How serious was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt about Missy LeHand, his personal assistant who is said to have been on call 24/7 for years on end? Known to have a heart condition caused by rheumatic fever, this workaholic woman seemed to not have had a separate personal life due to her total dedication to Franklin, with the exception of Bill Bullit.
In 1941 it all caught up with her and Missy suffered a stroke. After a second serious stroke 17 days later, was no longer able to speak and was paralyzed in her right arm and leg. She had no choice but to step down from her important White House job and the travel it required. Her mental illness issues were considered secondary or caused by her physical ones. She remained in Washington a while and then was sent to Warm Springs to recover.
FDR called in the best specialists and paid all her hospital and nursing bills - eleven doctors - but he was busy with World War II as Hitler had invaded Poland. FDR kept Missy LeHand on the payroll and signed a new will that provided for her medical care, willing one half his income of his estate to his wife Eleanor and the other half to "my friend Marguerite."
He decided to give the building that he and Missy desired to be a Presidential Library at Hyde Park to hold all his papers and memorabilia someday to the National Archives. Giving up on their project together, he called Missy on her 45th birthday in September 13th, 1941. His final in person visit with Missy occurred just weeks later on October 29, 1941.
He had been spending hours in the White House with Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd.
When Pearl Harbor occurred on December 7th, Missy, who seemed to be improving, with setbacks, called FDR. He didn't call her back.
Missy may have become suicidal. This was a woman who was used to being in an important and perhaps powerful position and where the action was. She was now reduced to living incapacitated and retired. She'd lost 25 pounds, at five foot seven, down to 105, wasn't eating, was depressed and crying. She choked on a chicken bone. She started drinking heavily. She set fire to herself with a cigarette.
It was decided it was time to send her home to her family. She was taken off the Federal government payroll. The Roosevelts continued to pay for her medical care.
She and Franklin had some brief communications; calls, letters, gifts came, but the the two never saw each other again. Then the trickle of communications came to that she called and he didn't call back, not even at Christmas. Old beau Bill Bullitt came by to see Missy but FDR had moved on. The woman who had once had a "ringside seat to history" was no longer a player. It took several women - all working at one time - to do the job she had done at the White House!
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