Meredith College : No Ordinary Time: Photo Gallery: Others

Photo Gallery: Others

William F. Halsey, Jr. (1882-1959)

"Bull" Halsey is best known for victories against the Japanese in the Second World War as fleet commander in the South Pacific and his slogan of "Hit hard, hit fast, hit often." Born on October 30, 1883, in Elizabeth, New Jersey, the son of Captain William F. Halsey, Sr., U.S. Navy, "Bull" was given his appointment to the Naval Academy by President McKinley in 1900. During the First World War, he commanded destroyers that escorted convoys across the Atlantic, which was regularly patrolled by German U-Boats. The next stage of his naval career began when, at the age of fifty-two, Halsey became a naval aviator in 1934. From that point on, he became a leading advocate of carrier warfare. He was quickly assigned successive commands of carrier divisions during the late 1930s and early 1940s, earning promotions at each major command position.

Sea duty on the USS Enterprise prevented Halsey from responding to the attack on Pearl Harbor; however, he aided in the first major U.S. retaliation, the famous April 18, 1942 "Doolittle Raid" on Tokyo. The following October, Admiral Chester Nimitz appointed Halsey commander of the South Pacific forces and the South Pacific area. His command of the South Pacific theater, especially his command of forces that captured Guadalcanal, Bougainville, and other key islands in the Solomon Island Chain catapulted Halsey to fame. In late October 1944, he served as Admiral Nimitz's tactical commander for the Battle of Leyte and helped destroy the Japanese Navy. As the war in the Pacific drew to a close, Halsey's fleet not only participated in the invasion of Okinawa, but he lent his flagship, USS Missouri, as the stage for Japan's formal surrender.

During the war he called ER a "do-gooder" and "dreaded" her arrival in the South Pacific to visit the troops. Halsey's mind began to change soon after ER's arrival as he "marveled" at her work. Towards the end of her trip, ER was permitted to go to Guadalcanal and tour the battlefield and talk with the troops in and out of the hospital. She covered seventeen islands, New Zealand, and Australia, seeing by one estimation 400,000 troops. As she was departing for the United States, Admiral Halsey told her that it was impossible to express his feelings for what she had done for his men.

Following the war, Halsey took the oath as fleet admiral on December 11, 1945, and became the fourth and last officer to hold that esteemed rank. Officially retiring from the navy on March 1, 1947, he accepted the position of President of International Telecommunications Labs, Inc., which he held until 1957. He died at Fishers Island Country Club, Connecticut, on August 16, 1959, and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery, next to his father.

Lucy Mercer

Lucy Page Mercer, daughter of a well -connected but impoverished Washington family, was engaged as Eleanor Roosevelt's social secretary in 1914 to assist with social responsibilities of the wife of the Assistant Secretary of the Navy. In September 1918, Eleanor discovered love letters from Lucy to Franklin and Eleanor offered Franklin his freedom. In the end, Franklin and Eleanor agreed to stay together and Franklin promised never to see Lucy again.

In 1920, Lucy Mercer married Winthrop Rutherfurd, a wealthy widower. Despite his promise, Franklin and Lucy continued to maintain contact and, after the death of Winthrop Rutherfurd in 1944, to meet. Lucy was present at the Little White House, Warm Springs, Georgia, when President Roosevelt died in 1945.

Harry Lloyd Hopkins (1890-1946)

Harry Hopkins was born in Sioux City, Iowa, the fourth child of David Aldona and Anna Pickett Hopkins. Hopkins attended Grinnell College and soon after his graduation in 1912, he took a job with Christodora House, a social settlement in New York City's Lower East Side ghetto. In the spring of 1913 he accepted a position with the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor (AICP) as "friendly visitor" and superintendent of the Employment Bureau. In October 1913, Harry Hopkins married Ethel Gross and the couple eventually had three sons: David (1914-1980), Robert (1921-) and Stephen (1925-1944).

In 1915, New York City Mayor John Purroy Mitchel appointed Hopkins executive secretary of the Bureau of Child Welfare, which administered pensions to mothers with dependent children.

With America's entrance into World War I, Hopkins moved his family to New Orleans where he worked for the American Red Cross as director of Civilian Relief, Gulf Division. Eventually, the Gulf Division of the Red Cross merged with the Southwestern Division and Hopkins, headquartered now in Atlanta, was appointed general manager in 1921. Hopkins helped draft a charter for the American Association of Social Workers (AASW) and was elected its president in 1923.

In 1922, Hopkins returned to New York City where he became general director of the New York Tuberculosis Association. During his tenure there, the agency grew enormously and absorbed the New York Heart Association.

When the Great Depression hit, New York State Governor Franklin Roosevelt called on Hopkins to run the first state relief organization in the nation – the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration (TERA). Hopkins met Eleanor Roosevelt only after he had accepted the job as head of the TERA. She reported, "I never heard of Mr. Hopkins until long after he had been working for my husband in New York State, so that whole paragraph on my having discovered him is untrue. In Albany, Hopkins and ER began an enduring friendship, which had significant impact on New Deal policy.

Soon after Roosevelt's inauguration as president in 1933, he summoned Hopkins to Washington as federal relief administrator. Convinced that work should be the chief antidote to poverty, Hopkins used his influence with FDR to push for federal programs to provide government-sponsored jobs for the unemployed. Reinforced by ER and Lorena Hickok's reports from the field, Hopkins worked to alleviate the suffering of the unemployed by creating work and relief programs for the unemployed. His particular contributions to the New Deal included the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), the Civil Works Administration (CWA), and the Works Progress Administration (WPA). He supported ER's call for a National Youth Administration and the Federal One Programs, and the two worked closely together to promote and defend New Deal relief programs.

During the war years, Hopkins acted as FDR's unofficial emissary to Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin, as administrator of Lend-Lease, and as the shadowy figure behind Roosevelt at the Big Three conferences.

Hopkins died in early 1946, succumbing to a long and debilitating illness.

Lorena Alice Hickok (1893 - 1968)

Lorena Hickok, Eleanor Roosevelt's devoted friend, mentor, and pioneering journalist, was born March 7, 1893, in East Troy, Wisconsin, to Addison Hickok, a buttermaker, and Anna Wiate Hickok, a dressmaker. Violence and instability characterized her early life. Her father beat Lorena and her sisters, had trouble keeping a job and forced the family to move as he sought work, thus interrupting Hickok's education as she traveled from school district to school district. She left home at fourteen to work as a maid, living with nine families in two years, until her mother's cousin Ella Ellis asked Hickok to live with her. Under Ellis's guidance, Hickok finished high school and, in 1912, enrolled in Lawrence College in Appleton, Wisconsin. Ridiculed by her classmates, Hickok never adjusted to college and flunked out after one year. The Battle Creek Evening News hired her to cover train arrivals and departures and to write personal interest stories for $7 a week.

Hickok's role model, the novelist Edna Ferber, began her career as a Milwaukee reporter, so Hickok joined the staff of the Milwaukee Sentinel as its society editor, "the only position available to most women on newspapers." Bored by society assignments, Hickok convinced her editor to assign her to the city desk, where she quickly made a name for herself as a skilled interviewer. She transferred to the Minneapolis Tribune in 1917, only to move to New York City to pursue her hopes of covering World War I. Hickok had trouble adjusting to such a large city, was fired after a month, and returned to Minneapolis to rejoin the Tribune as a rewriter and enroll at the University of Minnesota. Her college education ended when she left the university after the dean tried to force her to live in the women's dormitory. Thomas J. Dillon, the Tribune's managing editor, recognized Hickok's talents, tutored her, and offered her assignments rarely given to women, including politics and sports. "The Old Man," as Hickok called Dillon, taught her the "newspaper business, how to drink and how to live." In 1928, the Associated Press hired Hickok to write feature stories for its wire service. Quickly making a name for herself by covering politics and dramatic stories like the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, Hickok surpassed her male colleagues and won the coveted right to have her name appear as a by-line atop her articles.

Hickok met ER in 1932 when the reporter convinced her editors to assign her to cover ER during the 1932 presidential campaign. The two women quickly trusted one another, with ER speaking honestly about politics and social issues and confiding her fears about her life should FDR win the election. They become so close that Hickok let ER see her stories before she submitted them to her editor, and in one case, agreed to ER's request that a story be delayed. Their campaign experience led to a lifetime of devotion to one another.

In 1933, Hickok left the Associated Press because she could no longer be objective when covering the Roosevelts. ER recommended that Harry Hopkins hire the reporter to investigate conditions average Americans confronted for the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA). For two years, Hickok visited thirty-two states and provided detailed, salty reports on New Deal policy, living conditions, and politics to FDR, ER, and Hopkins. An astute, engaged observer, Hickok could assess the problems a community faced quickly after arriving and could solicit trenchant comments from locals that helped the Roosevelts and Hopkins see their policies from the citizen's point of view.

Hickok also provided invaluable advice to ER as ER struggled to adjust to living in the White House. She recommended ER hold press conferences with only women reporters and encouraged her to resume her writing career, most notably ER's monthly column "Mrs. Roosevelt's Page" and her daily column "My Day," and she edited the articles ER submitted for publication. She also served as ER's trusted sounding board, especially after Louis Howe's death in 1935. Her intense concern for unemployed coal miners spurred ER's concern and played a key role in introducing ER to the West Virginia community later known as Arthurdale . In the early years of the New Deal, the two women vacationed together and Hickok accompanied ER on her official visit to Puerto Rico. When Hickok became executive secretary of the Women's Division of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in 1940, ER invited her to live at the White House.

Hickok's diabetes worsened in early 1945, forcing her to leave the DNC. In 1947, ER helped Hickok secure a job with the New York State Democratic Committee. Hickok's health continued to decline, and in 1954, a frail and partially blind Hickok moved to Hyde Park to be closer to ER. The two women collaborated on Women of Courage, a portrait of women political leaders, and ER tried to stabilize Hickok's finances. Hickok wrote Reluctant First Lady, a biography of ER, and six children's biographies before her death in 1968.