
to her by her father, Ellen returned to New York to study art at the
Art Student’s League and on Sunday afternoons she taught
African-American children at the city mission. She and Woodrow wrote
each other of their hopes, dreams, and when he was offered a teaching
position at Bryn Mawr College, they were able to marry. They married at
her grandparents’ home in Savannah, the ceremony being conducted by her
minister grandfather and father-in-law on June 24, 1885.
Age at Marriage: 25 years, 40 days
First
Lady: March 4, 1913- August 6, 1914. Ellen Wilson had but a year and
five months in the White House. The second Mrs. Wilson would soon
overshadow the public’s memory of Ellen, which is unfortunate because
Ellen made her own contributions while First Lady. Her gentle manner
and soft Southern drawl made the staff call her “the Angel in the White
House.” She would be aided by all three of her daughters and her cousin
Helen Bones, who served as her personal secretary. She also hired Belle
Hagnar as her social secretary. She averaged over 41 receptions with
600 guests at each that spring and found time to redecorate the family
quarters of the White House, including artwork from the Appalachians
Hills. Ellen also oversaw the creation of the Rose Garden, bringing her
gardener from Princeton to the White House. It was in the area of
reform that Ellen Wilson made her greatest impact. On March 22, 1913,
she listened as the head of the women’s department of the National Civic
Federation told her of the plight of Black citizens in Washington. Two
days later, Mrs. Wilson toured the city and saw first hand the slums of
the nation’s capital. She also saw the working conditions of women in
the Post Office, where they didn’t have sanitary facilities. Mrs.
Wilson had difficulty in getting the attention of the President’s
advisor, Colonel Edward House, until she pointedly asked him questions
at a White House dinner in a loud enough voice to gain everyone’s
attention. The situation was soon corrected, at least for women in the
Post Office. Ellen Wilson joined a committee of 50 to campaign for the
passing of an bill that would destroy the slums and create better
housing for Washington’s poor. She became interested in child labor
laws, the enforcement of school attendance laws, and the use of schools
as recreation centers. In the summer of 1913, Ellen went to join an art
colony in Cornish, New Hampshire. The letters between husband and wife
showed how much Wilson needed and depended on Ellen. Jessie’s wedding
on November 25, 1913 in the White House was a moment of great joy but
for Ellen, it depleted her small reserve of strength. In March 1914,
Ellen fell in her bedroom which shook her already weakened body. The
doctors by then knew she had Bright’s Disease, but she was not told for a
long while. She begged her husband to see her bill passed and shortly
before she died, she was told that the Alley Dwelling Bill had passed.
Even
though Ellen was not at the white house long due to her death she
played a big part in her position as first lady. She was key to a bill
passing called Alley Dwelling Bill that was past just before her
death. Though she did not have a big key in the publics eye.
Grace Anna Goodhue Coolidge
Died: July 7, 1957
In the spring of 1905, she met Calvin Coolidge.
Husband: (John) Calvin Coolidge (1872 – 1933)
Courtship and Marriage: Grace and Calvin has a whirlwind romance. They met in the spring of 1905 and were married that fall. The biggest obstacle in their romance was Grace’s mother, Lemira Goodhue. Lemira thought very little of her daughter’s choice for a husband. Calvin’s father, Colonel John Coolidge, on the other hand, thought the world of Grace. Coolidge was a quiet, shy, silent man who shared with Grace a love of family, a quiet faith and an impish sense of humor. Over Lemira Goodhue’s objections, Grace and Calvin were married on October 4, 1905 at her parent’s home in Burlington, Vermont.
Age at Marriage: 26 years, 274 days
At no point did Coolidge ever consult Grace about his political decisions.
First Lady: August 2, 1923 – March 4, 1929: A telephone call alerted the Coolidges early on the morning of August 3, 1923 that President Harding had died in San Francisco. Grace Coolidge watched as her husband was sworn is as President by his father, Colonel John Coolidge, a notary public. (It was later discovered that a notary public could not swear in a president and the oath had to be re-administered). Grace thought to herself, "This is me and yet not me." She already began to feel the distance created by becoming First Lady.
The Coolidges were sympathetic to Mrs. Harding and did not push her to leave the White House. When she did on August 16th, the Coolidges waited another week before moving in.
President Coolidge made all the decisions on White House functions, including when, where, and who was to be invited and even kept a tight control on the kitchen. Grace’s only role was to appear ready, pretty, well dressed and charming. When she questioned her husband about the evening receptions and who was invited, he was not forthcoming with information. It took every ounce of her charm, sunny disposition and humor to offset his taciturn and sour disposition. It was Mrs. Coolidge who fostered stories of her husband’s dry wit and who used her own sense of humor to lighten what could have been a dull White House.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)