Feisty First Ladies and Other Unforgettable White House Women by Autumn Stephens

Author:Autumn Stephens [Stephens, Autumn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781573446044
Publisher: Cleis Press

“I believe that truth makes for better history than evasions.”

—KS

MAMIE EISENHOWER

RELAXED IN HER ROLE

SOME INDEPENDENT FIRST LADIES thought of the White House as a high-security prison on the Potomac. Others, more enthralled with their fifteen minutes (or four years) of fame, considered it a lovely bully pulpit. But only Mamie Eisenhower—the fluffy, pink-clad consort of manly General Ike—thought that 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was the address of her own personal spa.

“Every woman over fifty should stay in bed until noon,” declared Mamie, an aggressively youthful fifty-seven when Ike took office in 1953, and she wouldn’t be pried from between her rose-colored sheets a moment sooner. Not that every moment in Mamie’s private boudoir was devoted to snoozing: propped comfortably against her pillows, she perused her correspondence, dispensed orders to White House staff, and directed her avid attention to As the World Turns. Soap operas, sighed the luxuriously recumbent first lady (who officially pooh-poohed rumors of her husband’s adulterous affair), were so “true to life.” Meanwhile, across the hall, Mamie’s doting mama reposed in similar splendor, preferring to chat by phone with “Sleeping Beauty” (as staff soon dubbed her daughter) rather than disrupt her own sacrosanct beauty rest.

Needless to say, the president’s wife wasn’t expected to lift a freshly manicured finger around the White House—save, perhaps, to draw it languidly across a window ledge when she suspected the staff wasn’t performing up to snuff. But unlike most other first ladies, who maintained at least a nodding acquaintance with the kitchen (even overextended Eleanor whipped up those legendary Sunday scrambled eggs herself), Mamie pleaded ignorance when it came to producing anything more substantial than her famous fudge. Besides, she explained ingenuously, “Ike cooks anything better than anybody, that’s why I hate to work hard over a meal.”

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