Word: howe
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1930-1939
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
When Gus Gennerich wheeled him up the ramp from the colonnade into the new office building. President Roosevelt was beaming with happy expectation. So were the 120 members of the "gang," as Louis Howe calls the White House office force. They were delighted to have a wholly air-conditioned building to save them from the summer's heat; delighted with the roomy basement offices extending out under the lawn and surrounding a little sunken court with a fountain in its centre; delighted that in place of the beautiful but useless McKim dome over the old waiting room, their palace...
Before going to his own office, the President wanted to see the rest of the building, and Gus Gennerich rolled him around the main floor?through Louis Howe's office with its pale pistachio green walls (about which the President's No. 1 secretary grumbled softly); through the office of Secretary Howe's Secretary Margaret Durand (whose nickname is "Rabbit"); across the vestibule where Captain Clarence L. Dalrymple and Lieutenant Larry Seamen of the White House uniformed police force stand guard to pass legitimate visitors, turn back cranks. The President peeked into the new room set aside for White House...
Louis McHenry Howe, whose official title is Secretary to the President, is in fact the Secretary for secretaries, a member of the President's private as well as official family and his most trusted adviser. Not since Woodrow Wilson's Joseph Tumulty has any President's Secretary had such importance. The Howe-Roosevelt association began 22 years ago when "Louie" was a newshawk in Albany and "Franklin" was a young state Senator. Howe went to Washington in 1913 as secretary to Assistant Secretary of the Navy Roosevelt, went on the 1920 campaign tour with Vice-Presidential Nominee Roosevelt...
...devotion to Franklin Roosevelt has its obverse in that he does his jealous best to keep others from growing equally close to his idol. Other close Presidential friends such as Lewis Douglas and Raymond Moley have come and gone (and sometimes come again) but Louis Howe has maintained himself in a place unique and apart, the President's closest counselor...
Marguerite Le Hand is next to Louis Howe, the senior member of the Roosevelt entourage and, like him, dwells in the White House. She was a stenographer for the Shipping Board when she was hired for the Democratic Vice-Presidential campaign of 1920. She has never left the Roosevelts since. She handles all the President's personal affairs, knows his literary style so well that he can glance at a letter, direct "Say yes" or "Say no" and the answer she writes cannot be told from a Rooseveltian original...