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December 8, 1993
MEMORANDUM FOR CAPRICIA MARSHALL
FROM:
Kim
RE:
Furs
Let me summarize my findings this way: Furs -- bad; plain old cloth coat - good.
As always, I'm torn between thinking she can do whatever she damn well pleases -- and
everyone else be damned -- versus the political reality of how ugly it can get.
Summary
Most of the modern First Ladies have worn fur either as a trim or as a whole coat. While the
animal rights activists didn't like the fur trim, wearing a fur coat made them go ballistic.
Interestingly, the "fur-wearers" V. the "cloth coats" isn't divided along party lines. The most
egredious offenders were Jackie Kennedy and Nancy Reagan; the high-profile "cloth coats"
were Rosalynn Carter and Barbara Bush.
Recommendation - Don't Do It
There are two reasons I'd recommend against a fur coat:
1) We know the animal rights people will go nuts and make a big huge stink -- why have
that kind of bad publicity? Clearly HRC can handle things more gracefully than most other
people, but why have this be an issue at all?
2) It big time sends the wrong message at a time when we're talking about a compassionate
government, one that's going to "make a change". In 1989 Norma Kamali in explaining why
she encouraged the use of fake fur instead of real: "It seems inappropriate to display any sort
of wealth in such devastating times." I'd even go so far as to say it would probably be used
to undercut her credibility on health care. I know it sounds extreme, but given some of the
low blows of our opponents, can't you just see it? ("She may not think $600 is too much for
the average person to spend on premiums each year, but then why should she? She can
afford to buy a fur coat.")
First Ladies and Fur
Jackie Kennedy - I don't have the specifics on this but my understanding is at some point
early in the Administration Jackie Kennedy wore a leopard coat. Given the sway she held on
fashion this started a run on spotted animal coats. Conservationists wrote their Congressional
Members, who established regulations preventing American furriers from importing leopard
and other endangered species' skins.
Lady Bird Jonson - Wore fur trim on her inaugural gown. Doesn't seem to have caused much
of a fuss.
Pat Nixon - Wore a fur coat and hat to the inauguration. I believe they may even have been
loaned to her. This didn't seem to stir up much of a fuss.
Betty Ford - Noting was really said about whether or not she wore fur.
Rosalynn Carter - The only mention I found was by a designer who said that he (or she)
wouldn't ever design anything with fur for her because it would probably offend her
ecologically. (Go figure.)
Nancy Reagan - Man o' man, did she ever take a HIT. As you know, the Press loved to hate
her. Of all the First Ladies, she was the only one on which I found numerous articles on this
topic. As a matter of fact, most of the information I uncovered about the other First Ladies
and fur was in comparing them with NR. The attack on her regarding this topic even
followed her out of the White House. Listed below are a few highlights:
NR wore a mink coat early in the Administration (may have been to the inauguration).
The animal rights people went nuts. Representatives of the groups asked for a
meeting with NR and were granted one with Peter McCoy, her chief of staff. These
folks must not have been the brightest because they came out of it saying they had an
indication that she may not wear her mink coat in the future when what McCoy had
really said was that she wouldn't be wearing her coat in the next six months. The
meeting took place in April; he was referring to the summer months.
Sheila Tate, NR's Press Secretary, helped fuel the fire when the animal rights people
were complaining about the fur trim on NR's coat collar. Tate told a reporter that the
collar was just "a dead animal".
All the controversy put a damper on her fur wearing activities during Reagan's first
term. Upon his re-election, however, the furs re-emerged with far less controversy.
The Reagans were made to pay huge sums of money to the IRS after they left the
White House for gifts received there but didn't declare. Among the undeclared gifts
was a fur given by Galanos for Reagan's second inauguration.
In 1989, NR had agreed to do a Blackglama ad (i.e., the ads in which the sentence
"What becomes a legend most?" appeared under the picture of numerous celebrities)
but backed out with no explanation. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
(PETA) prepared an ad campaign spoofing NR and her intention to do the Blackgama
ad.
Barbara Bush - Made quite a splash by refusing the loan of a fur coat to wear to her
husband's inauguration. This was cited frequently by the animal rights activists as a sign that
times were changing. They lumped her in a category with other high profile women who
declined to wear furs: Princess Diana, Liza Minelli (who had once promoted fur, but then
became a spokeperson against it), Kim Basinger, and Ivana Trump.
Kennery
Fortune -- February 7, 1983, Domestic Edition
HEADLINE: THE FUR TRADE
BYLINE: TEXT Walter McQuade; RESEARCH ASSOCIATE Michael McFadden
BODY: FOR America's furriers, creators of such shimmering and sensuous garments as the
white mink jacket and white Russian lynx coat at left, it may be the best of times, or it may
be an ominous one. Their sales for 1982 will probably be 5% above 1981's record $1 billion.
The really costly coats have kept moving, the $75,000 sables and the even more expensive
Russian lynxes made by such renowned firms as Ben Kahn and Maximilian. But the
American woman's staple symbol of fulfillment, the mink, is leveling off, and many of the
lesser furs that are moving up -- fox, raccoon, and nutria -- are made abroad.
The rationale for the first furs was warmth, and most of the world's fur trade is still
concentrated in the northern climes of Europe and North America. But for centuries furriers'
customs have been governed mainly by whimsical trends of caste and style. In the medieval
court of England, only officers of the royal household were allowed to wear ermine. When
Abraham Lincoln chose a silk hat to wear to his inauguration, instead of the then more
stylish beaver, he probably saved that animal from extinction on these shores. In the late
1940s women stopped buying silver fox; now fox is coming back. Most certainly it is no
longer cold weather that creates customers for furs. Ernest Graf, head man at Ben Kahn
Furs, says that his few expanding markets are not in Manhattan or Chicago but in California
and Texas.
ONLY about 600 manufacturing furriers survive in the U.S.; in the late 1940s there were
2,500. Many disappeared in the 1960s when people began dressing down rather than up, in
a blue denim revolution that eventually affected even middle-aged ladies, the commonest
wearers of fine furs. Disreputable fake furs were the thing to wear in that era. And there
was Jacqueline Kennedy's infamous leopard coat too: the First Lady made the mistake of
appearing in public wearing the skin of that animal, and leopard lovers and other
conservationists wrote their Congressmen, who established regulations preventing American
furriers from importing that and other endangered species' skins. Even some wearers of
non-endangered species felt self-conscious. This ecological shame has since faded somewhat,
and furs, along with stylish dressing, have returned to favor. But now the strong dollar is
shrinking U.S. furriers' exports, which hit a high of more than $550 million in 1980.
ALTHOUGH imports to the U.S. have been growing, reaching more than $100 million last
year, American furriers are still regarded worldwide as second to none. Most are very small.
Ben Kahn Furs totals only 27 people, including Ernest Graf, Mrs. Graf -- the original Ben
Kahn's daughter -- and a Graf daughter and son. They divide their production between
high-quality coats for expensive specialty stores such as Neiman-Marcus, and
made-to-measure coats for the rich and famous -- for example, Reggie Jackson's unsheared
nutria coat and his Russian lynx with sheared nutria lining.
The Ben Kahn shop currently produces only 50 garments per month. To make a
street-length mink coat retailing at $12,000, Graf pays $60 each for 60 to 65 pelts. The rest of
the coat's price, $6,000 at wholesale, reflects labor and overhead. Still, enough profit remains
to send the Grafs skiing in Saint Moritz occasionally and to fuel their speedboat, behind
which the insouciant Ernest Graf, 62, water-skis relentlessly to keep in shape for the real
thing. A year ago, water-skiing on Long Island's Little Neck Bay late in the season, he
noticed it was snowing.
Most of the fur -bearing animals used in this elegant branch of the garment industry are
raised specifically for their fate, and the biggest crop is mink. The technique for raising mink
was developed in the U.S., but today more are bred abroad. While the U.S. produces four
million a year, the U.S.S.R. now raises 11 million. About a quarter of these are sold, along
with some 1.5 million other pelts, at annual fur auctions in Leningrad. Another 10.5 million
are produced annually in Scandinavia. Most European minks had American ancestors; U.S.
ranchers never have hesitated to sell breeding stock abroad. In contrast, the Soviet Union
(like Czarist Russia before it) has closely clutched control of sable, making it illegal to export
breeding stock. As a result almost all sable is Russian sable, of which only 100,000 pelts are
offered at auction each year. Ernest Graf has paid as much as $1,000 a pelt for sable.
U.S. furriers are taking heart from waning interest rates. Small businessmen all, they have
been paying 20% to 22% on investments in untreated mounds of skins. But no relief is in
sight from the nimble fingers of seamstresses in South Korea and Hong Kong. The coats
they produce sometimes sell for only a quarter of the price of the U.S. equivalent. The furs
are not as well made; if you remove the satin lining of a Korean mink coat, you are likely to
see tufts of fur sticking through the underside seams. But the pelts were probably bought
at the same auctions frequented by U.S. furriers, and who ever looks under the lining except
someone in the fur industry?7 characteristic reaction of a customer slipping into a silky
mink is to close her eyes tight in ecstasy.
GRAPHIC: Picture 1, on fifth avenue, fashion designer Halston and an assistant adjust furs
on models in the headquarters of the styling whiz, overlooking St. Patrick's Cathedral. The
jacket is white mink, priced at $5,000. The coat is the most precious of furs, white Russian
lynx, priced at $100,000. Though Halston Enterprises (which is a division of Norton Simon)
shaped the garments, both were manufactured by Ben Kahn furriers. PHOTO: ENRICO
FERORELLI-WHEELER, Picture 2, IN THE FUR DISTRICT of Manhattan, where nearly all
U.S. fur manufacturing is concentrated, two Ben Kahn craftsmen labor over precious pelts.
At left Kominos Vaxevaneris works up a $75,000 sable; his colleague Harry Condos is
finishing a mere $12,000 mink. Many of the furriers are immigrants from the Greek town of
Kastoria, a derivation of the word "beaver" in Greek, where the skills are handed down from
parent to child. An experienced worker earns $500 for a 37-hour week in New York. PHOTO:
JEFF JACOBSON-ARCHIVE; Picture 3, SELECTING PELTS at the largest fur fair of them
all, held annually in Frankfurt, West Germany, furriers and wholesale buyers confer with
dealers amid their prey (mostly foxes). The West Germans probably wear furs more than
any other nationality, including Americans. But the Japanese too are becoming fur bearing;
the trade there is expected to hit $1.1 billion this year, up from $30 million in the early 1970s.
PHOTO: WOLFGANG STECHE-VISUM; Pictures 4 through 7, AT THE HIGH-FASHION
Fendi workrooms in Rome, furriers follow the basic steps for making a fur coat. Tanned
pelts are tacked to boards and stretched. The length of the fur is measured for matching the
pelts. Then each pelt -- in this case mink -- has its skin scored in diagonal strips, which
loosens it for sinuous tailoring. The scorings are sewn back together, and the assembled furs
are fastened to a board, wetted, and left for 24 hours before being cleaned, ironed, lined, and
finished. PHOTOS: WOLFGANG STECHE-VISUM; Picture 8, WHOLESALE BUYERS
scrutinize finished coats during a fashion show by the house of Rosenberg & Lenhart in
Frankfurt. The furs are paraded by type; this part of the revue is all fox, worked in various
ways. The models hold numbers so the buyers will be able to identify their preferences later.
Kennedy
Copyright 1980 Time Inc. All Rights Reserved
Fortune
March 10, 1980, Domestic Edition
SECTION: Pg. 110
LENGTH: 5240 words
HEADLINE: Two-Income Families Will Reshape the Consumer Markets
SERIES: THE U.S. ECONOMY IN THE 80'S, Sixth in a series.
BYLINE: by WALTER KIECHEL III; Research associate: Peter David Petre
BODY: The American bazaar, that ongoing celebration of goods and colors, of wish
and feel and ownership unsurpassed in history among so numerous a people, will hum
with novel rhythms in the 1980's. A new class will rise to preeminence in shaping
consumer tastes. Inflation will drive Americans from one refuge to another, and
occasionally to the subterfuges of the untaxed underground economy. Adjustments in the
use of energy, while probably less important than many suppose, may also alter the
collective pace.
A marketplace whose offerings already clothe the nation decently -- or indecently,
when desired -- and feed it all too well, will bedazzle with the customary new marvels:
appliances that listen, and reply; bedsheets festooned with peonies, on a background of
wild plum; weekend joypops to Paris or London. Those Americans who can't avail
themselves of such wonders will scrape to keep up whatever lifestyle they have managed
to achieve. As propounded by Martin Duffy of Data Resources, Inc., "There is one
hypothesis in consumer economics which seems always to have held: people will try to
maintain and enhance their real levels of consumption, despite increasing costs."
The resulting scramble should produce real increases in consumer spending averaging
3.7 percent a year over the decade to come, according to an estimate prepared for
FORTUNE by Townsend-Greenspan & Co. The figure achieved in the 1970's was 3.5
percent. A rate of 3.7 percent, which parallels a projected average annual real increase
in disposable income of 3.7 percent, would propel overall personal-consumption
expenditures to the $1.325-trillion level in 1989, measured in 1972 dollars, compared with
$921 billion in 1979. That won't leave much for savings, which will recover from the
recent cyclical low and hover above 5 percent, a bit less than the postwar average.
Of more interest to businessmen, however, will be the twists and turns along the way --
the action in individual markets, the shift of dollars among them. Unfortunately, the
latter issue -- how and why spending on, say, furniture might increase at the expense of
cars -- is likely to remain clouded. Few economists study consumer spending exclusively,
and fewer still the cross-elasticities that obtain between one product or service and
another.
Absent such research, the best tack is that followed by analysts examining a single
market: array the demographic data and crosshatch with information on attitudes and
behavior. What one hopes will emerge is a picture of consumer armies, marching
according to some decipherable logic toward relatively predictable goals. In the 1950's
and 1960's, the march was to suburbia. By comparison, the 1970's seemed an era of
leaderless platoons, half-crazed commandos, and potshots from nowhere.
"Society no longer put forward a coherent set of values, a consensus, for people to live
by," suggests Arnold Brown, of Weiner, Edrich, Brown, Inc., a firm engaged in
contemplating society for its client corporations. The few values that pundits did detect
were of the most pluralistic, if not atomistic, sort. The children of the organization man,
those youngsters clucked over in The Lonely Crowd for their "other-direction," had grown
up to become the "me generation," pilloried for their self-centeredness.
Whatever its merits as a creed, the focus on self was a thesis that lacked predictive
power. It wouldn't explain where people planned to live, or portend much about what
kind of clothing or furniture they would buy. Instead, its chief lesson for marketers
appeared to be the necessity to divide up the total consumer audience into ever smaller
groups. Only rifle-shot segmentation could identify a body of consumers -- albeit a small
one -- with tastes similar enough to pitch a product to.
The good news for the 1980's is that such balkanization may no longer be the major
theme. A new army is marching into the marketplace, one relatively cohesive in its
behavior and affluent enough to dominate the shaping of consumer attitudes for years to
come. These new lords of creation are the two-worker households -- let us say, for
illustration, a married couple, each of whom works in a city, who plan to celebrate the
husband's forty-second birthday in 1990.
Earlier articles in this series have noted the extraordinary rise in the number of
working women, and their increasing contribution to family incomes. The majority of
wives today are in the paid labor force, and a glance back at the consumer's financial
position through the 1970's partly explains why that second paycheck became so
important. From 1972 on, the cost of most necessities -- food eaten at home, shelter,
transportation, and medical care -- increased more rapidly than income per family, even
as inflation drove many families into higher tax brackets.
In the imagery of Jay Siegel of the Planning Economics Group, the effect was that of a
pair of scissors, the one blade taxes, the other necessities, cutting into discretionary
income. According to Siegel's calculations, families in the $20,000-t -$25,000 income
group in 1972 had an average discretionary income of $13,533. By 1978, the families in
that group whose incomes had merely kept even with inflation had seen their
discretionary income decline to an average of $12,755, measured in 1972 dollars.
The implicit lesson was not lost on the millions of American households fiercely
interested in maintaining their standard of living, or even -- audacity -- improving it. The
family needed a big jump in income if it was to avoid a slow squeeze on its spending.
Arthur Shapiro, a senior vice president at Yankelovich, Skelly & White, recently
summarized the ideology that emerged: "The way you fight the economic battle is by
having two wage earners."
The impetus to buoy up the household's standard of living was not, of course, the only
reason women went to work. As made clear in the article on family incomes in this
series, the women entering the work force in greatest numbers today are precisely those
-- well educated, often already married to men with above-median incomes -- who a
generation ago would have been regarded as prime candidates for domestic bliss in the
suburbs. Getting and spending in tandem with their spouses, this new group -- the
dual-career elite in the phalanx of working couples -- will shape the consumer habits of
the nation as thoroughly as their suburban parents did. Nelson N. Foote, former
chairman of the sociology department at Hunter College, described the emerging trend
and its importance. "A few years back it was hazardous to talk about the dual-career
pattern -- people were embracing it, but in pieces. Now it is as coherent and as
self-consistent as the suburban pattern was. And as major."
The dual-career couple will lead the way in a general movement toward affluence that
millions of other working couples will participate in. The preceding article in this series
detailed the shift in family incomes likely to occur in the 1980's, a shift that will at once
push more families into the $25,000-plus income bracket, calculated in 1977 dollars, and
also give the families in that bracket a higher percentage of the total personal income
accruing to the nation. The difference in aggregate discretionary income between those
families and the rest will be even more dramatic (see drawing, page 111).
Families with annual incomes of $25,000 or more already have a higher proportion of
wives in the paid labor force -- 57 percent in 1977 -- than any other income class.
Affluent members of the baby-boom generation seem to be especially aware of the
difference a good woman can make. Some 2.1 million families headed by a person
twenty-five to thirty-four made $25,000 a year or more in 1977. Two-thirds of the wives
in this group worked.
Both broad trends and specific tastes give evidence of the usefulness of working
couples as guides to what's going on in consumer markets. A current truism holds that
time is the most precious commodity in the American home. For no one more so than
for these families. Retailers in New York City and Chicago detect a movement of
affluent young couples back toward the center city. They attribute it to the energy
crunch, but dual-career types -- focused on work, finding their friends there, each faced
with a commute -- have their own reasons for leading the migration. According to a
study done by Thomasville Furniture Industries, what women want in furniture these
days is convenience -- easy care, minimal dusting. The respondents were all full-time
housewives, yet the attitudes were precisely those one would expect from the two-worker
family.
The prudent merchant, while seriously considering hitching his wagon to the twin stars
of the 1980's, will also constantly check the economic ground beneath his, and their, feet.
In particular, he will monitor the tremors of inflation, seeking a sense of their effects
upon the buying patterns of his customers. So far, the evidence is confused.
Consumers clearly believe there is cause to worry. Together with many company
economists, they expect higher rates of long-term inflation than do most econometricians,
including Townsend-Greenspan. According to the survey Research Center of the
University of Michigan, consumers currently anticipate that, in the mid- to late 1980's,
inflation will be running at a 9 percent annual rate. By comparison, in projections
prepared for this FORTUNE series, Townsend-Greenspan foresees a rate of 5 percent at
the end of that period, a figure fairly close to that of other econometricians. The
econometricians agree that a sustained rate anywhere near double digits would make
hash of their forecasts for individual consumer markets.
The current inflation has already introduced an element of uncertainty about the
working of price effects -- the traditional notion that as the price of something goes up,
consumers buy less of it. To be sure, Americans can still spot a bargain. In the 1970's,
the consumer-expenditure categories with lower rates of price inflation generally
experienced higher real growth in sales (see chart, page 117). According to the findings
of the Survey Research Center, however, price effects in some categories seem
occasionally to have given way to what is termed the "buy in advance" psychology. The
question of whether such psychology will wax or wane, and how it will alter historical
purchase patterns, glowers over the markets for big-ticket items, most critically over the
markets for housing and automobiles, each the subject of a future article in this series.
Inflation has also further muddied the already muddy nature of the effect of wealth on
spending. While economists haven't yet settled the issue to their satisfaction, it appears
that spending increases with wealth -- the more money a family has, the more its current
income will be devoted to consumption. Of late, however, Americans have kept
spending furiously even while taking on higher levels of debt.
What seems to be happening is that consumers are lumping their real assets -- e.g., the
family home -- in with their financial assets in evaluating their wealth (see chart at left).
If this is the case, then continued inflation in housing prices should bolster the spending
of families who already own a home. A break in the price of houses, on the other hand,
might temporarily dry up spending in a number of markets that on the surface seem
totally unrelated to housing. It is clear that Americans have recently cashed in as never
before on the increased value of their homes. Between 1971 and 1979, the annual
number of housing resales nearly doubled to 3.8 million, with the proceeds going toward
another house or, as Alan Greenspan suspects, toward a big-ticket purchase such as a
boat or the ubiquitous family pickup truck. By FORTUNE's estimate, this cash-in on
housing values has added at least 1 percent a year to personal incomes.
Related to the wealth effect is the much-proclaimed discovery that Americans are
becoming more like Europeans in their response to inflation. The telltale signs,
supposedly, are a heightened propensity to put money into goods rather than into paper;
a greater interest in quality, extending even to a willingness to pay more for it; and the
choice to buy fewer, but better goods. It may simply be, though, that those increasingly
numerous upper-income families have lots to spend, and are trading up when they do so.
What will they buy? Furniture, almost certainly. Spending in this market amounted to
only $17 billion in 1978, less than was spent on tobacco, and there should be plenty of
room for growth. Baby-boom cohorts will form households and presumably need
something to sit down on, though not necessarily something designed for a suburban
tract house. Their furniture-buying behavior already reflects the greater mutualism of
the two-worker family. "It used to be that the husband would just say, 'Okay, you can
spend the $300," recalls Nathan S. Ancell, the chairman of Ethan Allen. "Now he's as
interested as she is in what their home's interior is going to look like."
In the short term, all those housing resales could boost activity in the furniture market.
But too drastic a rise in housing prices might slow spending by families buying a first
home. It already takes first-time purchasers from one to three years to get together
enough money to buy much furniture. That period could grow longer -- manufacturers
report seeing expensive condominiums in California where whole rooms stand completely
bare.
The size and style of furniture will also change, though gradually. Most manufacturers
are betting that the average floor space of new dwelling units will decline. This betokens
smaller-sized pieces, and more use of convertible furniture -- sofas and chairs that turn
into beds, perhaps coffee tables that become dining tables.
The tendency toward smaller furniture, together with that late-Seventies concern for
quality, probably helped hasten the demise of the Mediterranean style, a farrago of
massive size, ornate carving, and dreams of a sirocco-swept land that never was.
Furniture makers, unable to afford the elaborate woodworking required, had begun to
use molded plastic facades on their pieces. Customers responded by knocking the
product, both figuratively and literally -- tapping with their knuckles to find out where
the value was.
The lesson for the 1980's is that, in the consumer's mind, "quality" equals "real wood."
As a material, wood will predominate both in those increasingly popular pieces labeled
"casual" or "contemporary," and in a burgeoning style called "eighteenth century." (The
latter is patterned after American pieces of the 1700's, not the Louis Quinze style.)
According to its proponents, contemporary furniture answers the needs of the busy, less
formal modern household. Wipe it off; don't worry about polishing. It's also consistent
with the trends they see in the uses of space: fewer formal dining rooms, more gatherings
in the kitchen, and the spread of the "great room" -- a combination dining room, den,
and family room -- already extending from the Sunbelt to new homes as far north as
Virginia.
The eighteenth-century style, by comparison, attracts a crowd interested in an antique
look, and perhaps also in certain antique values. In the opinion of Jay Schaffer, a
consumer analyst for Sperry & Hutchinson, "If Americans are going to conserve, they'll
have to have role models. They may well find those models in our thrifty founding
fathers," who presumably used eighteenth-century furniture. The market is not confined
to older people. Sheet makers report a boom in bed linens trimmed with lace. The
buyers are mostly in their twenties.
Schaffer sees another potential upshot of the movement to conserve energy:
Americans may become more aware, and appreciative, of the changing seasons. To
judge from the sales of energy-saving housewares, many consumers are already in better
touch with the weather. Edward Donnell, chairman of Montgomery Ward, recently
noted that one of his chain's best-selling items is the "Casablanca ceiling fan," which
wafts warm air downward in winter and produces a mild breeze in summer. Americans
are also diving under electric blankets. Retailers report sales of these items up nearly 40
percent in the last year. (But not sales of the unpowered variety. "Consumers just don't
seem to think that regular blankets save energy," observes Fieldcrest president David
Tracy.)
The impetus to conserve probably won't do much to bestir sales of major appliances,
however. While customers do ask nowadays about energy efficiency, no one is rushing
out to trade in his refrigerator. This $13-billion market is mature, its prospects largely
dependent upon housing construction and replacement purchases. What some call "asset
saturation" is readily apparent in the nation's stock of appliances: virtually all households
have a refrigerator and a gas or electric range, 76 percent a clothes washer. Less
common appliances -- only 37 percent of households have dishwashers -- should
experience higher sales growth than the others.
The principal excitement in this market will probably come from the incorporation of
new electronics into existing types of appliances. This process, already under way, might
even launch the microwave oven on the dizzying upward course so long expected of it.
In 1979, about 2.7 million units were sold, up 12 percent from the previous year For the
time being, consumers have apparently decided that the device is best for defrosting
frozen food and boiling water. Ah, but what if the microwave oven talked? The
possibilities include a menu card, one per dish, that would not only control the oven's
functions and timing, but also give spoken instructions on how to prepare, say, duck a
l'orange, and call out when it was done to perfection.
Microwave ovens may not be the only talking appliances around the house. A few
television sets will respond with a cheery "Okay" to their owner's spoken command to
turn on or change channels. Purchases of TV's with some form of remote control, now
representing about 20 percent of color sets sold, should help television to continue to
defy customary notions of saturation. There are already TV's in about 98 percent of
American homes, and perhaps 150 million sets in service, but the industry keeps selling
new ones at a rate of 16 million a year. Only a third are thought to be replacement
purchases, suggesting that if present trends continue, in the late 1980's there will be
almost one television for every man, woman, and child in the nation.
The possibility of spectacular growth in consumer electronics awaits not so much in
television sets, however, as in what may be attached to them -- video-casette recorders,
videodiscs, and video games. VCR's were introduced in 1975. Around 200,000 were
sold in 1977, 475,000 last year -- substantial growth, but less than many observers
expected. By way of explanation, manufacturers cite the still high price of the item, and
consumer confusion over competing VCR technologies, confusion compounded by the
prospect of videodisc systems to come. The real crux, though, may be the attitude of
Americans to what they see on the television screen. Is it merely a passing show to catch
when the viewer can, or is it an aesthetic event worth preserving?
Questions of attitude also loom over the prospects of the home computer. An
estimated $100 million worth of them were sold in 1979, mostly to hobbyists. Future
growth will probably depend upon how complex Americans judge their "household
administration" to be, how much they want to work at home, and whether the managerial
class -- perhaps the best prospective customers -- can be persuaded to overcome their
traditional aversion to sitting down at anything like a computer terminal. The market
will also depend upon what sorts of cable-television or communications systems the
computers can be tied in with.
Consumers' developing rapport with the machines may be helped along by their
experiences with electronic games and toys. According to estimates from the Toy
Manufacturers of America, total annual sales of the products have jumped from $21
million to $375 million in the past two years. Demand is not a problem, but supply is --
specifically, supply of the electronic chips responsible for the devices' fiendish logic.
Even without the dollars paid for toys and games, however, spending on consumer
electronics -- which amounted to $19 billion in 1978 -- could easily increase twice as fast
as overall spending in the 1980's.
In the eyes of some consumer analysts, much of this growth, and the sales growth of
housewares generally, will be spurred by a new "focus on the home," i.e., Americans
retreating to the family castle and raising the drawbridge. The brooding omnipresence
of national and international problems will supposedly send people indoors, and gasoline
prices keep them there. They will see their spending on fuel oil and coal rise -- though
less than half as fast in real terms as overall consumer expenditures,
Townsend-Greenspan projects -- and use the telephone more.
Probably the more realistic forecast is that Americans won't change their
perambulation very much, barring a major cutoff in the supply of oil. Economists at
major oil companies such as Exxon and Standard Oil (Indiana) point out that while
drivers did cut back some immediately after sharp price increases in the 1970's, they
rather quickly returned to their old habits as the real price of gasoline fell. What
consumers seem to be doing to conserve is to buy more fuel-efficient cars.
Approximately 60 percent of the automobiles purchased in December, 1979, for instance,
were compacts or subcompacts. Gasoline used per driver thus will probably decline,
miles driven remain the same. Townsend-Greenspan estimates that spending on gasoline
and motor oil will not increase on a real basis during the coming decade. Last year,
after the sharpest price hikes since 1974, such spending catapulted to an estimated $65
billion, even though consumption dropped by 2 percent.
Another item Americans could stand to conserve is food. For years, waste has bloated
the national grocery bill, and it may be getting worse. In 1978, consumers spent $197
billion on victuals to be consumed at home, $69 billion on meals and snacks at
restaurants. Unless dining habits change appreciably, both eat-in spending and the
restaurant tab should increase about 2 percent a year through the 1980's in real terms
From 1977 to 1978, the Department of Agriculture conducted the most extensive
survey of American eating habits ever undertaken. Data were obtained from
approximately 15,000 households. Preliminary findings indicate that on a per-person,
per-day basis, 2,900 calories entered the typical household, but only about 1,800 to 1,900
calories made it to stomach. As D. Mark Hegsted, administrator of the USD's Human
Nutrition Center puts the question, "Where does all of that food go?"
Those 1,800 calories represent a drop from the average caloric intake recorded in a
similar survey in 1965, with the average caloric consumption of infants declining the most
-- by 34 percent. And yet, mean weights of individuals in 1965 and 1977 did not differ
greatly, arguing an increasingly sedentary population. Ninety-seven percent of the
households surveyed reported they had enough to eat.
The 1977 survey also confirmed that the longest-running consumer trend in the
American food market was still under way. The nation continued to improve the quality
and variety of its diet: more meat, poultry, fish, green vegetables, and fresh fruit; fewer
potatoes and dry beans. The national sweet booth made for one anomaly, however. The
biggest winner in 1977 was a category called "soft drinks, punches, and prepared desserts"
-- consumption had increased 36 percent since 1965.
Other changes suggest that the secular trend may be shifting, though. Historically, and
as observed in developing nations today, a population upgrading its diet tends to eat
more fats and oils, more sugar and processed foods, and fewer commodities such as
grain. The U.S. may have topped out in this respect. The 1977 survey found that
consumption of fats and oils, sugar, and candy had declined. According to Malcolm
McNiven, a vice president at Pillsbury, consumption of bread and grain products is
currently increasing -- it was one of the few categories to survive the additive scares of
the 1970's with a clean bill of health. In McNiven's view, what may be afoot is a trend
back to more commodity-based products, prepared in forms convenient for the consumer
to use. (It might be noted that Pillsbury has an instant pasta in test markets.)
Whether this shift proves out or not, grocery shoppers will continue to be guided by an
interest in convenience, in the kind of built-in preparation that many processed foods
offer. At the same time, they will be concerned about nutrition -- reaching in some
quarters to a notion of food-as-medicine -- and worried about too much being built into
what they eat. Moreover, the same working mother who repairs to McDonald's three
times a week may settle down on the weekend for a bout of gourmet cooking. Diet soda
with pizza, health food for lunch, and junk food for dinner -- the trends in the market for
food are precisely as consistent as the eating habits of Americans.
The clothing shopper will share the food shopper's desire for convenience. Experts in
the industry say that it is a truth universally to be acknowledged these days that no wife,
mother, or inamorata will iron a man's shirt. (The task takes seventeen minutes on
average for an all-cotton shirt, according to the Phillips-Van Heusen Corp.) Since less
than 10 percent of the male population send their shirts out to be laundered, that means
a lot of wash-and-wear, which pattern undoubtedly will persist.
Jeans, on the other hand, require no pressing. This may in part account for their
phenomenal popularity. They have dominated the men's and boys' clothing market of the
1970's, with the number of pairs manufactured domestically growing from 59 million a
year in 1964 to a peak of 187 million pairs in 1973. Men's suits, by comparison,
continued their long-term decline, from over 20 million cuttings in 1964 to about 16
million in 1976. While there may be some slight wavelet coming in sales of dressier
clothing as babyboom males go off to work, the historical tide is obviously running
toward ever-greater informality. (The men's pajama business, it may be noted, is sinking
even faster than suits.) But if men seem to be dressing down these days, women are
dressing up, particularly for work. Townsend-Greenspan projects that the men's market,
which had sales of $27 billion in 1978, should grow at about the same real rate as overall
consumer spending; the women's market, almost twice as large, about 30 percent faster.
On the distaff side, the frock is in trouble. Working women apparently want the same
types of durable fabrics that go into better men's clothing. They also may be eschewing
styles that promise to blow away with the next breeze of fashion. While domestic
cuttings of women's untrimmed coats -- blazers, jackets -- increased gradually from 18
million a year in 1964 to 21 million in 1976, cuttings of better dresses dropped from 171
million to 116 million. The dresses women do buy today may well have a designer label.
Such labels seem to have replaced the name of a department store as an assurance of
the owner's good taste.
For real assurance, there's always fur. With estimated sales of $858 million last year,
the fur industry has just completed the five best years in its history. The concern for
endangered species provoked by Jacqueline
Kennedy's leopard-skin coat has died down, and that efflorescent species, working
women, are spending at least part of their money on themselves. "There's not much of
the sugar daddy these days," reports Ernest Graf, the president of Ben Kahn Furs.
Some predict that flatter furs such as Persian lamb will gain in popularity, raccoon and
fox lose. Mink will be just fine.
Indeed, all those $25,000-a-year-plus families will not stint on luxuries, or fun.
Analysts at American Express believe that two-wage-earner families tend to take more
"getaway" vacations. They may need such retreats more, and if two schedules are to be
arranted, coordinated, and rearranged, better to use the resulting free time for travel
rather than for sitting around the house. The fastest-growing leisure market, however,
will probably continue to be gambling. According to extrapolations from University of
Michigan data, Americans legally wagered an estimated $55 billion last year, and at least
another $10 billion illegally. The total should keep rising at a 15 to 20 percent real
growth rate. Those increasingly numerous upper-income individuals bet more money
than the poor, but put a lower proportion of their income on the line. Moreover,
according to some students of gambling, higher inflation stimulates betting.
With their parents at the tables, or at work, who's going to take care of the
children?Child care may prove to be one of the most promising consumer markets of the
1980's, just as it was one of the most baffling in the 1970's. Today, over 50 percent of all
children under eighteen have working mothers, including at least seven million tykes
under six. But many companies that in the early 1970's opened daycare centers for their
workers' children have since closed them down, finding that the facilities didn't reduce
absenteeism or improve productivity. One expert reached the unsurprising conclusion
that parents don't like to take their kids to work with them.
Currently, about 5 percent of children with working mothers are watched over by
publicly subsidized child-care centers, 20 percent by private day-care facilities -- mostly
unlicensed, so-called mom-and-pop operations. Many of those busy two-worker couples
have apparently turned to family or friends to provide such care. Or to the untaxed
underground economy -- in this market, as in others, the chief beneficiary of
inflation.Still, an estimated 90 percent of the school-age population with working parents
remain "latch key" children, letting themselves into their houses and apartments at the
end of the school day.
Whatever their situation during the daylight hours, though, one hopes that these
children, and all children, will issue forth from their homes into the night air of April,
1986, to witness the arrival of Halley's comet, last seen in 1910 and the only bright, or --
to use the technical term -- fresh, comet that appears at such frequent intervals.
Throughout human history, comets have been thought to portend war, famine, and the
death of kings. But certain populations maintain the belief that wine pressed in the year
a comet appears is the best wine of all. They call this vintage, flavorful and fragrant,
comet wine. For many American families, particularly those with two workers at their
head, much of the decade to come should prove to be years of comet wine.
GRAPHIC: Chart 1, HAPPY HEIGHTS OF AFFULENCE, By 1990, nearly 40 percent
of the 67 million American families will be earning more than $25,000 a year, in 1977
dollars. This fortunate group will command more than 60 percent of the nation's
disposable income. The total available for spending on frills and fancies will swell
impressively, even while outlays on necessities (including food consumed at home,
shelter, utilities, clothing, transportation, and medical services) are growing too. The
breakdowns are FORTUNE estimates applied to in come projections by
Townsend-Greenspan and the Census Bureau., Drawing by Lonnie Sue Johnson; Chart 2,
With the family home soaring in value, consumers have been more willing to go into
debt to maintain their spending. Financial assets include pension funds, which haven't
grown as fast as disposable income, but exclude holdings of corporate equities, which
have done even worse. Drawing by Lonnie Sue Johnson; Chart 3, Consumers were quick
to spot bargains during the inflationary 1970's. In this decade, as in the last, one good
way to buoy sales will be to restrain price increases. The figures used in the chart are
from the Department of Commerce's G.N.P. accounts. Drawing by Lonnie Sue Johnson
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
NR
Copyright 1987 The Times Mirror Company
Los Angeles Times
March 22, 1987, Sunday, Home Edition
SECTION: Magazine; Page 6; Magazine Desk
HEADLINE: FIGHTING BACK; OVER THE COURSE OF HER HUSBAND'S POLITICAL
CAREER, NANCY REAGAN HAS DEVELOPED HER OWN MISSION: TO PROTECT
RONALD REAGAN, NO MATTER WHAT
BYLINE: By ELIZABETH MEHREN and BETTY CUNIBERTI, Elizabeth Mehren and Betty
Cuniberti are Times staff writers.
BODY:
PRESIDENT REAGAN CALLED IT "despicable fiction." His wife, he said angrily, had not
engineered the replacement of his White House chief of staff and she wasn't involved in any
government decision-making. "There is nothing to that," he said of the headlines that called
her a "power behind the throne" and "the new Edith Wilson."
Yet the image of Nancy Reagan as a tough, savvy political infighter who jealously guards
her husband's good name surfaced years before Donald T. Regan drove out the White House
gates after abruptly resigning. It has been, in fact, almost as enduring as the extraordinarily
close 35-year marriage that has sustained Reagan through his rise from actor to California
governor to President of the United States.
Without Nancy, friends of the couple candidly declare, Ronald Reagan would probably not
be President. She has always been her husband's best friend and closest adviser, "the one
person I can trust." To former Nevada Sen. Paul Laxalt, she is "the indispensable factor in his
political life."
What has always been special about her, friends say, is the intensity with which she
supports him -- an adoration that in public moments comes across as "the gaze" upward at
him, and that in his elected life has translated into a special ability to mold an environment
that best promotes his political skills. "Some people you meet in your life make you stretch to
reach your fullest capabilities," she wrote of her adoptive father; it might well have also
applied to her marriage.
Nancy Reagan's is an influence that has been molded by a series of episodes that both
threatened her husband's career and presented an opportunity for her to help shape his
future. They have transformed her from the backstage political wife of his Sacramento years
to the far more forceful White House figure working to repair the damage from the worst
scandal of his career.
"So many of the people they know have died," a friend says of the Reagans today. "Neither
of them has a lot of close friends; they're each other's.
There's nothing that they don't do
together."
I. THE LONELY YEARS
"I had a few rough times in the beginning." -- FROM "NANCY," BY NANCY REAGAN
WITH BILL LIBBY
JUST A FEW MONTHS after Anne Frances Robbins was born in Manhattan on July 6,
1921, her father, car dealer Kenneth Robbins, left her mother. Two years later, her mother,
actress Edith Luckett, decided that the toddler was thwarting her career. Little Anne, who
had been nicknamed Nancy, was sent off to live with an aunt and uncle in Bethesda, Md.
The separation was traumatic and over the years led to Nancy's determination to be a
model wife and mother. She focused on a future filled with romance and family. Nancy
Reynolds, a friend of the First Lady since she was her press secretary in Sacramento, sees
that same impulse still. Mrs. Reagan, she says, has "the strongest nesting instinct I've ever
seen."
"My aunt and uncle were very nice to me," Nancy Reagan said in a 1982 interview with
The Times, "but I missed my mother. Very much. She had to earn a living, and she couldn't
take me touring all over the country with her. And I guess somewhere I said to myself way
back here" -- she paused, pointing to the back of her head -- " 'Boy, when I get married!' "
The lonely little girl would take dolls and toy dishes out to the front of the house in
Maryland and give pretend parties. When she suffered a bout of pneumonia at age 4 without
her mother to care for her, she decided: "If I ever have a child and she's sick, I'll certainly be
with her." Another time, during a visit with her natural father, Nancy and he got into an
argument about her mother and he locked her in a bathroom. "I was terrified," she wrote in
"Nancy," her autobiography, "and it seemed suddenly as if I were with strangers. Recalling
the incident brings back a flood of memories I would rather forget."
Her rescuer from those turbulent early years was Loyal Davis, the wealthy Chicago
surgeon her mother married in 1929. Davis adopted her when she was 14, and he showered
her with love and material comforts. There would be difficult times yet: Her 18-month
courtship by a Princeton student, Frank Birney, ended in tragedy when he was struck by a
train and killed; and she called off an engagement to an Amherst College student after
deciding that she had simply been "swept up in the glamour of the war, wartime
engagements and waiting for the boys who were away."
But she would find a model in her mother, whom she came to see as "the ideal doctor's
wife," expert at hosting her husband's social affairs. She emulated her mother in another way,
pursuing an acting career after she graduated from Smith College in Northampton, Mass.
Between 1949 and 1956 she would make 11 films.
Although actress Nancy Davis had a keen survivor's instinct and a certain toughness, she
remained vulnerable to hurt and rejection -- and yearned for love and approval. When she
received her first fan letter, she was "so excited when they gave it to me that I pinned it on
the front of my dress and wore it around the studio." When a make-up artist commented that
her eyes were too big, she walked around the rest of the day with her eyes half closed, and
stopped only after he convinced her he'd been joking.
Once, she was fired from an acting part. "I found out how painful it is to be rejected," she
recalled years later. "I begged the director to go back to the dressing room to get my coat and
purse as I did not want to face the other people in the show
I left, humiliated and
depressed."
She met her second rescuer while playing in the movie "East Side, West Side." The director
introduced her to fellow Warner Bros. actor Ronald Reagan. They married a year later, on
March 4, 1952. "I have never really been able to understand women who say they lost their
identity when they got married," she has said. "It seems to me to be completely the opposite.
My life began when I married Ronnie."
II. FIRST MOVES
"In Sacramento, and afterward, protecting Ronnie became a full-time job." -- LOU
CANNON, IN "REAGAN"
RONALD REAGAN is in trouble. Members of his inner circle have resigned under a cloud
of suspicion, and the episode is threatening to permanently mar a successful term. His
Administration is in a state of shock; his longtime advisers agree that part of the problem is
that he has over-delegated his responsibilities. It is the worst crisis of his political career: the
so-called homosexual scandal of 1967.
Reagan, presented with allegations that two of his aides were homosexual, had quietly
demanded their resignations. For the next 2 1/2 months, his governorship went into what
one person called a "receivership," as surviving aides fretted over the possibility that the
incident would hit the press. When it did, in a short item in Newsweek that said a top GOP
presidential candidate had a sordid scandal on his hands, Nancy Reagan stepped in.
She had always been an important adviser, but for the most part, she was depicted as a
poised socialite who smiled politely, if not especially warmly, and deflected questions about
her influence on the governor. "My life is homemaking
antiquing, things like that," she
told interviewer Nancy Skelton.
She bristled at suggestions that she took a detailed interest in her husband's official duties.
In "The Rise of Ronald Reagan," journalist Bill Boyarsky relates the story of a reporter who
had been in Reagan's office when the phone rang. Reagan apologized, saying, "It's my wife."
The governor had made a statement in Sacramento, only to be contradicted by his finance
director. "Yes, dear," he said several times, then: "No, dear, I don't think he was being
insubordinate."
After Newsweek's mention of the homosexual scandal, journalist Lou Cannon relates in his
book "Reagan," Nancy Reagan urged communications director Lyn Nofziger to get the story
killed. Instead, Nofziger deliberately leaked it to five newspapers and CBS News -- hoping
that by giving it an airing, the issue would be forgotten long before Reagan's presidential bid
in 1968. But the plan backfired. Subsequent charges and denials created a lengthy credibility
crisis for the governor.
Mrs. Reagan had never liked the frumpy Nofziger, aides said at the time. And, according
to Cannon, she urged that he be fired and refused to talk with him for months when Reagan
kept him.
Nofziger had made Reagan look bad, and protecting the man who had delivered her from
loneliness would become Mrs. Reagan's enduring theme. "The bottom line for my mom,"
their son Ron would say years later, "is: Is this person hurting my father or helping him?
And once she's come down on one side or the other, then she's going to be either a very
powerful ally, or an enemy you don't want to have."
III. THE EMISSARY
"I would say she does not like dissonance in (his) life." -- FORMER REAGAN STAFFER
THE NETWORKS AND newspapers called it a "stunning upset" in January, 1980, when
George Bush narrowly beat heavily favored Ronald Reagan in the Iowa Republican caucuses.
Analysts faulted Reagan for having been overconfident, aloof -- for having not taken
seriously the first key test of the presidential race.
To make matters worse, the Reagan camp was rife with dissension. The campaign was
running a deficit, and campaign manager John P. Sears III was under internal attack for poor
management. Ever since Sears had succeeded in ousting longtime Reagan advisers Michael
K. Deaver and Lyn Nofziger, his dealings with the candidate had been strained; he was also
locked in a bitter power struggle with chief of staff Edwin Meese III, a trusted Californian. It
was clear an independent outsider was needed to get the campaign back on track.
According to James Lake, the campaign's press secretary and an ally of Sears, Nancy
Reagan took the first step. At Sears' suggestion, she contacted William P. Clark, whom
Reagan, as governor, had appointed to the California Supreme Court. She asked him if he
would be interested in taking over. "We knew things were deteriorating," Lake says today.
"We wanted someone who would not be seen as a Sears person."
In "Reagan," Lou Cannon writes that Clark asked Mrs. Reagan if the Reagan camp didn't
already have a leader. "That's our problem," she replied. "We've got two." Though Clark was
unwilling to leave the bench, this was the beginning of the end for Sears. Two weeks later,
on the afternoon of the New Hampshire primary, Ronald Reagan called Sears, press secretary
Lake and political director Charles Black to his hotel room. There, according to a participant,
Reagan handed each one a press release announcing their resignations and the appointment
of William Casey as campaign manager. Nancy Reagan broke the ensuing silence, turning to
Sears and saying, "John?" as if asking for his acceptance of the move.
Lake says he has "very little doubt" that it was Reagan who initiated the firings and that "it
wasn't (Nancy Reagan's) doing. People who have said she engineered the ouster of Sears are
wrong." But the episode reflected Mrs. Reagan's increasingly active role in helping to shape
the group of advisers surrounding her husband.
Some also give Nancy Reagan credit for tipping the balance at the celebrated Nashua
debate the Saturday before the New Hampshire primary. The Nashua Telegraph newspaper,
sponsor of the debate, had decreed that it would be limited to Bush and Reagan. But Reagan
"ambushed" Bush and regained the forceful, engaged image he had lost in Iowa, by storming
the stage with four other candidates and admonishing the moderator: "I paid for this
microphone, Mr. Green."
According to Peter Hannaford, then a Reagan campaign aide, an impassioned back-room
debate over whether Reagan should join Bush alone on the stage, walk out in protest or
bring the other candidates with him to the microphone had ended when Nancy Reagan
declared: "You should all go on."
"I don't think I exert any influence as far as policy goes," she would say during the next
campaign, four years later. "But I may have an influence as far as people are concerned. I'm
more sensitive to people who might be helpful or not helpful."
Reagan is "so trusting and so genuine, and he likes everybody so much, that I think she
often feels he is not being well-served and (is) being used," says her former press secretary,
Nancy Reynolds. "When she perceives that, naturally she is going to do what she can to
correct it, as any good wife would do. She's always been that way, going back 20 years."
IV. HER OWN WORST ENEMY
"I'd never wear a crown. It messes up your hair." NANCY REAGAN, JOKING ABOUT
HER "QUEEN NANCY" IMAGE
THE CRITICISM BEGAN early, almost from the day of Ronald Reagan's first inaugural in
1981. Initially, the return of Republicans to the White House -- after four years of Jimmy
Carter's Southern frugality had been greeted by social Washington with relief bordering on
celebration. Elegance and glamour were back. But in the Washington press corps, at least, the
admiring glances turned to stares of disbelief as the Reagans' wealthy friends and political
supporters descended on the capital for an inaugural unmatched in cost and splendor.
"These women will wear expensive clothes, lavish jewels, gorgeous quality furs and
entertain extravagantly in Washington, just as they have been doing in California,"
Washington Post fashion writer Nina Hyde wrote. "They are rich, and they have no hang-ups
about showing it off." Another journalist reported that the First Lady's inaugural handbag
"cost more than the annual food-stamp allotment for a family of four."
Sentiments soured further when Nancy Reagan's first major project was an effort to raise
nearly $1 million from private sources to redecorate the White House living quarters. She
hung hand-painted, 18th-Century-style Chinese wallpaper in the presidential bedroom and
ordered new White House china -- trimmed in her favorite color, red -- to replace the
dinnerware bought during the Johnson years.
These projects hit their stride just as the nation slid into the deepest recession in decades
and as budget planners for her husband's Administration were arguing on Capitol Hill for
substantial cuts in federal programs for the poor. At a press conference, the President of the
United States found himself defending his wife's dishes.
Washington Post columnist Judy Mann was one who took aim at Mrs. Reagan. "So far,"
Mann wrote, "she has been someone who is far more interested in being socially chic than
socially useful. We had gotten used to something more." Sheila Tate, the First Lady's press
secretary at the time, says that only the attempted assassination of her husband in March,
1981, hurt Mrs. Reagan more than Mann's column.
The furor did not abate during Nancy Reagan's first trip abroad, to the wedding of Britain's
Prince Charles to Lady Diana Spencer. The British press gleefully described the American
First Lady's huge wardrobe and her entourage of 10 Secret Service agents, a hairdresser,
friend Betsy Bloomingdale and her husband, a nurse, a photographer and assorted aides.
Reporters inquiring about Mrs. Reagan's stunning matched set of diamond-and-ruby
necklace, earrings and rings discovered that she had carte blanche to borrow any jewels she
wanted from Bulgari, the international jewelry firm. At one polo match, Mrs. Reagan arrived
with a fleet of long limousines; Queen Elizabeth drove herself in a green Vauxhall station
wagon.
Rather slowly, it dawned on the White House that it had an image problem, one that could
become a serious political liability to Reagan. In the euphoria over launching the Reagan
Revolution, no one had given much thought to mapping out a strategy for involving the First
Lady in a substantive issue or project -- standard practice since Lady Bird Johnson had
begun beautifying highways in the 1960s.
Mrs. Reagan told the Times that she received supportive letters and calls from Jacqueline
Kennedy Onassis, whom many thought she was emulating. But times, and perceptions of
women's roles, had changed since Jackie Kennedy redecorated the White House and set
fashion trends in the early 1960s. In Ms. magazine, Gloria Steinem called Mrs. Reagan "the
rare woman who can perform the miracle of having no interests at all." A Wall Street Journal
article theorized that Nancy Reagan was partly to blame for a dramatic exodus of women
from the Republican Party.
A Gallup Poll conducted in December, 1981, showed that Mrs. Reagan had the highest
disapproval rating (26%) of any modern First Lady. "It is hard to think of a First Lady who
has been damaging," political analyst William Schneider said, "but Mrs. Reagan
crystallizes an important criticism of this Administration: its supposed bias toward the rich.
She is the image of the suburban matron who spends her time shopping and having lunch."
Once again, someone close to the President had become a liability, and once again Mrs.
Reagan felt a need to protect her husband. But this time, she herself was the problem. "She's
concerned about how things are perceived," says a former White House aide, "and we know
perception is reality in Washington."
The turnaround came after a counterattack she engineered with the help of Michael K.
Deaver, the Sacramento and campaign veteran who was now deputy White House chief of
staff. In Reagan's second year in office, the somewhat insubstantial foster-grandparents
program she had championed suddenly took a back seat to the war on drug abuse. She had
always planned to attack the issue, she explained, but had put it off while she "got my family
settled" and during what she called the "lost year" after the assassination attempt.
Her staff objected, arguing that drug abuse was too depressing a topic to be associated
with a First Lady. But she overruled them and plunged into a frantic travel schedule. (To
date, her crusade has logged more than 100,000 miles of travel to 59 cities, 30 states and 7
foreign countries.) In interviews, she virtually refused to talk about anything else, deflecting
all questions about dishes and fashion.
And at the annual Washington Gridiron Club dinner in 1982, she conquered the hometown
audience with a deft parody performed before a formally clad crowd of Washington's most
powerful journalists, officeholders and corporate executives. She danced and sang a
self-deprecating version of "Second-Hand Clothes" and, after receiving a tumultuous ovation,
smashed a piece of china as an encore. "Queen Nancy" was dethroned.
In a 1982 Times interview, Nancy Reagan was asked what she would like to be
remembered for after she left the White House. She sighed heavily and thought for a long
time before concluding: "That I tried." Later she added, "Nobody sets out to be a bad First
Lady."
V. HANDLING THE HANDLERS
"You know, I have been a very fortunate woman. I have had a chance to see the man I
love under extreme pressure." -- NANCY REAGAN, IN AN INTERVIEW
RONALD REAGAN entered the final weeks of his 1984 reelection campaign with a
commanding string of legislative victories to his credit and a lead in the polls that many
thought was insurmountable. And now the man dubbed the Great Communicator for his
instinctive skills in front of a television camera was about to debate, on live nationwide TV, a
Democratic opponent known for his whiny voice.
But on the night of Oct. 7, only hours after leaving the Louisville stage he'd shared with
Walter Mondale, Reagan knew it had been a disaster. The 73-year-old President had flubbed
his lines, blurted out mind-numbing strings of statistics, borrowed old lines from his
televised encounters with Jimmy Carter in 1976 and generally failed miserably in his efforts
to display the famous wit that had helped make him so popular. He had acted confused,
muddled. Instantly, age became the hot issue of the waning campaign.
Afterward, Reagan complained to his wife that he'd felt "brutalized" by the debate
preparations. A group of White House staffers had staged a full dress rehearsal -- complete
with lights, cameras and other TV equipment -- in a meeting room of the Old Executive
Office Building next to the White House. "We sat there stuffing him with information,"
remembers a staffer who has continued to work with the Reagans. "The room was full, about
25 or 30 people, with everybody throwing their 2 cents in. The focus was that we didn't want
him not to know something. That was the thesis."
David A. Stockman, Reagan's brash young budget director, seemed to take particular
delight in standing in for Mondale and jabbing his boss with one pointed question after
another. "You better send me some flowers," the President told him later, "because you've
been nasty to me."
Nancy Reagan was livid. Instead of flying on with Reagan to the next campaign stop, she
returned to Washington with campaign chairman Sen. Paul Laxalt of Nevada, a Reagan
confidant since the years the two men were governors of neighboring states. "She was very
unhappy," an aide recalls today, "and she voiced her unhappiness through Laxalt." He
promptly relayed the "brutalized" quote to reporters.
Deputy Chief of Staff Deaver, whom Mrs. Reagan had long used as her sounding board in
the West Wing, was the first target of her wrath, aides say. "What have you done to my
husband?" she raged. The President, she complained, had been overprepared to the point of
paralysis. Ronald Reagan had never won a debate by spewing forth detailed facts and
figures; his strength lay in his ability to articulate broader concepts and national aspirations.
"I was upset," she said later, "because I thought they'd gone about it all wrong. And they
had. They overloaded him. He knows all those things. They don't have to overload him."
Some aides wondered whether she was speaking only for herself. Sometimes, say those
who have worked closely with both Reagans, she acts as a conduit for the unfailingly genial
President, voicing his displeasure in situations where he is uncomfortable being critical.
One former White House speech writer compares the phenomenon to "what Shirley
MacLaine would call channeling. He speaks and it goes through her." She is, the speech
writer says, "a very good mirror for the President."
No more picking on Ronnie, she decreed; no more ganging up. One aide was instructed to
help beef up the presidential self-esteem: "Mr. President," he called from the rear of the room
during one of the next practice sessions, "I thought that was a terrific answer."
Aides say Mrs. Reagan also dictated that the candidate should get more sleep before the
next debate, and she saw to it that the final rehearsal was held in the familiar comfort of the
wooded presidential retreat at Camp David, Md.
By the second debate two weeks later, Reagan was more relaxed and combative. He
dispatched the age issue with a single quip: "I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I
am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience."
Nancy Reagan had almost publicly battled the White House staff to assert her notion of
what was in her husband's best interest. She was asked later if she felt she had made any
changes. She fixed her calmest gaze and offered her own one-liner. "Well," she said, "the
second one was better, wasn't it?"
VI. THE GLOVES COME OFF
"I don't think most people associate me with leeches or how to get them off. But I know
how to get them off. I'm an expert at it." NANCY REAGAN, SHORTLY AFTER DONALD
REGAN RESIGNED
WHEN SHE leaves town without her husband, Nancy Reagan often gives him a 3-by-5
instruction card, which aides say would typically read:
Five o'clock: Take medication.
Six o'clock: Dinner.
Nine o'clock: Brush teeth.
Nine-thirty: Bedtime.
The First Lady's own aides say with a chuckle that when she is away, the President's daily
calendar expands dramatically. Suddenly it is jammed from 7 in the morning through
working dinners and on to after-dinner meetings in the White House. "He never does that
when she's here," one aide says.
From the start of Reagan's political ascendancy, Nancy Reagan's three main areas of concern
for her husband have been his image, his staff and his schedule. By Donald Regan's last day
at the White House, he had crossed her on all counts.
Throughout the first term and into the second, Mrs. Reagan had relied on Deaver, the
one-time Los Angeles public relations executive, to exert back-channel pressure on her
husband. She and Deaver spoke daily, often several times. And in the triumvirate that
formed Reagan's original inner circle (the others were Chief of Staff James A. Baker III and
Counselor Edwin Meese III), Deaver had the duty of assuaging the concerns of the First
Lady, a self-described constant worrier.
Deaver always insisted that Mrs. Reagan had no involvement in policy, a view that has
generally been supported. "She wouldn't know a continuing resolution from a New Year's
resolution," he once told the Washington Post. Instead, she claimed to concentrate on
personnel matters.
Often, aides say, Nancy Reagan was one of the first to sense that a controversial
Administration official had become a liability. And she would muster assistance from a cadre
of friends to help persuade the President -- a man notoriously hesitant to fire anyone -- that
the official must go.
That group includes Southern California political consultant Stuart Spencer; Nancy
Reynolds, now a Washington political consultant; Deaver (even after he left the White House
to start a consulting firm); Mary Jane Wick, wife of U.S. Information Agency Director Charles
Z. Wick; best friend Betsy Bloomingdale; former Sen. Laxalt and his wife, Carol; former Atty.
Gen. William French Smith; Carol Price, wife of Ambassador to Britain Charles Price; Betty
Wilson, wife of former Ambassador to the Vatican William Wilson, and journalists Mike
Wallace and George Will.
When Regan arrived and Deaver left, she lost her sounding board. Regan, a former Marine
and Wall Street executive, installed a kind of unofficial buffer against the East Wing by
assigning an assistant, W. Dennis Thomas, to deal with Mrs. Reagan's chief of staff. "She
hasn't had a good operative in the White House since Mike left," a former staffer says. "The
First Lady has legitimate concerns and questions that arise every day, and she needs
someone over there who's in the loop."
One aide suspected early on that the relationship between Mrs. Reagan and Regan was
headed for trouble when Regan groused about being seated next to "Julius the hairdresser or
Anita the maid" on a major presidential trip. "I thought, 'How shortsighted of him,' " the aide
said. "They have the First Lady's ear."
As the Iran-contra scandal unfolded late last year and the President's popularity dove with
each sensational new disclosure, aides say Nancy Reagan launched a war of attrition against
Regan. She dialed the influential friends. She fought off a news conference, insisting that
Reagan had not recovered fully from prostate surgery. And she and the Regan camp engaged
in a skirmish of leaks over who had hung up on whom.
Even before the critical Tower Commission report appeared, Regan had lost. The day after
the report was made public, word leaked from the East Wing that former Senate Majority
Leader Howard H. Baker had been selected to replace him. Regan had barely beaten a retreat
out of the White House compound when the First Lady's office issued a statement
welcoming the replacement.
VII. KEEPER OF THE LEGEND
"Obviously, I think she cares about his place in history." -- REAGAN FRIEND NANCY
REYNOLDS
FRIENDS SAY Nancy Reagan had a dream. It was for her husband to be the first President
since Dwight D. Eisenhower to leave office after a full eight years without a cloud of failure
or scandal. Until the Iran-contra scandal came to light last year, followed by the Tower
Commission report that painted a devastating picture of a hands-off presidency, her dream
seemed assured.
But now, the biggest challenge of her career as the most devoted guardian of Ronald
Reagan's image -- "keeper of the legend," as one friend put it -- may lie ahead, in his two
lame-duck years in office. To preserve the luster, or restore it, she is likely to take up a major
issue. The betting is on arms control; friends expect her to lobby for another summit meeting
with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev.
Reagan will be nearly 78 when he leaves office; the First Lady, 67. Nancy Reynolds
predicts that the President "will always be on the campaign trail for Republican candidates
and causes and making speeches," though an active career in politics seems unlikely. Nancy
Reagan more than once has said she plans to continue her crusade against drug abuse. And
both have contracts with Random House to write books. The President's memoirs are
scheduled to appear in 1991; the First Lady's two years earlier.
"They'll go back to what they've always done -- entertaining friends, going to Chasen's,
traveling," one friend predicts. Others believe they will divide their time between their hilltop
ranch near Santa Barbara and the $2.5-million house in Bel-Air that was purchased for them
earlier this year by 20 longtime supporters.
Though Reynolds concedes that Mrs. Reagan is concerned about her husband's place in
history, in the end, she says, the post-White House years will come down to the same
romance that has been her driving force all along. Whatever the political difficulties her
husband faces at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the little girl who grew up a few miles north in
a house in Bethesda will not have lost the security she longed for.
"There is always some crisis," Reynolds says, "and in the end, you see, they have each
other.
"Long after they've left Washington; long after the bands have stopped playing, they have
a relationship nobody can touch: rock-hard and soft and loving, too. And that will continue
to the end of their days."
GRAPHIC: Photo, Nancy Reagan, campaigning with her husband in Ohio in 1980: "I don't
think I exert any influence as far as policy goes," she says. "But I may have an influence as
far as people are concerned."; Photo, Ronald Reagan, in 1980, with his original inner circle of
advisers: from left, Michael Evans / Sygma; Photo, Relaxing at the Santa Barbara ranch in
1985: She has always been Ronald Reagan's closest adviser, "the one person I can trust."
Gene
Proprietary to the United Press International 1982
June 14, 1982, Monday, BC cycle
SECTION: Regional News
HEADLINE: A visit to President Benjamin Harrison's home
BYLINE: By MICHAEL HEMMES
BODY:
The porch on Benjamin Harrison's house became almost as famous as its ownerwhen
Harrison challenged incumbent Grover Cleveland in 1888 for the presidency of the United
States.
Cleveland stumped the country but Harrison never left town. He campaigned from a
small, second-story porch on his red brick house at 1230 North Delaware, a scant mile from
the center of the city.
From this familiar platform, the bearded lawyer and former U.S. senator delivered fiery
speeches to as many as 10,000 supporters at a time, crowded on the lawn below.
The famous "Front Porch Campaign of 1888" helped Harrison win the election (he lost the
popular vote but won in the electoral college), and made the Harrison home the nation's
political hub for several years.
Today the crowds at the 16-room mansion are school classes and tourists, who have
trekked through the Victorian rooms since 1937, when the Arthur Jordan Foundation
purchased the house from Mary Lord Harrison, the president's second wife. The foundation
operates the home as a memorial to the 23rd president.
"We are fortunate there were only two owners, the Harrison family and the Jordan
Foundation. It's allowed us to keep the house almost exactly the way it was when President
Harrison lived here," said Katherine Svarczkopf, a Harrison home guide.
Mrs. Svarczkopf said the home was built in 1874, seven years after Harrison bought the
land. The cost was just under $30,000.
The massive front porch which greets 35,000 vistors a year is an extension of the famous
campaign porch. Restoration in 1974 uncovered porch boards signed by the workmen who
built the addition in 1895, Svarczkopf said.
Inside, behind wooden doors with leaded glass windows, the house is filled with
memorabilia.
The library contains a chair made from bobcat fur and 22 steer horns with Harrison's
name spelled out on the back in 200 tiny diamonds, a Texas rancher's inauguration gift.
White House chinaware handpainted by Caroline Harrison, the president's first wife, is
displayed in the dining room.
"Caroline was the only First Lady to design her own china," Svarczkopf said. "She was
the one who started the White House china collection."
The dining room also contains long drapes which cascade to the floor in pools of fabric.
"The longer the drapes, the wealthier the family, Svarczkopf said. "In Victorian times,
only the rich could afford the extra fabric needed for the longer drapes."
A round, jeweled vessel about two feet tall sits near the fireplace in the front parlor. It was
a gift from Hungary during the Harrison's White House days.
"The Harrisons used to fill it with water, put it in front of the fireplace and use it as a
humidifier," Svarczkopf said.
A Bible signed by Tippecanoe Club members lies open on a table in the back parlor. The
Tippecanoe Club was composed of men who had voted for Harrison in1888, as well as
Harrison's presidential grandfather, William Henry Harrison, 50 years before.
A firehose nozzle given to Harrison by Indianapolis firefighters was made into a lamp by
the president and placed prominently at the foot of the front staircase.
The master bedroom houses a self-contained home gymnasium made of wooden pulleys
and weights. Harrison used it every day to keep in shape.
Harrison's law office desk, which opens like a safe and contains several drawers and slots,
is in his upstairs study with his law files. One file contains a handwritten letter from a
12-year-old girl, who signed her note, "From a little unknown friend, Helen Keller."
The third floor ballroom, now a museum, displays other pieces of presidential
memorabilia, including photographs of Harrison's inauguration.
"It was raining the day of the inauguration, so the president used an umbrella. You can
hardly see him taking the oath of office because of all the umbrellas blocking the view,"
Svarczkopf said.
Harrison's concern for the weather was understandable. His grandfather, President William
Henry Harrison, caught pneumonia while riding in his inaugural parade and died a month
later.
The President Benjamin Harrison Memorial Home is open weekdays, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. and
Sundays 12:30-4 p.m. The admission charge is $1.50 for adults, 75 cents for students,
preschoolers are free, and group rates are available. LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
Gene FL
The Washington Post
December 25, 1985, Wednesday, Final Edition
HEADLINE: The First Families: Hosts of Christmas Past
BYLINE: By Carl A. Sferrazza, Special to The Washington Post
BODY:
Among first couples, President and Nancy Reagan win hands down when it comes to
giving unusual Christmas presents to each other. The chain saws, pickup trucks and manure
spreaders used at their Rancho del Cielo property in the mountains are a far cry from the
founding first couples' gifts.
In 1789, that very first presidential Christmas, George Washington paid 16 pounds for a
fashionable set of seed pearl pins and earrings for Martha. Evidently, George held all the
purse strings in the family, for he ended up buying his own present to himself. He bought
fur cloaks for both Martha and himself, shelling out 42 pounds, 16 shillings at steep New
York (the first capital of the United States) prices. And Martha was not the kind of lady who
wanted manure spreaders for Mount Vernon under her tree. In 1792, during her first
Christmas in Philadelphia (the second capital of the United States), "Lady Washington" wore
her husband's gift of a new black velvet gown purchased for 40 pounds.
Second President John Adams' Christmas gifts to his wife Abigail were more esoteric. At
her specific request one year, he bought Lady Craven's "A Journey to Constantinople,"
"Bennett's Stricture on Female Education" and "Letters to a Young Lady."
Cold winds chilled the damp, unfinished rooms of the new White House in 1800, when the
Adamses became the first first family to celebrate Christmas in Washington. Abigail --
depressed by her husband's defeat for reelection and the terminal condition of an alcoholic
son -- pulled herself together to host the first Christmas reception for congressmen and those
few wives who had come to the permanent national capital.
James and Dolley Madison had their own depressing holiday in Washington, though not in
the White House. Christmas 1814 was celebrated in the Octagon House by the Madisons,
since four months earlier the White House had been burned by the British during the War of
1812. The buoyant Dolley Madison was in unusually low spirits since her son Payne, sister
Lucy and brother John never arrived. With no knowledge of when the war would end,
lacking expected family members and, now, a first lady without a White House, it was a
miserable holiday season for her. Little did the Madisons know that on Christmas Eve the
Treaty of Ghent had been signed in Belgium, ending the war. They would not know until
February.
That next Christmas, spent in another temporary White House by the Madisons, was a
joyous one. On Christmas Eve 1815, guns and cannons were fired throughout the city. Dolley
was entertaining Secretary of the Navy Benjamin Williams Crowninshield and his family and
letting her parrot fly about freely. It was, said Mary Crowninshield, "quite a frolic," but she
also noticed that the first lady served her famous "ice cream put in a silver dish, and a large
cake -- not very good
[on] saucers instead of plates."
As a widower with no children of his own, President Andrew Jackson's Christmases,
ironically, revolved around young children.
On Dec. 19, 1835, he hosted the first White House Christmas party exclusively for children
of prominent Washingtonians. Jackson's devotion to his countless grandnieces and
grandnephews was complete, and as a man with a famous temper, his expectations of others
to have equal devotion to them was usually met. Consequently, one of the most vivid
memories of the day was the sight of Vice President -- and presidential aspirant -- Martin
Van Buren standing on one leg, singing a childish ditty and then running across the room,
gobbling as a turkey, under the approving eye of Old Hickory.
Christmas was perhaps the most emotional time of the year for Jackson. In 1829, just prior
to his leaving for Washington and the presidency, his wife Rachel died tragically and was
buried on Christmas Eve.
Mary Emily Donelson, a Jackson grandniece, remembered the president taking the little
ones to a Washington orphanage to distribute gifts. When another child asked Jackson what
toys Santa Claus would bring him, the president somberly told them a story.
"I once knew a little boy who not only never had a toy in his life, but after the death of his
mother, a pure and saintly woman, had neither home nor friends."
Unknown to the children, Jackson was sadly reflecting upon his own childhood.
Evidently, fine dining was Julia Gardiner Tyler's priority during her one and only White
House Christmas in 1844. Her witty New York debutante sister Margaret Gardiner, serving
as the first, though unofficial, social secretary of the White House, took care of arranging the
mansion for the season. Gardiner had the rooms of the state floors laden with evergreen
wreaths, and even the stately Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington was framed in
boughs of greenery. Margaret's record of the day speaks revealingly: "We commenced the
day with Egg Nog and concluded with Apple Toddy."
Nobody ever accused the James Polks of being wild hosts. Christmas Eve 1847 lacked
"cheer" in more ways than one. While the president could be found bowing to guests before a
blazing fire, "the better half was seated," wrote one lonely visitor "engaged in lively
conversation
Sarah Polk is shrewd and sensible." Christmas Eve fell on one of the Polks'
regular open house reception nights, and an unusual assortment of remaining statesmen
wandered the empty rooms, including a wealthy Wall Street financier, a few congressmen
and naval officers and several deaf women speaking in sign language. The "shrewd and
sensible" Sarah was not, however, about to break her rules just because it was a holiday. No
refreshments were served.
Children again played a central role in White House Christmases during the Taylor,
Lincoln, Johnson and Grant administrations. During the Hayes years, the president's wife
invited the two teen-age daughters of a family friend, John Herron, to stay at the White
House. So impressed was the eldest girl, Helen, of her 1878 stay, that she vowed to return to
the house as first lady herself someday. She did in 1909, as Mrs. William Howard Taft.
Toward the end of the 19th century, White House families began extending their
Christmases into the cold homes of the local poor. The Christmas Clubs of Washington,
formed in the 1800s, provided hot dinners for more than 2,000 local needy children. Among
its founders was Nellie Arthur, the young daughter of President Chester Alan Arthur.
Frances Cleveland, wife of Arthur's successor, Grover Cleveland, took particular interest in
"The Colored Club," established specifically for the city's black children. Frances Cleveland,
"with the badge of the Christmas Club gleaming white on her fur -trimmed garnet coat,"
wrote one reporter, "helped distribute the toys and candy from the sparking Christmas tree"
and took in the postdinner Punch-and-Judy shows.
A Christmas tree in the White House did not appear until 1889. That year, Benjamin and
Caroline Harrison grandparents of four toddlers -- started that since-unbroken yuletide
tradition.
Days before Christmas the Harrison grandchildren scampered throughout the house with
secrets, messages and questions about Santa Claus and expected gifts. Suddenly, in the late
afternoon of Christmas Eve, they found the doors of the oval library and family room locked
shut. They hovered around trying to figure out what was going on. After dinner the curious
were sent off to bed. Meanwhile the head gardener, several of his assistants and President
Harrison himself were busily securing and decorating the first White House Christmas tree.
For Ida McKinley, diamonds were a first lady's best friend, as the New York jewelry firm J.
Dreicer & Sons was very happy to report: That past June, on her birthday, the president gave
her two diamond rings; Christmas 1898 was two diamond bracelets; the yuletide before that
it was a pair of diamond side combs. In 1899, Mrs. McKinley insisted he not buy anything
expensive.
It was a White House steward, William Sinclair, who saved the day by heading down to
Galt's jewelry store and coming back with a beautiful vase and a delicate miniature blue
picture frame, set with jewels, in which the president placed a photograph of their deceased
child Katie, born on Christmas Day. McKinley considered the day to be a solemn holiday.
The Theodore Roosevelts' Christmas was anything but solemn. Their first Christmas
included the hanging of stockings over the mantelpiece and a dinner for a large crowd of
friends and family.
Initially the conservation-minded president was opposed to his children having a
Christmas tree, but the ingenious Roosevelt children smuggled a small one upstairs. Finally,
Gifford Pinchot, the U.S. chief forester, explained to the president that selective cutting of
trees actually helped others in the forest grow stronger.
The Roosevelts' last Christmas was filled with mirth. Edith Roosevelt, the first lady, invited
more than 50 to dinner where the table decorations were green ferns and red leaves.
Everyone at the table found a tissue paper booty that popped, revealing a party hat for the
guests to wear. Dinner was turkey courtesy of Horace Vose, "The Turkey King" who
provided presidential birds since Grant's years. Dessert of flaming plum puddings and
miniature Santa Claus ices ended the meal.
Perhaps one of the most memorable presidential Christmases was celebrated in 1918 when
Woodrow Wilson and his wife Edith were in France for the peace conference following
World War 1. On Christmas Eve day, the president and first lady shopped the streets of
Paris, stopping at Brentano's bookstore and Perrine's, a couturier. At a flower market they
paused to watch mistletoe being painted gold. On Christmas Eve, they traveled by train to
Gen. John Pershing's Chaumont headquarters, where they planned to spend the holiday with
the troops.
They were met by Pershing in the early morning and driven in his Cadillac to the troops'
post. As a light snow fell, the Wilsons trampled through ankle-deep mud to the open field
where the review stand was built. The New York Fifth Division made the first lady an
honorary member of the division, giving her their blue-and-gold insignia pin with the
Goddess of Liberty on a blue field.
Florence Harding was given the most political and unusual of Christmas gifts from her
husband Warren in 1921 -- the privilege of choosing which prisoners in federal penitentiaries
would be pardoned that Christmas.
That same year, she became alarmed at what security considered a routine threat to the
president, marked for Christmas Day. Frantically, she called her confidant Evalyn Walsh
McLean and asked if they could spend the holiday with the McLeans at their mansion.
After church services, the Hardings arrived at the McLeans', admiring their three-story
Christmas tree. The first lady made sure there were Secret Service agents scattered
throughout the house and outside, while the president laughed it off. After dinner, the
president played poker with chums in a hideaway room upstairs while Evalyn and Florence
watched a private showing of "Little Lord Fauntleroy," hearing the laughter of the men every
so often.
"Suddenly, somewhere in the house," wrote Evalyn McLean, "there was a loud crashing.
Mrs. Harding half-screamed and almost slid from her chair
A servant came
and
apologized because a door had been slammed." Finally departing at 2 a.m., the president
thanked McLean, saying, "I am grateful to my assassins for a very pleasant Christmas."
Beneath his laughter, however, there was sadness. When Charlie Forbes, a friend and
political appointee, ran into the Hardings' doctor in the White House Christmas week, he
was told, "They had a hell of a row this morning." The Hardings were fighting again. Later,
admitting to Forbes that the presidency was too much for him to handle, President Harding
quietly cried.
The energetic Grace Coolidge infused the White House with a bright spirit during her first
Christmas there in 1923. In the Blue Room she had a large Vermont spruce displayed for the
public. Later she hosted a dance for 60 young men of Mercersburg Academy (where her son
attended school), dancing with each one of them. She distributed gifts at a large number of
social service organizations, joined the president in his annual Christmas message to the
nation and started a new White House yuletide tradition -- caroling for the public.
Lou Hoover, president of the Girl Scouts, continued that tradition but let her scouts do it
sans first lady. One "scout," however, was paying extra attention to Lou and her husband,
President Herbert Hoover. Reporter Bess Furman had secretly penetrated the White House
Christmas Eve party by disguising herself as an overgrown Girl Scout and entered unnoticed
as a caroler. Furman made note of the Hoover tradition of each child escorting an adult into
the State Dining Room. After dinner at a horseshoe-shaped table with an oversized
centerpiece of Santa, reindeer and sleigh, the Hoovers led the group -- men holding candles,
women ringing bells -- up the darkened staircase to a surprise finale
a moving picture
show.
Eleanor Roosevelt was Mrs. Santa Claus.
Every single member of the White House staff -- from police officer to florist, doorman to
plumber -- received a personal gift from the hands of ER. In a large room on the third floor,
she stored the hundreds of gifts that she accumulated throughout the year.
Throughout Christmas Eve day, the first lady buzzed around Washington, making rounds
at dozens of charitable organizations, passing out food baskets. Getting back to the White
House in time for her annual dance for young people, she relaxed until 5 p.m. when she
joined President Franklin Roosevelt in lighting the tree and stood by as he broadcast his
Christmas message to the nation. Then FDR gathered the family around and read with great
drama Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol." When that was over, she raced across town for
St. Thomas' midnight service.
Certainly the most moving Roosevelt Christmas was that of 1941, just after the bombing of
Pearl Harbor. Winston Churchill, having arrived secretly in Washington and staying at the
White House, delivered a joint radio address to the nation with the president.
"Let the children have their night of fun and laughter," he said. "Let the gifts of Father
Christmas delight their hearts. Let us share in their unstinted pleasure before we turn again
to the stern tasks in the year that lies before us."
As her first White House Christmas approached, Mamie Eisenhower exclaimed with joy,
"Well, I've done it! It's been my desire, all my life, to be able to give a Christmas gift to
everybody who works for me!" The first lady invited all the White House employes, in small
groups, upstairs to the family tree where she gave out gifts for each. When Mamie became
overwhelmed with requests for gifts from poorer American families, she directed her staff to
take toys and other presents from a gift room where items sent to the Eisenhower
grandchildren were accumulated.
Mamie also loved decorating -- not just the East Room and outside walls as had been done
in the past but the entire house. She blitzkrieged Washington stores searching for baubles on
sale, and hung holly on chandeliers; oversized red bows, green roping and white branches on
the hall columns; wreaths on candelabra. An aficionada of piped-in sound effects (one spring
she had bird trillings piped through the house, admonishing the staff to "Turn up those
birds!"), Mamie Eisenhower had "prerecorded Christmas carols blasted from beneath an
otherwise harmless tree in the East Room," remembered former Chief Usher J.B. West in
1980. She also had a record number of Christmas trees: 26 in 1959.
Barbara Eisenhower, the president's daughter-in-law, recalls that the most unusual items of
the season were glass ornaments given to the family by Nikita Khrushchev for their family
tree. "Here was a Communist acknowledging a Christian holiday," Barbara said. "But there
were space rocket designs on one of them. Maybe he was trying to say, 'Merry Christmas,
but we're still ahead in the space program.
The Secret Service men had become, by the early '60s, part of the first families' permanent
entourage. After her first Christmas in Palm Beach, Fla., as first lady, Jacqueline Kennedy
noticed that the men who accompanied her family to Florida had to spend their holidays
without their families. Thereafter, she insisted agents bring their wives. During her second
Christmas as first lady, in 1962, just before leaving for Palm Beach, Jacqueline Kennedy sent a
brilliantly illuminated tree to King Saud of Saudi Arabia, who was then ill in an American
hospital. In a note she wrote that though she of course knew his religion didn't celebrate
Christmas, it was intended to brighten his spirit with the spirit of the season.
Besides installing a delicate 18th-century Neopolitan cre che, Jacqueline Kennedy was the
first president's wife to have a "theme" tree. The balsam fir she had placed in the Blue Room
was trimmed with ornaments representing scenes from Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker Suite"
ballet, complete with sugarplum fairies and toy soldiers.
The Lyndon Johnsons' last Christmas in Washington in 1968 was both a joyous and sad
time. On impulse, Lady Bird Johnson organized a large party of old Washington friends,
making most of the calls herself, remembering that "all the fires were burning, and the spirit
of Christmas and real joy was as strong as I have ever felt it."
After the guests left, the Johnson family gathered in the yellow Oval Room -- the very
room where for decades White House families gathered for Christmas when it was the family
library -- and began opening gifts. Lynda Johnson Robb immediately put on her gift from her
father, a dress. "As soon as he gives you something," Lady Bird Johnson wrote, "he can't
wait for you to wear it."
The family also placed a call to Pat Nugent and Chuck Robb, their sons-in-law in Vietnam,
"somewhere near Da Nang," recorded the first lady. And, as Lady Bird Johnson described
the day's end, "We had an early bedtime, wrapped in that warming sense of family and
Christmas and the hope of better days to come."
The Nixons decorated their family tree themselves, and with ornaments that had been in
the family for many years. Staff members recall seeing Pat Nixon digging into the boxes,
choosing the items, reminiscing a bit about when they were used and placing them on the
branches. She also started the tradition of trying to obtain something from past White House
Christmases to be displayed for the public. One year she had a Victorian doll house,
borrowed from the Rutherford Hayes home in Ohio, which had been given to Fanny Hayes
as a Christmas present when she was in the White House.
Gerald Ford's family continued their Christmas tradition by spending the day in Vail,
Colo., skiing. During their White House tenure, however, the holiday season, according to
son Jack, was "the most active, gayest and happiest times in the house, when everybody --
everybody -- who came there put political differences aside."
Though the family decorations were kept in Colorado, all the Fords took a particular
interest in the national Christmas tree. "The highlight of the season," he recalls, "was always
who was going to turn the lights on. Susan did it one year. Mom and Dad did it another
year. I never got to."
As Secret Service agents, the press corps, White House staff and military escorts all
accompanied the Fords to their first Vail Christmas as the first family, Jack Ford remembers
how everyone in 1974 was ready to become expert at skiing. "As the days went on, I saw less
and less of them on the slopes and more and more of them in the taverns. By the end of the
trip only two or three remained skiers."
Although they never spent Christmas day in the White House, preferring to gather in
Plains, the entire Carter clan -- four generations, from Miss Lillian to the president's
grandchildren -- used to come up from Georgia for other parts of the holiday season.
The Cabinet dinner was revived, and the annual congressional Christmas party was turned
into a formal ball with Peter Duchin conducting his band. In 1977, Amy Carter performed for
guests with her violin class -- a first for a first daughter.
The 1979 state dinner for Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, held amid the Christmas
decorations, was a holiday highlight from the Carter years, but the most interesting was the
1980 staff party.
Held on the South Lawn, snow machines churned out the white stuff for a snowman
contest. The smell of roasting chestnuts filled the air as hot chocolate and mulled cider were
served to the guests.
"But that evening was most special," remembers Gretchen Poston, White House social
secretary. "We had an ice rink made on stage and Peggy Fleming skated."
The first White House Christmas fireworks display closed the evening. "The end was
spectacular," Poston recalls. "It was a huge Christmas card saying, 'Merry Christmas, Jimmy
and Rosalynn.'
GRAPHIC: Picture 1, First Lady Betty Ford in front of the White House Christmas tree in
1975; Picture 2, President and Mrs. Kennedy beside the tree; Picture 3, President Eisenhower
examines Christmas gifts presented to him by his grandson David. Mamie Eisenhower is
shown; Picture 4, President Truman with his wife Bess and daughter Margaret at the White
House on Christmas Eve.
Ganl FL
The Washington Post
January 20, 1985, Sunday, Final Edition
SECTION: Style; B1
HEADLINE: First Ladies Day of Destiny on Inaugurations
BYLINE: By Carl A. Sferrazza, Special to The Washington Post
BODY:
One first lady started the Ball rolling. Another rescued one, and yet another literally
stopped the music. Two stopped a swearing-in ceremony. Another accidentally started the
tradition of riding to the Capitol with her predecessor, and yet another first lady started the
tradition of riding from the Capitol with the president.
Although it is the president's Inauguration Day, Jan. 20 (or, before 1937, March 4) has also
been first ladies' day. First ladies have left their mark on inaugurations, and through whims,
weather conditions and personality, several even began traditions.
Martha Washington was still in Virginia getting Mount Vernon in order when her husband
George took his oath as the first president at Federal Hall in New York City on April 30,
1789. She missed the dance at which he did the minuet with several of the more beautiful
women of Knickerbocker society. Abigail Adams was in Massachusetts getting the Peacefield
House in order when her husband took his oath as the second president.
It was the flamboyantly rouged, card-playing, snuff-toting Dolley Madisonwho became the
first first lady to witness her husband's swearing-in ceremony, in the new capital of
Washington on March 4, 1809. The "Queen of Hearts" also approved the idea of an inaugural
ball when approached by her friend Thomas Tingey, head of the Navy Yard. An official
committee was formed through newspaper notice and tickets were sold for $4 each in the bar
of the Long Hotel, where the ball was held.
President James Madison, solemnly admitted that he would rather be in bed, but he
showed up with Dolley as she made her way into the overcrowded hall wearing a
buff-colored velvet gown and a turban with two long bird-of-paradise
feathers swaying dangerously close to low chandeliers. The dancing commenced at 7, but the
first lady, a Quaker, refused to dance. Instead she egged others onto the dance floor. That
was nearly impossible as the room swelled with a mob, primarily clustered around Mrs.
Madison. The air was so stifling that windows were smashed to allow fresh oxygen to flow
in. Dinner followed the dancing, and Dolley Madison rose to new levels of social diplomacy
by strategically seating herself between the ministers of warring England and France. Not
everyone enjoyed the night. John Quincy Adams noted: "The crowd was excessive, the heat
oppressive, and the entertainment bad."
Rain was perhaps the most apt metaphor for Sarah Polk's husband James' 1845
inauguration. A prim and forbidding Calvinist, she refused to allow music and dancing in
her home. The steady rains of March 4 turned the papier-ma I che' floats into lumps of paper.
There was a run on umbrellas. People standing ankle-deep in mud trying to hear Polk's low
mutterings fled for shelter. It was miserable, but Sarah Polk was undaunted, carrying a paper
fan with portraits of the first 12 presidents painted on it.
That night there were two balls. The first, at Carusi's Hotel, cost $10 a person. As the Polks
entered the room, there was no trouble when the music and dancing were suddenly halted in
deference to Sarah Polk. The second ball at the National Theatre had a huge temporary dance
floor built over the orchestra seating. Baltimore shopgirls had come en masse to
husband-hunt at the relatively low cost of $5 a ticket, and bands played loud polkas and
waltzes. President and Mrs. Polk arrived at 10. As Sarah Polk made her way to the front, the
music was again stopped and the dance floor cleared. For several minutes the Polks greeted
dignitaries. The shopgirls got restless. The calls for resumption of the music began. Sarah
Polk visibly tightened. To calm the crowds, the music was struck up. The first lady was not
pleased. The Polks ate quickly from the supper tables behind the curtained stage and left for
their new home. The wrath of "Sahara Sarah" could not change the will of shopgirls.
Franklin Pierce's 1853 inauguration was particularly miserable without his wife Jane. Just
two months before the inauguration their only living child, 11-year-old Benjamin, was
crushed in a train accident before their eyes. Jane Pierce, a slightly religious fanatic, believed
God took Benjamin so Pierce would have no distractions as president. Then she discovered
that Franklin lied to her about his supposed disinterest in gaining the nomination for and
winning the presidency and, angered, she refused to come to Washington for his
inauguration. Mrs. Pierce had also planned to give him a locket with strands of Benjamin's
hair to wear next to his heart as he took the oath, but now she held back and turned him
away. A day that should have been a hopeful beginning soured to a mournful dispirited
event. The ball was canceled. That night, the new president found no servants or sleeping
arrangements in the White House. He retired in the gloomy, dark mansion alone on a
mattress.
Early on the morning of March 4, 1865, his second Inauguration Day, President Abraham
Lincoln was signing documents in the Capitol Building. At noon he was to take the oath on
the building's East Portico. He stayed late into the morning. Meanwhile, back at the White
House, a parade escort was organizing to lead the way for President Lincoln in his carriage
from the Executive Mansion to the Capitol. However, unknown to the paraders, he was still
in the Capitol. Mary Todd Lincoln, a nervous and ambitious first lady, began fretting. She
could not break protocol and leave without her husband. Word was sent that rain clouds
threatened to force the ceremony indoors and ticket-holders were already filling the Capitol.
Mrs. Lincoln decided to enter the closed presidential carriage and wait for the president.
At some point soon after 11 o'clock she realized that Lincoln was not going to be returning
to the White House. Impulsively, she demanded that the driver speed up the street to the
Capitol and forget about the parade escort or else she would miss the swearing-in. Crowds
saw the carriage zooming to the hill and, assuming it was Lincoln, cheered the first lady as if
she were president. This tipped off the parade marchers who quickly formed ranks and
began the march up Pennsylvania Avenue. The ceremony was held outdoors as planned, and
Mary Lincoln was proudly present.
The Gilded Age, dawned with the inauguration of Rutherford Hayes on March 5, 1877,
and heralded a new era of "ladies of the press," a growing group of women journalists who
flocked to Washington in large numbers after the Civil War. It was therefore appropriate that
a woman like Lucy Webb Hayes represented their "New Woman Era." Lucy Hayes was the
first college-educated president's wife and a savvy politician who refused to serve liquor in
her home.
As she appeared on the inaugural stand for her husband's swearing-in ceremony, a title
previously expressed only in letters and conversation became nationally circulated. Lucy
Hayes, as reported by Mary Clemmer Ames, was not just a "Lady of the White House" or
"Presidentess" but "the first lady of the land." Other writers picked up on it and the press
thereafter began referring to presidents' wives as first ladies.
Mrs. Hayes' personal appearance also attracted great attention. Rather than dressing in the
Victorian vogue of ruffled, sleeveless gowns and frizzed, puffed hair adorned with jewelry,
Lucy was dressed with a high neck and long sleeves, and her black hair was tightly pulled
back in a bun, as she smiled to the heavens. It was quickly labeled "Madonna" chic, and from
that point on, journalists would begin to cover and report on the presence of the "first lady of
the land."
First ladies have reacted in a wide range of emotions at their husbands' inaugurations. The
young and ravishing Frances Folsom Cleveland, who, in 1886 at 21, married the 49-year-old
bachelor President Grover Cleveland in the White House, was sad and determined when her
husband lost his race in for reelection in 1888. As she departed the White House she told the
staff, "Now, I want you to take good care of everything -- the furnishings, the china, the
crystal, the silver. I want to see everything just as it is now when my husband and I move
back in here precisely four years from today."
She did return, becoming the only first lady to serve two nonconsecutive terms. The 1893
inauguration was her day. On several occasions, in front of many people, the popular first
lady happily burst into a very un-Victorian display of affection by throwing her arms around
the president and kissing him in public. Frances' successor, Ida Saxton McKinley, was very
different, though no less determined in accomplishing what she saw as her duty. Mrs.
McKinley, a fragile epileptic, insisted nevertheless in fully participating in and witnessing all
of her husband's 1897 inaugural events.
Special elevators were run for her, paths were cleared and she was always carefully
watched. Everything went fine until the ball at the Pension Building. The crowds and the
climbing of stairs proved to be too much, and in the middle of her grand procession with the
president, the new first lady, in diamonds and a blue and silver gown, fainted. The crowds
were shocked, but neither they nor the press openly discussed the epilepsy. Years later, when
Mrs. McKinley's inaugural gown was sent to the Smithsonian, a wine stain was found, which
she had acquired when she fell.
The snowstorm of March 4, 1909, when William Howard Taft was inaugurated, was
perhaps the worst of those that have hampered the auspicious day. The ambitious Helen
(Nellie) Taft, whom her husband frankly admitted wanted the White House more than he
did, was beside herself in fretting that her inaugural gown would not arrive because of the
stalled trains coming from New York.
She nevertheless took advantage of the day's weather when outgoing President Theodore
Roosevelt decided not to ride back with Taft, as was traditionally done. "Since the
ex-President was not going to ride back
I decided that I would," she later wrote. "No
President's wife had ever done it before, but as long as precedents were being disregarded I
thought it might not be too great a risk for me to disregard this one. Of course, there was
objection. Some of the Inaugural Committee expressed their disapproval, but I had my way
and in spite of protests took my place at my husband's side." Nellie got her gown, and
started a tradition followed by nearly every first lady since then.
Even first ladies get their heads turned at inaugurations. Ellen Axson Wilson said she was
"naturally the most unambitious of women and life in the White House has no attractions for
me." She and her husband decided against a ball, considering it frivolous. But when Mrs.
Wilson stepped out onto the East Portico of the Capitol for her husband's 1913 swearing-in
ceremony, she became suddenly mesmerized by the swarming crowds beneath her. She
changed her direction and headed right up to the railing, stepping onto the speaker's
podium, staring. When she snapped to, Ellen returned to her appropriate seat. At the solemn
moment when her husband Woodrow was taking his oath, she stood up on her chair to get a
better view. Later in the evening she and her daughters ran through the rooms of their new
home. Evidently she had lost her indifference.
If Nellie Taft was the woman who started riding back with her husband from the Capitol,
it was the equally domineering Ohio matron, Florence Kling (Duchess) Harding, who began
the tradition of riding to the Capitol with the outgoing first lady. In this case it was
unfortunately President Wilson's second wife, Edith Bolling Wilson, whose dislike for
"Duchess" was barely hidden. Florence and Edith were drastically different. Mrs. Wilson was
tight-lipped, swathed in furs and slow to reply to Mrs. Harding's bragging. Mrs. Harding
had a large, blue, feathered hat, highly rouged cheeks, a velvet dog collar with a diamond
sunburst around her neck to hide wrinkles, fur pieces loaded on her shoulders, pince-nez
eyeglasses and tightly marcelled gray hair.
As they pulled out of the White House, Mrs. Harding wildly waved to the reporters and
cameramen along the way. "They're my boys!" the former business manager of the Marion
(Ohio) Star assured Edith, who treated her eccentric successor with staring silence. When
their car arrived at the Capitol, following their husbands', Mrs. Harding quickly jumped out
and ran up the staircase, right behind her husband. As Warren G. Harding delivered his
address that day of March 4, 1921, Mrs. Harding listened carefully. Earlier she had helped
him prepare the text, and strongly vetoed his planned references to America's possible
consideration of a League of Nations.
Harding, as usual, obeyed the Duchess when it came to politics. It was no secret that she
was the driving force behind his rise. Indeed, Mrs. Harding was the first to admit it. When
the new president and first lady arrived at the North Portico of the White House after the
ceremony, Florence turned to Warren and imperiously asked, "Well, Warren Harding, I got
you the presidency. Now what are you going to do with it?"
Grace Coolidge and Lou Hoover were friends. They spent Herbert Hoover's March 4, 1929
Inauguration Day together giggling, gossiping and laughing. They were escorted together,
rode together and sat together during the swearing-in of Charles Curtis as vice president in
the Senate gallery. It was after that that things got confusing. Outside on the East Portico in
the rain, the seats for guests witnessing Hoover's swearing-in filled quickly. Hoover was
there. Coolidge was there. Chief Justice William Howard Taft was there. The Cabinet, the
congressmen, the senators, the justices were all there. The crowds stopped cheering and
stood waiting for it all to begin.
The swearing-in of a president was being delayed. Suddenly two embarrassed-looking and
giggling women appeared at the back of the stand and obediently took their places with all
the nation's eyes upon them. Grace Coolidge admitted,
II
we nearly missed this part
I
began to feel a little uneasy and finally I heard the Marine Band strike up 'Hail to the Chief
and I made a break and grabbed Mrs. Hoover saying 'Come on, I'm going.' We made a joke
of it
Well, of course, we arrived in due season, but we should have been there before."
They had gotten lost in the Capitol.
In the confusion and waiting for the tardy first ladies, Hoover's plans to have the Bible
turned to the Sermon on the Mount were mixed up and it was inadvertently opened to
Proverbs 29:18, which read, in part, "Where there is no vision the people perish
"
From her first days as first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt was different. Her independence and
her husband's reliance upon her were amplified throughout March 4, 1933, when Franklin D.
Roosevelt took the first of four inauguration oaths. The day before the inauguration, she and
her friend, Lorena Hickok, visited the famous Saint-Gaudens statue, "Grief." They sat there
silently and then Mrs. Roosevelt spoke quietly, as if she were there alone.
"In the old days when we lived here, I was much younger and not so very wise.
Sometimes I'd be very unhappy and sorry for myself. When I was feeling that way
I'd
come here alone, and sit and look at that woman. And I'd always come away somehow
feeling better. And stronger. I've been here many, many times."
Early on Inauguration Day morning, Eleanor slipped unnoticed out to Connecticut Avenue
to walk her own dog, and contemplate her new career, which she initially feared would
inhibit her. When the Roosevelts made their way to the White House to ride to the Capitol
with the Hoovers, FDR was unable to get out of the car. It was Eleanor who went forward to
meet and chat with the Hoovers before all three returned to the cars and the ride to the
Capitol. In the first ladies car, Mrs. Roosevelt asked Mrs. Hoover what she would miss the
most. Mrs. Hoover told her the servants, the travel arrangements and having everything
done for you. Eleanor vowed to herself that she would never be so dependent.
The bank holiday was dec
ER
The Associated Press
The materials in the AP file were compiled by The Associated Press. These materials
may not be republished without the express written consent of The Associated Press.
June 9, 1989, Friday, AM cycle
SECTION: Washington Dateline
LENGTH: 447 words
HEADLINE: Eleanor Roosevelt's Mink Coat is Sold at Bazaar
BYLINE: By ROBERT M. ANDREWS, Associated Press Writer
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
BODY: A mink coat once owned by Eleanor Roosevelt - about the time Richard M.
Nixon was bragging about his wife's Republican cloth coat - was eagerly bought up
Friday at a Democratic women's club bazaar for $$530.
The three-quarter length brown mink, bearing an elegant "ER" monogram on its black
lining, was donated to the fund-raising bazaar at the Woman's National Democratic Club
by the late first lady's granddaughter, Eleanor R. Seagraves, a club member.
The coat's new owner is Doris Foster, a longtime party contributor and former
volunteer for the Adlai Stevenson and Hubert Humphrey presidential campaigns who
said she has always admired Eleanor Roosevelt for her liberal principles.
"She's been an idol of mine all my life," said Mrs. Foster, who beat everyone else to
the coat rack and snatched up the Roosevelt mink as soon as the club's doors opened at
10 a.m. EDT.
After paying $$500 plus $$30 tax, the wife of retired State Department official
Schuyler Foster happily modeled the coat and posed for her picture-taking fellow
shoppers.
Mrs. Seagraves said she believed her grandmother bought the mink in the 1950s while
she was living in Manhattan, after the death of her husband, President Franklin D.
Roosevelt, in 1945.
About the time Mrs. Roosevelt purchased the mink, Nixon made his famous "Checkers
speech" in September 1952 in response to charges that he was the beneficiary of a secret
Republican slush fund. Nixon's televised defense was credited with keeping him on the
GOP ticket as Dwight D. Eisenhower's vice presidential running mate.
During the speech, Nixon said at one point: "I should say this, that Pat doesn't have a
mink coat, but she does have a respectable Republican cloth coat."
Mrs. Seagraves said she inherited her grandmother's mink from her mother, Anna, the
oldest of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt's six children and their only daughter, who
died in 1975.
Mrs. Seagraves, 62, wife of a Washington newsletter publisher, said she kept the coat
in her bedroom closet along with another, full-length mink that also belonged to her
namesake, but she never wore either one.
"I don't wear furs, she said. "They are not my style. But if it can be used by someone
who is devoted to ER, it should be."
Mrs. Foster said she would wear her new mink "on very choice occasions" and
eventually would donate it to the Eleanor Roosevelt museum at Val-Kill, the former
first lady's home at Hyde Park, N.Y.
"Mrs. Roosevelt was the role model for my generation and for every generation since,"
Mrs. Foster said. "The principles she stood for - Social Security, the minimum wage,
housing and human rights - are what I want to see carried out."
GRAPHIC: LaserPhoto WX16
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
NR
Copyright 1992 The Financial Times Limited;
Financial Times
April 13, 1992, Monday
SECTION: Pg. 15
LENGTH: 1155 words
HEADLINE: A self-righteous orgy of purging the perks: Public anger over the privileges
enjoyed by American government officials
BYLINE: By JUREK MARTIN
BODY:
In 1977, when he first came to Washington as President Jimmy Carter's press
secretary, Jody Powell was asked if he intended to have a portable phone installed in his
car, a decrepit VW beetle. 'Nah,' he drawled, 'it couldn't stand the extra weight,' and
everybody laughed.
Nobody is laughing now at the weight that is dragging Washington's name through the
mud. The debate is over whether 'this town' (local cave dwellers never call it anything
else) is so stuffed to the gills with the perquisites of office that it has lost all touch with
the reality that is the lives of average Americans.
This kind of puritanism is not exactly new. Sherman Adams, President Eisenhower's
right hand, had to resign for accepting a free fur coat; the G-man himself, J Edgar
Hoover, got into deep trouble for having free window valances installed; and the fall of
John Sununu, President Bush's White House chief of staff, was pretty much determined
when it became known last year that he used government aircraft as lesser mortals might
taxis.
Some administrations have tried to set an honourable example. Mr Carter, for
example, stipulated economy-class air travel. But the sight of Paul Volcker, the then
chairman of the Federal Reserve, miserably curling his six-and-a-half-foot frame into a
back seat, unlit stogie in hand, while on missions to save the dollar did not have the
desired effect. Others have not even bothered; the 'sleaze factor' was notorious in the
Teflon Reagan years, even to the point of the First Lady soliciting contributions for the
upkeep of her ballgowns.
But this year the unpopularity of 'this town' in the nation knows no bounds. Add to
this some vicious election-season partisan politics and there emerges the extraordinary
spectacle of a self-righteous orgy of purging the perk. It should be funny, and sometimes
is, if it were not taken quite so seriously.
Congress is the most defensive because it has seemed to be the main offender, as
anyone listening to a radio phone-in programme realises within three minutes. In the
wake of revelations that the House bank never bounced cheques, and of charges that its
post office delivered cocaine more efficiently than letters, all the little things that make
the congressional life a touch easier are under scrutiny. They include subsidised
restaurants, hair cuts and gymnasia, free potted plants and subscription drugs, gratis
parking at the Capitol and at local airports, the fixing of any tickets, and wholesale price
gifts and knick-knacks.
In the aggregate, and excepting the abuse of the House bank, they do not appear to
amount to anything that is not commonly provided for executives in the corporate sector,
including the media. But abuses have inevitably occurred; last year, for example, it
emerged there were Dollars 300,000 in unpaid bills owing at the House restaurants,
which is a little steep for a canteen.
Any increase in the salaries of Congress, which decides its own pay, invariably invites
public criticism. At Dollars 129,500 a year now, these are not bad by national standards,
except that many members have to support homes both in Washington and their own
constituencies, which explains why this year an abnormal number are retiring to go out
and make real money. The lobbyists and lawyers with whom they routinely mingle in this
town are usually paid a lot more.
Tom Foley, speaker of the House, finally decided he had had enough of these assaults
on an institution he loves so much. His counter-attack is that people in glass houses
(Republicans and the White House, not, of course, the public) should not throw stones.
He chose not to stoop so low as to take away the free car from his chief congressional
tormentor, Newt Gingrich, the Republican whip (at least not yet, though if Mr Gingrich
goes on much more about 'institutional corruption' he will be lucky to find a rack for his
bicycle). But in ordering an investigation into the perks enjoyed by the executive branch
it looks as though he does not intend to spare even the president.
Mr George Bush's perks are not insubstantial, as a recent Washington Post article
pointed out. They run to a Dollars 7.26m annual operating budget for the White House
itself, covering nearly 100 domestic employees - including five florists, spending Dollars
200,000 a year on displays, and five calligraphers, presumably deciphering the
presidential scrawl. There is also in the official residence a bowling alley, cinema,
swimming pool, putting green (Vice-President Dan Quayle recently had a high-tech
version with variable breaks installed in his mansion), tennis courts, a basketball court
and a horseshoe pit; and a free box at the Kennedy Centre for the performing arts.
There is Camp David and there is, of course, Air Force One (there are actually two
of them, specially modified Boeing 747s) and a constant supply of helicopters, which is
the most seductive of all. When asked what he would miss most on ceasing to be
president, Lyndon Johnson wordlessly waved an arm at the helicopter pad on the White
House lawn.
Mr Foley's more tangible target is the staff of the executive branch and indeed it
appears that, outside the cabinet, senior officials enjoy a range of privileges pretty similar
to those of Congress. Among them is the provision of home-to-office limousine services
for nine White House heavyweights. Unfortunately for Mr Foley, it transpired that this
privilege had been authorised (surprise, surprise) by Congress itself.
Also under the gun are frequent flyer programmes. Congress last year specifically
allowed its members and staff to use mileage accrued on official business for their
personal use, on the grounds, possibly now questionable, that this was the norm in the
private sector. The executive branch, it appears, has no policy governing frequent flying
and, if it had, you can be sure Mr Sununu would have used it to the hilt. Congress,
however, has been obliged to put limits on the outside income its members may earn in
honoraria; curiously, a federal judge last month ruled that the ban on civil servants
supplementing their incomes in this way was unlawful.
This fixation with perks, while the stuff of good 'n' dirty politics, completely misses
the point. There is something wrong with the governance of America, but it is not simply
because those who govern have grown fat and greedy. The root causes are complex, but
must include the unrealistic personal standards asked of public figures and the decline in
the controlling influence of the two main parties. The two have led to the absence of
leaders of quality and a fragmentation of the body politic.
As Senator Warren Rudman, the New Hampshire Republican, explained when he
bowed out last month, the system is not working and real issues are being ducked. If it
were, and they were not, no one would be wailing over free potted plants and floral
displays.
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE-MDC: April 13, 1992
ER
Copyright 1989 Newsday, Inc.
Newsday
July 2, 1989, Sunday, NASSAU AND SUFFOLK EDITION
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 45
LENGTH: 255 words
HEADLINE: Edward E. Krepela, 89, Had Sayville Fur Shop
Edward E. Krepela, 89, of Bohemia, a furrier who dedicated himself to community
service, died Thursday in a West Babylon nursing facility after a long illness.
Born on New Year's Eve, 1899, Krepela "always said he came in with fireworks and
bells," said his daughter, Edwina Gross of Bohemia.
BODY: Mr. Krepela grew up in Astoria, Queens, and learned the fur industry there.
He was a talented designer who once made a mink coat for then first lady Eleanor
Roosevelt, his daughter said.
After working for several large furriers in New York City, he moved to Bohemia in
the early 1940s and opened a fur shop in Sayville.
He plunged into community activities. He was the local air-raid warden for Bohemia,
West Bohemia, Sayville and Ronkonkoma during World War II. He and men under him
patrolled the communities to make sure no lights shone brightly enough to attract enemy
bombers. Over the years, he served as captain of the auxiliary police and as a volunteer
firefighter.
The son of Czechoslovakian immigrants, Mr. Krepela was an amateur musician who
enjoyed playing Czech folk tunes on the piano, accordian, harmonica or drums. He spoke
several European languages, his daughter said.
Other survivors include a sister, Emily Bachsmith of West Sayville; a son, Edward Jr.
of Ocean Beach; five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. Mr. Krepela was a
widower.
A service will be at 11 a.m. tomorrow at the Raynor & D'Andrea Funeral Home, 245
Montauk Hwy., West Sayville; burial, the Bohemia Union Cemetery in Bohemia.
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
came
FV
The Washington Post
February 2, 1986, Sunday, Final Edition
SECTION: Washington Post Magazine; Pg. 162
HEADLINE: The Fashion for First Ladies; From Jackie to Nancy, from Paris to New York
BYLINE: By Anne Behrens
BODY:
WITH ADMIRATION, disapproval, pride and disappointment Americans take great
interest in the personal style of the reigning first lady. From the French fashion designers
Jacqueline Kennedy favored as first lady to the gifts Nancy Reagan accepted from American
designers, the clothing issue has entangled many. Pat Nixon was accused of not having
enough style. One reporter wrote of her in 1969, "If only Pat would do something for the hell
of it." When Rosalynn Carter brought her sewing machine to the White House, it was
interpreted as a slap in the face of Seventh Avenue.
Certain pieces of clothing will always remain in the memories of Americans: Jacqueline
Kennedy's pink suit stained with the blood of her slain husband; Lady Bird's bright yellow
sensible clothes; Pat Nixon's Republican cloth coat; Betty Ford's scarves; Rosalynn Carter's
not-brand-new gown; Nancy Reagan's $25,000 inaugural wardrobe.
The Magazine's Anne Behrens talked with Margaret Brown Klapthor, the curator emeritus
in the division of political history of the National Museum of American History of the
Smithsonian Institution, where Klapthor has worked for over 40 years. Klapthor's specialty is
the collection of the first ladies. Here are some of her recollections.
Power of the Pillbox
JACQUELINE KENNEDY, who very much liked French fashion, tried to downplay that
fact, so that people didn't know when she was wearing a French-made gown. She always
wished to spotlight the fact that she was actually wearing American clothes made by as
many American fashion designers.
She liked Oleg Cassini, and he did a number of dresses for her. But her inaugural ball
gown was from a sketch that Jacqueline made herself; it was made by Ethel Franco who was
head of the designer fashion salon at Bergdorf Goodman in New York City. She knew exactly
how she wanted it to look.
She suggested they use a very handsome silk as the basic foundation of the dress, and then
cover it over with a number of layers of silk chiffon -- each one going in a different direction
-- giving it a very deep matte finish. Then the bodice of the dress, which is beautifully
embroidered with silver, was even veiled over with the silk chiffon.
That night, when the lights hit the chiffon, you could just see a little glint once in a while
of the silver and silk underneath so it did create the kind of effect she was trying to achieve
-- something that was very elegant looking, very deep, very rich looking.
She didn't like her clothes to be the main thing that she was noted for as first lady, though.
She was very careful to publicize the more cultural things she was interested in, like the
ballet, music, the interior restoration at the White House and so forth. She felt those kinds of
things were more substantive. But like it or not, people were very much interested in what
she wore and young women all over the country adopted the kind of styles that she wore.
The little pillbox hats that she wore to the first inauguration were immediately worn by
people all over the country, and her styles -- the kind of clothes that she wore -- definitely
influenced what Americans were wearing.
Jacqueline had an innate sense of fashion. And I think she really did like to look well. She
downplayed it because it was being made a rather nasty political issue during the campaign.
She really got mad at the publicity about how much she spent on her clothes. That was when
she said, "I couldn't spend that much if I wore mink-lined underwear."
She dressed to please herself. She was proud of how she looked as a representative of the
American people.
REPRESENTATIVE WOMAN
LADY BIRD JOHNSON came from the Southwest, where fashion was not asimportant as
it was to somebody who lived in the northeast corridor, where clothes were available and
where how to dress was something that a woman knew almost instinctively from the day she
was born. That was something Mrs. Johnson had to learn.
But she did learn it. You can see the increasing sophistication in Mrs. Johnson's clothing
during the time that she was in office.
Lyndon Johnson liked for his women to look well, to be pretty. He was insistent that they
shouldn't gain weight, they should have and maintain nice figures. So Mrs. Johnson was
definitely dressing to please him as well as to please herself and to please the American
people.
1 don't think clothing or fashion per se was one of the strong interests in her life. I think
she was much more interested in things like her beautification program and Johnson's
programs for the Great Society.
Mrs. Kennedy seemed to be dressing for the people who were interested in high style and
Mrs. Johnson saw herself as representing women from al over the country. Mrs. Johnson's
clothing was chosen to be the kind of thing that more people were able to wear, people in
her own age group.
That beautiful silk fabric that Mrs. Johnson's inaugural gown is made of -- that really
heavy, heavy, heavy yellow satin -- was probably something that the designer was fascinated
with. And Lady Bird likes bright, cheery sunshiny kinds of things, so it probably was a
meeting of the minds. She looked pretty in it with her dark hair.
Mrs. Johnson's dress is perfectly plain; there is no ornamentation -- it just has a beautiful
line. The coat has the only decorative note on it, which were the fur cuffs on the sleeves.
She liked yellow, maybe because of Texas, yellow being associated with the yellow rose of
Texas. If you come from a specific place, and it's a place you love dearly you tend to want to
identify with it.
CAMPAIGN WIFE
PAT NIXON was a very practical woman. She did a lot of campaigning for her husband
and separately from her husband, so that she was on the road a lot more than many of the
first ladies had been.
Lady Bird was on the road a lot but not until after she became first lady. Mrs. Nixon had
been traveling on the road and campaigning for her husband since the Eisenhower
administration. She had been involved in active political campaigning outside on a national
level, and so Mrs. Nixon was wearing the kind of thing that was practical, that was easy for
her to keep up on the campaign trail.
I just don't see Richard Nixon as having the interest in how his wife appears that Johnson
had, or having the intense masculine pride in how his wife appears that John Kennedy had
for Jacqueline. Richard Nixon seems to have just trusted Pat to look right. And probably if
you had asked him a day after what she had on the day before, he would not even be able to
tell you other than he knew she looked fine.
Pat Nixon's own background had something to do with her style. She came from a family
that didnt have very much as far as worldly goods were concerned. I imagine clothes were
the least important thing in her life in growing up. There was not enough money in the
family for her to be able to do anything more than be clothed and clothed decently -- as
decently as she could on what they had available.
When they had the controversy about whether Nixon should continue for the second term
as Eisenhower's vice president, somebody brought up the fact that he had a political fund
that was supporting him, that was set up for his use by wealthy Republicans in California.
And so some people were insinuating that there was something that was dishonest. When
Nixon went on the air to refute this, he said that he and his wife lived very simply -- and all
she had was the Republican cloth coat, which helped defuse the distrust.
Pat Nixon realized that she had gotten caught in a political cross fire as far as her
Republican cloth coat was concerned, and, I suspect, was shaken up by it. But she did wear a
fur coat and hat to the inauguration. And it didn't seem to have prevented her from wearing
fur later on when she was able to afford it on her own.
If she preferred one color, it was probably blue. She looked pretty in blue with her blond
hair and her blue eyes.
Model of Comfort
BETTY FORD'S interest in ease of dressing had to do with her young children -- car
pooling and taking care of everybody's interests when her husband was busy with his career.
And the shirtwaist dress, which was definitely the style that she preferred, was just
something that she was very comfortable in -- it was quite easy for her to wear. She had been
a fashion model, so she had a model's instinctive interest in clothes and could wear them so
that they looked well.
When she knew a style looked nice on her, she tended to trust her instincts and to wear
that style -- different varieties of it. She loved a scarf around her neck. And the scarf became
quite popular during the Ford administration.
When she suddenly became first lady she probably enjoyed having the opportunity to
indulge her interest in clothes for a specific purpose amd being able to go to New York and
select what clothes she wanted. And she probably enjoyed the opportunities a first lady has
to show off fashion.
One of her favorite evening dresses was made from a piece of fabric that her husband had
gotten for her from China when he went there as a member of the House committee -- after
China was opened up during the Nixon administration. He brought her back a beautiful
piece of green brocade, and she had a dress made by Frankie Welch in Alexandria.
She had told Frankie she liked the dress so much she wished she had more of the fabric
because she'd like to have another dress just like it. Frankie found a second fabric in New
York City. It's the same color exactly, the same design exactly, but it's not a brocaded silk; the
design is embroidered on a silk chiffon. So she had the second dress made out of the fabric
from New York. And it's the second dress that we have in the collection at the Smithsonian
(of course she never had an inaugural ball), because that's the one she wore most at the
White House.
Office Partner
ROSALYNN CARTER saw her first lady's role as a job, as a career. She had her own office
in the East Wing in which she worked. She dressed like a businesswoman. This was the way
many women were moving. They were beginning to be more independent, to be seen as
having a part in the career of -- as well as being a social adjunct to -- the husband. And so
Rosalynn's clothes and the way she dressed reflect mainly a change that was happening to
women all over this country.
She perceived herself as one of these women. She saw herself as having just as much of a
job as the president did. It was a kind of partnership. What was new about her was that she
organized the position into a business much more than the other first ladies. The other first
ladies sort of went with the flow. They did the kind of thing they wanted to do, what was
necessary. But they didn't see it as a career and a business. With Rosalynn you get much
more the feeling of the modern career woman in how she approached the job.
She had a little bit of a more tailored, more practical look. And you have to remember that
she came from a very small town in Georgia, and she was not comfortable with the New
York fashion scene. She didn't want to be. She didn't think that was important. So when she
wanted a formal dress she would probably be just as likely to go back to Georgia and get it
from one of the stores down there as to go to New York.
The dress that she wore for the inaugural ball was the dress that she had worn when her
husband became governor of Georgia -- at the inaugural ball in Georgia. The most interesting
thing about that dress is that you can see the influence of first ladies' fashion on what's being
worn elsewhere in the United States. Rosalynn Carter first wore that dress the same year that
Richard Nixon was inaugurated as president of the United States. And Mrs. Nixon's
inaugural ball dress certainly influenced the style of the dress that Rosalynn Carter wore as
the wife of the governor of Georgia. It has the same little standing collar. The lines of the
coat and the silhouette of that whole ensemble looked very much like the one worn by Mrs.
Nixon.
NANCY REAGAN'S clothes, like those of Jackie Kennedy, caused a bit of a fuss. They both
went to the top designers, the most expensive designers in the country.
People tend to go to somebody they trust and somebody that they have patronized before
-- somebody they know helps them to look well. And Mrs. Reagan had been accustomed to
dressing in high style since the days of her youth. She always dressed well, and she knew
good clothes right from the beginning. So it's not any wonder that by the time she was an
adult, and the Reagans had the money, she went to the best of the fashion designers.
Her first inaugural gown had been a gift to her from Galanos. It is an off-the-shoulder
dress and is very hard to display -- but it certainly is a handsome dress.
By the second inaugural, she had learned a few things. The second dress had both
shoulders in and she did wear her hair in its usual style. I think that she might have learned
a little bit about Washington weather and that on the night of the inauguration there is the
problem of going to seven different places and taking coats on and off and differences of
temperature in each one of those ballrooms.
Her preference for the color red says that here's a woman who's not afraid to be noticed,
that in fashion she rather likes to stand out in a crowd. It's in keeping with her self-
confidence.
Her ensembles and well- coordinated look reflect the look of a woman of her generation. I
think Jacqueline Kennedy's casualness -- in which she would have brown shoes and black
gloves -- is a reflection of the casualness of youth and of the 1960s. Mrs. Reagan has come
from an earlier generation. In my day you wouldn't think of having a handbag and shoes
that didn't match. You dressed as an ensemble. And I think Mrs. Reagan still sees that as
being the way to dress.
I don't know which sparks which -- whether having parties and enjoying parties sparks
Mrs. Reagan's interest in formal dress or whether formal dress sparks the interest in parties.
You'd have a hard time untangling that one. But I think that the Reagans come from a class
of society where people do have big parties, and they just like to socialize. That's one of their
relaxations at this stage of their lives. This is the way they like to enjoy themselves.
GRAPHIC: Picture 1, Jacqueline Kennedy set style for many women; Picture 2, Lady Bird
Johnson dressed simply and for her husband; Picture 3, Pat Nixon liked comfortable clothes,
Picture 4, Betty Ford knew when a style looked good on her; Picture 5, Nancy Reagan
.She always dressedwell.
Copyright 1989 The Times Mirror Company
BB
Los Angeles Times
September 29, 1989, Friday, Home Edition
SECTION: View; Part 5; Page 6; Column 4; Fashion Desk
LENGTH: 545 words
HEADLINE: FAKE FURS
BYLINE: By BARBARA FOLEY, Barbara Foley is a regular contributor to the Times
fashion pages.
BODY: Fake fur is turning out to be the season's most political fashion symbol. All of
a sudden it represents more than just the latest style; it connotes a social conscience for
many people. But even the least politically motivated might appear to have joined the
cause when they get a look at the synthetic minks, lynx and sables now stalking the coat
departments of local stores.
Some top-name designers are encouraging the trend, though not necessarily for
political reasons.
In Milan, Giorgio Armani, who lives with five cats and two dogs, is showing fake furs
with a glamourous feeling about them. He says he's not an animal-rights zealot, but finds
fake furs appealing anyway. "The look is fun and my menagerie still loves me," he says.
In Los Angeles, Antony Moorcroft says he favors animal rights. But he believes his
fake-leopard, bathrobe-style coat is such a success because it fits in with the broader
trend toward animal print fashions.
"We've shipped over 1,000 of that coat for fall, our biggest single cutting ticket ever,"
he says.
New Yorker, Norma Kamali offers: "I'm a vegetarian and love my three dachshunds."
But, it is the slouching economy that makes her question the taste level of real fur now.
"It seems inappropriate to display any sort of wealth in such devastating times," she
says. The improved quality of the fabrics also influenced her, Kamali says.
At Tyber, the Belgium-based fake-fur fabric company that counts many top designers
among its clients, a spokesperson points out how new, cotton-and-acrylic-pile blends
make the content of the fabrics feel like velvet. And advanced technology allows for long
hair, thick and flat weaves as supple as silk and closely resembling a range of real animal
fur.
Maintenance is easy too: Fake fur need not be stored in cold locations during
warm-weather months, and it can be dry cleaned. It also eliminates the obvious security
risks of real fur.
While many in the fur business contend that animal-rights activists are not
influencing their sales, they admit that sales are down.
"Overall it's been a tough year, but that has more to do with economic conditions than
people reacting to animal-rights issues," says Marvin Oshan, managing director of Fein
and Co. furs in New York. "Our business is still up 10% over last year."
PETA (people for the ethical treatment of animals) coordinator Dan Matthews says
sales figures are down. He cites a report by Evans Fur, a large U.S. chain, that the
company lost $2.2 million in the first quarter of 1989.
The fashion element, combined with the lower price of fake- fur styles (Moorcroft's
full-length leopard retails at $250) certainly accounts for some of the loss in real fur
sales this season.
But the fact that so many admired, or otherwise notable women around the world are
letting their preference be known, may be having the strongest impact of all.
In London, Princess Diana reportedly returned a mink coat that was a gift from Prince
Charles. First Lady Barbara Bush refused to wear fur for her husband's Inaugural
celebration last winter. Ivana Trump, president of The Plaza hotel owned by her
husband, Donald, has made a pronouncement-no more fur for her. And ealier this year,
Zsa Zsa Gabor sold all of her furs.
GRAPHIC: Photo, Left: fedora hat, $100; Anne Klein earrings, $50; black gabardine
jacket with faux mink trim, $240. All from Saks. Above: leop- ard-like swing coat, $248,
by Style VI Ltd., at the Broadway. ; Photo, Sable look-alike jacket by Options, $650,
features full collar, toggle closings, $650; at Neiman Marcus. ; Photo, COLOR,
UNREAL -- Sonia Rykiel's three-quarter length faux leopard coat, $1,045, is modeled
with designer's cranberry sweater, $530, and knit pants, $490, at I. Magnin and Bullocks
Wilshire. It's one of many stylish fake furs available this fall. AL SEIB / Los Angeles
Times
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
Copyright 1989 Gannett Company Inc.
USA TODAY
November 24, 1989, Friday, FINAL EDITION
Correction Appended
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 12A
LENGTH: 371 words
HEADLINE: It's morally wrong for people to wear fur
BYLINE: Dan Mathews, Guest columnist
BODY: Yet each year, tens of millions of foxes, rabbits, raccoons, minks and other
magnificent animals are still punished for being born with such lush coats. They are
trapped and drowned or beaten to death in the wild, or they face confinement, then
gassing or painful anal electrocution on fur farms. Luxurious? Glamorous?
First lady Barbara Bush refused a free fur. Liza Minelli, who once promoted fur,
now speaks out against it. So do Kim Basinger, Belinda Carlisle, Peter Falk and many
more Hollywood luminaries. Top designers, model agencies, photographers and fashion
stylists are also refusing business from furriers. Today, hundreds of animal-rights groups
across the country are protesting this trade.
This week, The Fur Vault, the USA's second-largest fur chain, announced it wants
to sell its retail operations, having lost $ 7.2 million over the past two years. Antonovich
and Evans, the other two publicly traded fur corporations, also report quarterly losses
in the millions.
Trade reports reveal that trapping activity has been cut in half - or more - due to a
lack of demand for pelts. Contrary to fur industry propaganda, there is no ecologically
sound reason to trap animals for "wildlife management." When left alone, animal
populations can and do regulate their own numbers. Callous trappers were not part of
Mother Nature's plan and are fortunately on the way out.
Fur "farmers" also report a dramatic drop in business. As a result, millions of
animals will not be born into a life spent entirely in the confines of a small cage, where
food is dumped on top, forcing the animals to eat through the wires, and where they
must endure the fumes of their feces which collect below, until they are killed at the age
of seven months. Good riddance, fur farms.
Meanwhile, enterprising and compassionate merchants are reaping the benefits in the
fake- fur and non- fur garment businesses, which are expanding as rapidly as the bloody
fur trade is shrinking.
Compassionate people have good reason to smile this winter. Americans are deciding
that when we have some extra money and want to celebrate life, the last thing we should
do is wrap ourselves in death, which is what each fur coat represents. CORRECTION:
Spelling Correction:Liza Minnelli, Source:Celebrity Birthday Book
GRAPHIC: PHOTO; b/w (Dan Mathews)
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
NR
Proprietary to the United Press International 1981
April 21, 1981, Tuesday, AM cycle
SECTION: Washington News
LENGTH: 253 words
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
BODY: Two representatives of the Committee for Awareness About Furs said
Tuesday that Nancy Reagan's top aide indicated the first lady may not wear her mink
coat in the future.
But Peter McCoy, the first lady's chief of staff, said he made no such promise.
Andrea Posner and Jane Risk, representing the animal protection group, met with
McCoy at the White House Tuesday in connection with a letter they wrote to Mrs.
Reagan last March 4, urging her not to wear furs.
After the meeting, Ms. Posner reported that McCoy said "we should probably not look
for her active participation in their cause." But she said McCoy told them, "It's possible
what you will see is that Mrs. Reagan will simply not wear her fur coat."
McCoy said he had met with the two committee members at Mrs. Reagan's request,
and "the only thing that really came out of the meeting was that I would relay the
information to Mrs. Reagan."
"I did say she undoubtedly would not be wearing her fur coat in the next six
months," he said.
"I did tell them I would inform Mrs. Reagan" about the meeting "because Mrs.
Reagan is concerned," McCoy said.
Ms. Posner said the committee's letter told Mrs. Reagan that "her mink coat was
receiving a lot of attention and causing other people to buy fur coats."
She said she explained to McCoy how the animals are killed to produce the fur coats,
recalling that when Jacqueline Kennedy sported a leopard coat while she lived in the
White House, it started a run on spotted animal coats.
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
April 21, 1981, Tuesday, AM cycle
SECTION: Washington News
LENGTH: 260 words
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
LEAD: Two representatives of the Committee for Awareness About Furs said Tuesday
that Nancy Reagan's top aide indicated the first lady may not wear her mink coat in the
future.
BODY:
Two representatives of the Committee for Awareness About Furs said
Tuesday that Nancy Reagan's top aide indicated the first lady may not wear her mink
coat in the future.
But Peter McCoy, the first lady's chief of staff, said he made no such promise.
Andrea Posner and Jane Risk, representing the animal protection group, met with
McCoy at the White House Tuesday in connection with a letter they wrote to Mrs.
Reagan last March 4, urging her not to wear furs.
After the meeting, Ms. Posner reported that McCoy said "we should probably not look
for her active participation in their cause." But she said McCoy told them, "It's possible
what you will see is that Mrs. Reagan will simply not wear her fur coat."
McCoy said he had met with the two committee members at Mrs. Reagan's request,
and "the only thing that really came out of the meeting was that I would relay the
information to Mrs. Reagan."
"I did say she undoubtedly would not be wearing her fur coat in the next six
months," he said.
"I did tell them I would inform Mrs. Reagan" about the meeting "because Mrs.
Reagan is concerned," McCoy said.
Ms. Posner said the committee's letter told Mrs. Reagan that "her mink coat was
receiving a lot of attention and causing other people to buy fur coats."
She said she explained to McCoy how the animals are killed to produce the fur coats,
recalling that when Jacqueline Kennedy sported a leopard coat while she lived in the
White House, it started a run on spotted animal coats.
The New York Times
August 30, 1981, Sunday, Late City Final Edition
SECTION: Section 6; Part 2; Page 246, Column 4; Magazine Desk
HEADLINE: DREAMS OF LUXURY
BYLINE: By Andre Leon Talley
BODY:
If you had an unlimited amount of money to spend on one luxurious item for your
wardrobe for fall, what would it be?Ask prominent women this same question and they
conjure up fantastic personal visions, as fanciful and extravagant as the question itself.
Some would choose exacting seasonal wardrobe needs, such as fine silk dresses or dinner
suits; other dream of luxuries and exotica associated with royal antiquity or present-day
primitive cultures.
For some, the ultimate luxury is a matter of practicality. For others, lasting, yet seasonal,
wardrobe additions - of the finest workmanship, the best fabrics and exquisite detailing - for
an active business and social life are on this list. For some women, the luxury item is
something that is practical on a daily basis.
DIANA VREELAND, for instance, who is a fashion authority and special consultant to the
Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, wears mostly custom-made clothes
that she has owned for years. Spending unlimited funds on "stocking a supply of heavy
white silk shirts made by the best shirtmaker one could find in the world today" is
something she would not consider extravagant. They would be worn in the same way as her
custom-made snake-printed vinyl boots, which she wears to work with navy wool trousers
and at night with silk pajamas. About her Mick Jagger-rock-star-style boots, she adds: "I
maintain them by having them polished on the soles that hit the streets and haven't had to
order boots since the day they were delivered."
ESTEE LAUDER, head of her own cosmetics and beauty empire, selects clothes that work
well in her schedule, which often takes her from boardroom to dinner in a restaurant. Each
season, she purchases a street-length dress with matching jacket from the couture, a practical
but still luxurious investment. "For autumn 1981, I will buy a soft, luxuriously textured,
subtly printed, multicolored dress with jacket," she says. "It has to be as beautiful for
luncheon with the jacket as it will be for dinner without it."
KIM CARNES, the pop singer, wants only one thing. "That's that everything I buy for my
fall wardrobe by Giorgio Armani," says the blond singer who wears tailored Armani suits on
stage when she sings her hit "Bette Davis Eyes."
PALOMA PICASSO, jewelry designer for Tiffany & Company and the daughter of the
painter Pablo Picasso, has a more whimsical wish. She would design a modern-day version
of a Velazquez "Infanta" dinner outfit for herself, beginning with a pair of boots that rise
form her heel to her waistline in one piece. "I would have Capobianco make me a pair of
trouser boots," says the boldly original designer who wore fiery red to her wedding
celebration. (Capobianco is a customer shoemaker in Paris).
The boots would be part of her own modern-day "casual" luxe dinner ensemble, which
would include "a bright yellow sash to knot into a bow at the waist from the couture-made
collection of Yves Saint Laurent, a black lace shirt from his as well; a huge reversible cape in
some fur that looks and feels like silk velvet that would be black on one side, red on the
other"; her own dramatic design pendant in precious topaz, gold and baguette diamonds.
The fashion designer MARY MCFADDEN has one luxury fantasy: to handcraft a gold
ornament to be worn around her neck. "It would be a Greek wreath in 22-karat beaten gold."
IRIS LOVE, the archeologist who discovered the ancient Temple of Aphrodite the Greek
goddess of love - the same day man walked on the moon, would have crafted a headpiece
based on a diadem from antiquity. She would go to the master craftsmen of Zolotas or
LaLaounis, the internationally known Greek jewelers, "for an exact-scale copy of an exquisite
gold diadem consisting of miniature flowers and bees - like the one found in the recently
excavated royal tomb believed to be that of Philip of Macedon. Of course, I want the
original, but it's in a museum in Salonika. I'd settle for a master copy and wear it with
admiration and sincerity, despite the fact that it would necessitate having a bodyguard."
NAN KEMPNER, a perennial on the best-dressed list, who wears designer clothing by Bill
Blass, Calvin Klein and Perry Ellis as well as Yves Saint Laurent and Dior couture she selects
in Paris on her annual fashion expeditions, would spend unlimited amounts on gold, but
"nothing conspicuous that attracts attention. I would like a beautiful gold compact and
cigarette case encrusted with stones. Something of such an exceptional quality, it would
almost take bringing Cellini back from the grave to make it.It would be something I could
enjoy sitting on my dressing table as well as concealing in my handbag. It would be a very
private luxury."
The fashion designer NORMA KAMALI would travel to Africa, Indonesia and South
America to seek antique jewels and accessories. "I would look for handcrafted items from
indigenous cultures," said the designer, who has a collection of belts made from slices of
petrified wood, grass skirts suspended on leather yokes decorated with bright beads, and
disk necklaces from the Masai of Africa. "These are soon to be extinct accessories, the best of
the native antiques to have forever from primitive cultures."
NATHALIE HOCQ, chairman of Cartier, also likes fashionable objects with ageless
elegance. "I would buy a precious object that might incorporate jewels into the design, like a
box with such design integrity it would never go out of style."
SUZANNE DE PASSE, president of Motown Productions, is a corporate executive who
demands from her wardrobe accessories that look right and instill confidence from 9 A.M. to
9 P.M. "My one ultimate item would be to buy a fine pearl necklace from Bulgari, my
favorite jeweler," she says.
A versatile dinner suit with a beautiful lame blouse is what actress CLAUDETTE
COLBERT - who comes to Broadway in the fall as the star of a new play called "A Talent for
Murder" - would select from a designer like Bill Blass or Adolfo. "It would be trimmed with
a sable collar and cuffs. That way, I could avoid wearing a fur coat."
Some of the wealthiest women, who would seem to have everything money can buy, lack
that one grand luxurious item - a coat or other article of Russian stable. The high cost of
sable skins seems to make even the most successful woman of wealth or achievement still
consider a full-length coat a faraway fantasy rather than an affordable reality.
"If a woman spends between $80,000 to $100,000 for our best sable coat today," says a
spokesman for Mme. Potok of Maximilian of New York, "she knows it is the coat with the
best quality silvery skins with the delicate texture of silk." Lawrence Schulman of Alixandre
Furs says: "Today, women who are working invest in something like our evening fisher
shawl edged in ruffles made from the same skins which retails for $16,000."
LENA HORNE, currently on Broadway in her smash one-woman show, "The Lady and
Her Music," would also buy Russian sable. "I would, if I had a lot of money, go right out
and buy myself a full-length raincoat lined in sable."
BETSY BLOOMINGDALE, wife of the Diners Club founder, Alfred Bloomingdale, and a
close friend of Nancy Reagan, would go to Mme. Potok, the furrier that made the First
Lady's lunaraine mink coat earlier this year. Mrs. Bloomingdale, who lives in Beverly Hills -
where she sees two Rolls-Royces on every block - would have her coat dyed to match a
brand-new black car."l would ask Mme. Potok of Maximilian to make a black sable coat to go
with a brand-new black Ferrari. With all the luxury cars around Beverly Hills, there is
something smashing about having a Ferrari and matching coat."
PATRICIA TAYLOR BUCKLEY, wife of the writer and editor William F. Buckley Jr.,
dreams of having not one but two new luxe furs. "I would buy a fisher coat because it's the
choicest fur, II she says. "It would be cut very sporty, belted and with a deep vent up the
back, double-breasted and very much like a polo coat." Her second choice is sable. "I don't
wear a fur coat at night and since the idea of a little fur stole is quite repellant to me, I
would want a great big triangle made of sable.
"When I say big, 1 mean something really big all done up with sable tails as fringe. A
large sweep is perfect to wear at night with anything. Why, I could throw it this way, that
way, appear as if I'd strangled myself with it coming through the door."
GRAPHIC: Illustrations: photos of Diana Vreeland, Estee Lauder, Kim Carnes (p.246) photos
of Paloma Picasso, Mary McFadden, Iris Love (p.248) photos of Nan Kempner, Nathalie
Hocq, Norma Kamali (p.248) photos of Suzanne de Passe, Claudette Colbert (p.250) photos of
Lena Horne, Betsy Bloomingdale, Patricia Buckley (p.252)
Los Angeles Times
March 20, 1988, Sunday, Bulldog Edition
SECTION: Part 1; Page 36; Column 1; Advance Desk
HEADLINE: TRAVEL, APPEARANCES CLOSELY SUPERVISED;
NO SURPRISES IN FIRST LADY'S PUBLIC LIFE
BODY: Just as it is for her husband, life in public is for Nancy Reagan a preordained
venture, in which surprises are singularly unwelcome.
On a sightseeing tour at the 1987 economic summit meeting in Venice, an aide makes an
"X" in masking tape on a cobblestone to mark where Nancy Reagan should stop for
photographers. There are no similar marks for the mayor of Venice or the wife of Italy's
prime minister.
When she goes to Harpers Ferry, W. Va., to welcome a trainload of make-believe
comic-strip characters campaigning against drugs, a six-person advance team, similar to the
President's but smaller, precedes her by four days.
Her traveling party on trips abroad includes her personal assistant, hairdresser, personal
secretary, photographer, medic, protocol officer and Secret Service agents.
She flies on an Air Force plane, designated Executive Foxtrot One. On a side trip from
Venice to Sweden, it was an Air Force Boeing 707 outfitted to accommodate the First Lady
and 40 to 44 other passengers as well as the pilots, stewards and military communications
personnel. On other trips, it is a smaller plane.
"Security doesn't really allow her to fly commercial," Elaine Crispen, Mrs. Reagan's press
secretary, said.
By contrast, Bess Truman and her daughter, Margaret, used to go from Washington to
Independence, Mo., by train, paying for their own first-class compartment. Lady Bird
Johnson rode the Eastern Airlines shuttle on shopping trips to New York. By the Richard M.
Nixon Administration, however, the presidential family was flying on government planes.
Raisa Gorbachev, wife of the Soviet leader, also gets some perks. Her clothes, hats, furs,
shoes and accouterments are something the average Soviet woman can only dream about.
And, although such information is not disclosed in the Soviet Union, it is doubtful that she
pays for them. It is known that she received gifts from Paris couturiers during the couple's
official visit to France in 1985. She has also worn creations of Soviet designer Slava Zaitsev.
A scene during Margaret Thatcher's 1987 reelection campaign illustrates the difference in
treatment of political spouses in England and the United States.
After the Thatchers, flying aboard a plane hired by the Conservative Party, arrived at the
packed Manchester Airport, the prime minister plunged into the crowd, but her husband,
Denis, became separated from her and spent about 10 minutes wandering around the fringes
by himself. It would not have happened to Nancy Reagan.
Copyright 1983 The Washington Post
The Washington Post
March 2, 1983, Wednesday, Final Edition
SECTION: Style; B1
HEADLINE: Taking the Coast By Storm The Reagans & the Royals Meet and Greet and Eat
BYLINE: By Lou Cannon and Donnie Radcliffe
DATELINE: SANTA BAREARA, Calif., March 1, 1983
BODY:
President Reagan played the role of hero to the rescue today, braving storm and high
water in an attempt to salvage a rain-drenched westeran welcome for his favorite queen,
Britain's Elizabeth II.
The president's motorcade forded seven streams of wheel-high water to get to a barren
metal hangar at Santa Barbara Airport, which the queen reached after an adventure of her
own.
In Long Beach, the queen first left her royal yacht Britannia and then abandoned her
flood-blocked limousine for the more reliable transport of a U.S. Navy bus, which took her to
the Long Beach airport for the flight here.
The queen changed into knee-high rubber boots and a macintosh in the four-wheel-drive
vehicle that took her from Santa Barbara to the president's secluded mountaintop Rancho del
Cielo (Heavenly Ranch). Through it all, she wore the same turquoise hat with feather trim on
the side. At the ranch, she and Prince Philip had a mostly Mexican lunch with the Reagans,
White House Chief of Staff James A. Baker III and his wife Susan, and British Foreign
Secretary Francis Pym and his wife.
"You've seen this water before," the president told reporters as he and the queen stood on
the ranch house porch, posing for photographs. "I remember it was this way when we signed
the economic program."
Perhaps the president was reminded of his economic troubles by his ride down the
mountain for the red-carpet arrival ceremony in the hangar. Reagan reached the airport after
Secret Service agents had scouted the tortuous road leading from his ranch to U.S. Highway
101 and advised that he and Mrs. Reagan make the trip in a four-wheel-drive vehicle.
It took 30 minutes to negotiate the 6 1/2 miles of hairpin turns and twisting curves, and
one White House official acknowledged that he was concerned that the president had been
needlessly exposed to a dangerous drive to attend the seven-minute ceremony.
The condition of the road was so bad that a Secret Service detail was trapped on the
mountain early Monday morning during a storm. Fog and wind had made the helicopter
landing area unusable.
In Washington, a Secret Service spokesman, Joe Petro, told the Associated Press, "We would
never permit the president into a dangerous situation unneccesarily."
White House officials said Reagan had been advised of the condition of the road, which is
not unusual during the rainy season here, and had decided to go to Santa Barbara anyway.
He and Nancy Reagan also decided to go ahead with their plans for a mountaintop lunch for
the British royal couple.
The royal visit chewed up most of Reagan's day at a time his administration faces a host of
serious foreign and domestic policy problems. All told, including the ceremony, the lunch,
the trip down and back up the mountain and a lot of waiting time for a queen, Reagan spent
five to six hours of the day involved in the unusual royal visit to his ranch.
His staff was similarly preoccupied. Chief of Staff Baker made the trek up the mountain for
the lunch. Deputy Chief of Staff Michael K. Deaver, who said today he had been much more
worried about the queen's traveling conditions than she had been, has been detached to
accompany her throughout her 10-day visit to the West Coast. "The queen insists upon
staying on schedule. She didn't want to cancel anything today," Deaver said.
And White House spokesman Larry Speakes, reflecting the importance that Reagan gives
the royal visit over anything else, did not even bother to hold his usual daily press briefing.
The closest Speakes came to discussing any issue during the day was when he was asked
at the airport to comment on a report that Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) had accused the
White House of withholding important imformation about the troubles in the Environmental
Protection Agency.
"The president has indicated that we will not use executive privilege to cover up
wrongdoing," Speakes said. "If Dingell has any evidence of wrongdoing, he should turn it
over to the Justice Department."
To American observers, Queen Elizabeth has seemed rather impervious to both the many
cheers and the fewer signs of protest that have marked her visit. In the hangar ceremony, for
instance, she gave only a little halfway glance to a welcoming crowd of 1,000 that included
many children who had been let out of school for the visit.
However, when the presidential limousine--flying both the U.S. flag and the monarch's
royal standard--left the hangar, Prince Philip rolled down the window and acknowledged the
cheers.
The ceremony itself featured a 21-gun salute and the playing of both "The Star-Spangled
Banner" and "God Save the Queen" by a military band. The massive jet, decorated with the
presidential seal, taxied into the hangar and deposited the queen and Prince Philip at the foot
of the red carpet, where they were joined by the Reagans.
The president and the queen then walked to the end of the carpet and stood stiffly at
attention as the anthems were played. Elizabeth's face was impassive. The president wore
what some have called his "patriotic expression," familiar to those who have watched him at
parades, ceremonies with important allies and the welcoming home of former prisoners of
war.
At the ceremony, Mrs. Reagan wore a brown coat with fur collar and a small brown hat.
The queen wore a turquoise dress and hat and two strands of pearls and a diamond brooch.
The welcome for the queen here, which will culminate in an official dinner in San
Francisco Thursday night, followed by a 31st anniversary dinner for the Reagans the next
night aboard the Britannia, was unprecedented.
Though kings and queens and others of similar rank are customarily accompanied by the
U.S. chief of protocol, the relationship between the Reagans and and the British royal couple
has become so personal that the first family was unwilling to delegate the ceremonial
responsibility.
"As far as I'm concerned, it's perfect," said Chief of Protocol Selwa Roosevelt. "It's a big trip
and there's a great deal to be done. Normally, when we do a queen we don't have the
president and Mrs. Reagan to move, too."
In 1976, when the queen paid her six-day visit to the United States, she also stayed aboard
HMY Britannia. Only in Washington, when President Ford entertained her at a state dinner,
did she come ashore to stay in Blair House.
Then, however, Ford left it up to the State Department to arrange an escort. Since the State
Department has no navy of its own, officials had to find a volunteer one. Publisher Malcolm
Forbes was invited to accompany her flotilla in his 113-foot yacht, Highlander, and while he
was at it, provide accommodations for then-chief of protocol Henry Catto and then-U.S.
ambassador to Great Britain Anne Armstrong.
On that voyage the Britannia sailed along the Eastern Coast, docking at such ports as
Charleston, S.C., Philadelphia and Newport, R.I., where the Fords went aboard as the queen's
dinner guests the night before she left.
Deaver said last week the present trip was different from other royal visits because it was
the first time a British monarch had toured the West Coast. Queen Elizabeth came to Rancho
del Cielo at the personal invitation of Reagan, who, during a ride the two took at Windsor
Castle last June, said he would reciprocate at his own ranch.
But the horseback ride planned for today was scrubbed because of mud, rain and slippery
conditions, which are normal accompaniments to the rainy season here. A Santa Barbaran
attending the hangar ceremony apologized to the president for the weather as he shook
hands while waiting for the queen to arrive, but others in this seaside city wondered why the
visit was arranged for this time of the year in the first place.
The queen's stopover here wasn't limited to the ranch trip. After flying here from Long
Beach in a presidential jet, she attended an official welcome by the city. When she returned
from the ranch, she visited the Santa Barbara Mission.
Throughout her visit, Queen Elizabeth has received mostly warm and friendly greetings
from Americans. However, there have been a sprinkling of protesters and a few hostile signs.
Last night, a small group of all-purpose demonstrators marched up and down outside the
White House press briefing at the Sheraton Santa Barbara with signs that said, "Free Ireland"
and "The Malvinas are Argentine." Today the signs of protest were directed more at Reagan
than the queen. One placard at the Santa Barbara airport said: "Sixty million more--horror for
El Salvador."
At the ranch, the president wore a denim jacket, western shirt, cord tie and boots, and Mrs.
Reagan was in a bright red raincoat as they welcomed the queen. They served a combination
plate that included enchiladas, tacos, refried beans, chilies rellenos and fresh fruit.
The royal couple, accompanied by the first lady, braved the road from the ranch again to
tour Santa Barbara Mission and then flew to Long Beach to board the royal yacht. Weather
permitting, the couple and Mrs. Reagan are scheduled to steam up the coast and arrive in
San Francisco Thursday morning.
GRAPHIC: Pictures 1 and 2, The queen, the president and Prince Philip during airport
ceremonies in Santa Barbara yesterday; Shielded from rain, the queen leaves Long Beach
airport; AP photos
The New York Times -- March 7, 1983, Monday, Late City Final Edition
HEADLINE: A WEEK OF CLOUDS IN THE WEST, NOT ALL IN THE SKY
BYLINE: By FRANCIS X. CLINES, Special to the New York Times
BODY:
President Reagan seemed close to fearless on the subject of the environment as he made
the final stop of his long week out West by visiting troubled timberland executives in
Oregon. His path dogged daily by the growing controversy over the Environmental
Protection Agency, the President nevertheless chose the occasion to defend industry's
treatment of nature and to complain about backpackers' concern over woodlands.
"The private sector has not been guilty of rape of all the natural resources," the President
told the lumber executives Saturday in Klamath Falls. The statement, while categorically safe,
was politically troubling to aides who have been working ceaselessly at damage control in
the E.P.A. controversy.
Similarly, the President, as if heedless of the latest poll readings showing growing public
distrust of his dedication to defending the environment, took up a favorite theme, his
contention that too much of nature can be protected by Government.
"We have 80 million acres of wilderness land now," Mr. Reagan said. "This is land that you
cannot have a road in or anything of the kind. It's there because out of the 250-odd million
Americans in this country, we realize that at least 240 million of them are backpackers who
want to hike into that wilderness area."
His audience laughed heartily along with the President. Reagan staffers were hardly as
amused, particularly those anonymously insisting that the President was "forcefully" tracking
the E.P.A. controversy.
"There was a period once upon a time," Mr. Reagan went on, "when there were so few
people and this country loomed so big and unexplored that, yes, people used and then
moved on. But that isn't true anymore."
The President's critics contend it has been heartfelt statements such as that, over the years,
that underlie the policies and attitudes of E.P.A. appointees now facing charges of
mismanagement and hostility toward environmental tasks. But White House aides, as they
traveled with the President through his rainy week of celebrity with Queen Elizabeth II, kept
to their insistence that any problem was rooted farther down the chain of command.
In tandem with the unwanted environmental controversy, the President's West Coast
travels also trucked along the "crisis" in El Salvador, as proclaimed far more willingly by
Administration officials. The President himself offered strong warnings Friday, after a San
Francisco speech, on the dangers of leftist guerrillas toppling the Salvadoran Government.
Other nations in the hemisphere, he warned, would fall in turn.
The President denied he was posing any parallel with Vietnam, and this was reiterated
Saturday night on the plane home by Edwin Meese 3d, the President's counselor, who said
Mr. Reagan had in mind not a new "domino theory" but more of a "cancer theory."
"I wouldn't call it the domino theory," Mr. Meese said. "He has always talked about the
threat to Central America. Call it the cancer theory: Infection in one country can spread to
others."
Originally, the President's trip was designed to be an easy mixture of a few speeches and
long hours of social graces with the Queen. But even as Mr. Reagan arrived in Santa Barbara
Monday, the trip had ragged edges and his staff was preoccupied with the problems of basic
security that were aggravated by disastrous storms. The seven-mile mountain road to the
President's ranch had been sliced through by half a dozen overflowing creeks, and some
Secret Service agents were concerned at making repeated trips on it, even in four-wheel-drive
vehicles. Nevertheless, the President's cherished plan to bring the Queen up the mountain
was kept, even though gales had washed out the most picturesque plan of the week, the
hope of President and Queen to go horseback riding.
Secret Service agents on the President's Oregon tour were devastated later in the week
when word came of the death in a auto accident of three colleagues on the Queen's security
detail in California. At least one wondered whether the high-speed routine of these V.I.P.
protection trips, in which assisting local and state police often race anxiously about the roads,
had been a factor.
Secret Service agents are among the most resilient people on Presidential trips. They have
the esprit of football specialists who defend against the deep pass, and they quietly intercept
the most outlandish surprises such as the occasional, predictable habit of some innocent
Americans to actually carry their own pistols to dinners and lunches where the President
speaks. "Isn't that wild? Well there really are people who do that," one agent said in
describing the discreet confiscation of these weapons after they set off metal detectors at the
doorway.
Mr. Reagan himself seems at least as resilient as his bodyguards and far more smilingly
fatalistic on this subject. At the end of the week, discussing the question of whether his
economic policies might revert back to more inflationary days, he said: "I would say, 'Over
my dead body,' but there are too many people willing to take me up on that."
In Santa Barbara, the President vigorously "worked the crowd" as he waited for the
Queen's arrival, reaching to shake hands, smiling, waving, patting children. Such a scene of
Presidential politicking is rare lately, but should not be taken as a sign that Mr. Reagan will
run again. Rather, he had to wait through weather delays for the Queen and this was a
handy way to kill time. "I think he's using the Presidency as a steppingstone to get back into
pictures," Bob Hope joked at one point.
Of all the nuances of the week, none was more closely searched from city to city than the
respective wardrobes of the Queen and the First Lady. Nancy Reagan so often seemed to
show up in outfits that were far more eye-catching than the Queen's that even a member of
the President's party was hoping Mrs. Reagan would begin to show some mercy. Even amid
the tans and grays of a rainstorm photo session, Mrs. Reagan managed to have a bright red
raincoat. It was noted that she did adjust in midcourse one day and remove an elaborate fur
collar from her dress. The Queen's special taste in frocks eventually seemed refreshing
against the California norm of overstyled display. And on Thursday night the Queen
reigned at the state dinner in San Francisco with such a display of diamond shimmer that
any contest with Mrs. Reagan imagined by the masses was settled with blinding finality.
The Washington Post
October 24, 1983, Monday, Final Edition
SECTION: Style; C1
HEADLINE: The First Lady's First Lady;
As a Firm Voice From The East Wing, Shelia Tate Helps Remold an Image
BYLINE: By Elisabeth Bumiller
BODY:
AT A PARTY not long ago, Jimmy Carter gave Sheila Tate a big kiss on the cheek, smiled
knowingly, then said: "You have the hardest job in the White House." Tate, who says the
former president "couldn't have been nicer," just giggled.
In fact, Nancy Reagan's press secretary might have the hardest public relations job in
America, considering that her client came to town with an image problem as big as the Ritz.
That was 1981, the year Nancy Reagan:
*
Selected her $209,508 White House china;
*
Spent more than $800,000 in private donations to decorate the house;
*
Accepted free clothes from her favorite designers;
*
Seemed at a loss for a public service project, the traditional core of the first lady's role.
It was an impossible time for Tate, who had to defend her. The press was snarling, and
sometimes she snarled back. "I would wake up in the middle of the night thinking, 'I can't
believe I really said that,' " she says. She was so frustrated she was actually telling friends
that if Nancy Reagan were ugly and fat, reporters would leave her alone. At the same time,
top White House staffers were complaining about the job Tate was doing. Some of them
wondered how long she'd last.
Things have changed. In recent days, Nancy Reagan has:
*
Appeared on "Good Morning America," interviewing former drug addicts;
*
Delivered an antidrug message on the NBC sitcom "Diffrent Strokes";
*
Read poetry before a performance of the National Symphony; and
*
Narrated two one-hour PBS docudramas on drug problems, to be broadcast Nov. 2 and 9.
Tate's life has improved. A shrewd former public relations executive, she has helped
remake the first lady's image into that of a national spokeswoman fighting drug abuse. At
the same time, she has gained credibility with the press--in large part because she doesn't try
to hard-sell the media a product it won't buy. When a reporter once joked that Tate's job was
a lot like being press secretary to Marie Antoinette, Tate just laughed. Still, she's been around
too long to curry favor with reporters at the expense of her client; never will you hear Tate
say anything that's not glowing about the woman she calls "Mrs. Reagan."
In the East Wing, where she often walks with her head down, brow furrowed and jaw set,
Tate, 41, is the worker bee. Unlike former White House social secretary Muffie Brandon, who
came from Georgetown's social circles, and unlike Mary Hoyt, Rosalynn Carter's press
secretary, who had a sophisticated, uptown look, Tate is the no-nonsense girl from Falls
Church High School who was never a cheerleader but was best friends with one. Her client
wears Adolfo, but Tate orders through the Brooks Brothers catalogue. She buys conservative
dresses with bows at the neck.
In nearly three years on the job, she has mastered the press secretary's basic techniques:
1. The Look, once directed at two photographers who nearly got into a fist fight during a
White House state dinner. 2. The Rolling of the Eyes, good for making a reporter feel
frivolous for asking a question like "What was Nancy Reagan wearing last night?" 3. The
Selected Use of Sarcasm, as in "If I were first lady, I would probably take on some kind of
nice animal issue, so I could be photographed with puppies for the next four years." 4. The
Sense of Humor, used when she convinced Brandon, who once said the White House had a
"tablecloth crisis," that her code name over the two-way radio the East Wing staff uses was
"Tablecloth" then got the dispatcher to use it. 5. And The Earnest Approach, brought
into action when she spent an entire day on the phone with reporters, assuring them that
Nancy Reagan's cold was just a cold, and not a First Illness that might keep her husband
from running.
"It's a terrible job that she has, a no-win job," says Tate, as earnest as ever. "She's doing the
best she can."
Influence and Images
It is 9:20 a.m., time for the East Wing staff meeting. James Rosebush, the staff director,
shuffles papers on his desk as a half-dozen female aides come in, freshly made up and
beautifully dressed in bright wool suits, the corps de ballet for Nancy Reagan. They take
their seats in a close semicircle around Rosebush, facing him from the other side of his
horseshoe-shaped desk. Tate is the last to slip in, yawning and sleepy-eyed from a late night.
She takes a seat on the couch, away from the rest of the group, then looks over at the coffee
table. She picks up one of Rosebush's hotel mementos. "Did you know that Jim steals
ashtrays?" she asks slyly.
The meeting progresses as Tate rubs her eyes. "You really did stay out late last night,"
says Rosebush. "No," says Tate, dismissing him. "Midnight."
The meeting moves on to Reagan's upcoming trip to Japan, and what Nancy Reagan will
do while she's there. "Did you read 'Tokyo at the Top?' " Rosebush asks the group. What?"
says Tate, furrowing her brow. "Did you read this article in Town & Country about Tokyo?"
Rosebush repeats, holding up a photocopy. "It's very useful."
The article is about the elite of Tokyo. Nancy Reagan has often been criticized by the press
for spending time with the elite of foreign cities, particularly when she went to a week of
royal parties in London for the wedding of Prince Charles and Diana. Tate gives Rosebush a
dull stare.
Tate and Rosebush have never liked each other, although Tate says that's past and "we
made our peace." At one point, Rosebush is said to have wanted her fired. "Oh, that's
ridiculous," he counters. Now there's speculation that he's going to leave for another job
within the administration by the end of the year.
"In the beginning there were some things that needed to be smoothed out," says Rosebush
of Tate, "but we smoothed them out. If there's some sort of a feeling that we don't get along,
I think it's grossly exaggerated."
Tate's influence is subtle, and she does not run the shop. Michael Deaver, the presidential
aide Nancy Reagan calls as often as 10 times a day, still makes the major decisions in the
East Wing. Others say it's Nancy Reagan, not Tate, who deserves credit for the new image.
"Sheila surely has helped," says presidential pollster Richard Wirthlin, who says the first
lady's popularity is up from the early days, "but it's hard to assess a specific cause and
effect."
Tate can be hardheaded and intense ("I wanted to tear people limb from limb," she says of
the early press coverage), but she loosens up for jokes with her own staff. At White House
state dinners, seeing how Brandon kept the social aides whipped into a state of high alert for
snoopy reporters trailing close to the Reagans, Tate dubbed the aides "Muffie's Marauders."
The name stuck.
And in New York, when Tate's staff car didn't show up in time to join a White House
motorcade, Tate hailed a cab and, as the Secret Service looked on aghast, quickly directed it
into the caravan of sleek limousines. Kacey McCoy, the wife of then-East Wing staff director
Peter McCoy, got into the front seat. "Do you always travel like this?" she asked, amused.
The cabbie, who said he'd only been driving a taxi for three days, was stunned. He looked
straight at Tate and said, "This is a Woody Allen movie--right?"
Sometimes she backfires. When the animal rights people were complaining bitterly during
the early months of the administration about the First Lady's fur coat, Tate told a reporter
that the fur collar on another coat of Nancy Reagan's was just "a dead animal."
"You should have seen the letters," Tate laughs. "I got one from some woman who said, 'I
have looked into your eyes, your vacant eyes,' and on about this horrible person I was."
She has worked ever since she graduated from college, at first writing radio ads for cans of
yellow cling peaches, later becoming a vice president in the Washington office of Hill &
Knowlton. Divorced once, she was remarried in 1981 to Bill Tate, an insurance agent she
dated in college. Her idea of luxury is having a whole day to shop.
These days she's too busy. It was Tate who suggested that Nancy Reagan perform at
Washington's annual Gridiron Club dinner in March 1982, an evening when she sang, danced
and made fun of herself on stage as a "Second Hand Rose"--and which Wirthlin later called
"a turning point." And it is Tate who diligently keeps the New York and Washington gossip
columnists fed with backstairs tidbits, all designed to make Nancy Reagan seem like any
other wife of a president, trying to succeed at a difficult job.
"I wish more people had seen Merv Griffin," she says about a recent television appearance
of Nancy Reagan's. "Funniest thing I have ever heard her tell. She invited a woman up to the
residence to have iced tea, and she had on just a plain blouse and a wraparound skirt. At the
end of the meeting, Mrs. Reagan got up, extended her hand and said she felt something at
her foot, thinking it was the napkin from her tea." But no. It was her skirt, down around her
ankles. As Nancy Reagan said to the woman: "Well, I guess this is one meeting you'll never
forget."
Reporters know exactly what Tate is up to with an anecdote like that, which is humanizing
her client. But they still like her a lot. "She's a pro," says Helen Thomas, the UPI White House
correspondent who has covered every first lady since Jacqueline Kennedy. "I rate her very
high."
But reporters, and even some staffers at the White House, have often wondered what she
honestly thinks of the woman she represents.
"I like her," she says, adopting The Earnest Approach. "I really do. I'm a different person,
but that does not mean I don't appreciate Nancy Reagan for the person she is."
"They're not buddies," says White House spokesman Larry Speakes, a colleague from her
days at Hill & Knowlton, "but it is a good, professional relationship." The two don't talk
about their children or clothes, but they speak to each other three or four times a day. Tate
can always reach her with a reporter's question, fast.
"I think the way she is perceived now is more accurate," Tate says. "It was a matter of just
keeping at it. The media has the need to make judgments right away, and you have to work
against that need, just hammering away."
* Anytime and Anywhere
Another day, another meeting. This one's at 9 a.m., in the office of Larry Speakes. Tate is
sitting in a corner, listening to Speakes tell his staff how to respond to the press about events
in the Middle East. The phone buzzes.
"Larry, it's Mrs. Reagan," says an aide. Everyone, including Tate, falls silent.
Speakes picks up the phone. "Yes, ma'am, how are you doing this morning?" he says, the
southern politeness flowing from every pore. "Uh, I was not involved in that, but let me try
to find out and see what happened. Uh huh, uh huh, uh huh. All right. I'll do that. I really
was not involved in that
that's true. Well, I'll check on it. Let you know."
Speakes hangs up, gives Tate a blank look, then resumes the meeting. Afterward she
hurries up to his desk.
"I don't know what she was talking about," Speakes says, carefully. "Can you try to figure
out what it was--tactfully?"
Tate's day has begun. By midafternoon, she's determined that Nancy Reagan had been
reading an article that her son, Ron, had done in Interview magazine about a Puerto Rican
boxer, and that a picture of the boxer had subsequently been taken with the president. Nancy
Reagan had called Speakes because she wanted to know where the picture was. Tate, familiar
with the first lady's frequent requests of minutiae, immediately took care of it--but told
Speakes to call Nancy Reagan back with the details. "It's good for Larry," she says later. The
two old colleagues watch out for each other.
Tate long ago got used to a first lady who calls her anytime and anywhere. "That week
after the assassination attempt," she says, "she had some kind of a sense that it was really
important for people to have some details, every day. She would call me in the morning,
even before I left home, 6, 6:30, and she would tell me anything that had gone on the night
before."
Other parts of Tate's job require a unique talent. There was that time the Egyptian and
American photographers almost got into a fist fight while the president was making his toast
at a White House state dinner. "It was like being a schoolteacher in a schoolyard," she says. "I
can only control the Americans, so I gave him The Look. At the end of it I gave him a piece
of my mind. He started to say, 'He pushed me first.' I said, 'Don't ever do that again.' It was
Alexander Haig's soup that was at risk, I remember. They were about to go into it."
And then there was the time in England when reporters, parked curbside outside nearly
every party Nancy Reagan attended, were pressuring Tate to come up with anecdotes and
observations from inside the country house gates. "I remember I was introduced to Lady
So-and-So and Lady So-and-So," she says. "And they started talking, and I couldn't
understand a word. It was sort of like when you first go to an English movie, and it takes 10
minutes to get used to the accent. I kept thinking, 'How am I going to give anybody
anecdotes?'
II
And finally, there was the memorable get-acquainted briefing with Nancy Reagan and
reporters during her first month at the White House. "And after it was over," Tate
remembers, "this reporter comes up to me and says, 'Please tell Mrs. Reagan she should
never cross her legs.'
Tate paused.
"Why?" she finally said.
"It can give you heart attacks," said the reporter.
"I came back to my office," says Tate, "and I said to myself, 'I have made it to the top of
my profession.' " She shakes her head, laughing.
Shining the Appliances
Tate grew up in Arlington and Falls Church, the daughter of a communications lawyer,
graduated with a degree in journalism from Duquesne University, got a job in public
relations at Westinghouse Air Brake in Pittsburgh, then broke off an engagement with a
college sweetheart.
"I gave the ring back," she says. "It was just my ambition coupled with it being the wrong
time." It was the early '60s. "I mean, I had to lie about my marital status to get a job. You
couldn't tell people you were engaged. They figured engagement meant marriage meant
pregnancy. And I really wanted a career. I hadn't gone to college all that time to get married
and have kids. But I felt like I was getting disengaged to his whole family, because literally
that last year I had spent every weekend at his parents' home, and his mother was giving me
turkey platters."
From Westinghouse, Tate went on to write the canned-peach ads, then moved to another
ad agency in Parkersburg, W. Va., where she test-marketed Purafil, a product that was
supposed to get rid of household smells when you put it in your air conditioner. "In Florida
one day they sent me to Fort Lauderdale to interview this lady who had written a letter
saying that Purafil had saved her marriage," she says. "She had a pet monkey and her
husband hated it because it smelled so bad, but now her house 'was like a rose.'
"So I go up there, and the smell almost knocked me over when I walked in that place. And
I had this monkey literally crawling on me while I'm doing this interview. This filthy
monkey." She laughs. "The product didn't work. It smelled awful."
She married an advertising executive in 1967, moved to Denver and became public
relations director of the Colorado National Bank, adopted one son (the doctors had told Tate
and her husband they couldn't have children) and then, while trying to adopt another,
became pregnant with her daughter. With two children, she worked part time, and entered
what she now calls her "shiny appliance period."
"You know, everything has to be perfect all the time," she says. "I think that's how I
compensated for not working full time outside the house. I made lists, and I stuck to them.
But it's very hard to go like that for several years. The kitchen floor keeps getting dirty again.
Now it doesn't all get done. I come home and have to kick the basketball out of the way, and
the dog hair sometimes gets the better of me. But you can't have shiny appliances and do a
good job at work, too."
From Colorado she moved to Texas with her husband, got a job at Hill & Knowlton, then
divorced him and moved with her two children back to Washington. "It was not a good
marriage," she says.
Back in her home town, in a rented townhouse in McLean, Tate got a job with Hill &
Knowlton--over the objections of Robert Gray, the head of the office, who said he didn't need
an extra person. He finally acquiesced, and after six months, made her a vice president in
charge of the American Trucking Association, one of the biggest public relations accounts in
the country. "I never promoted anybody as fast as I did Sheila," he says.
It was Gray, the cochairman of the Reagan inaugural, who recommended Tate for the
White House job. Nancy Reagan finally offered it to her Jan. 10, Tate immediately accepted,
and then went home and drank champagne with friends. A reporter woke her up to confirm
the news at midnight, called back at 1 a.m. and asked if a photographer could be sent over
right away (Tate said no), and the next morning, a Saturday, Nancy Reagan's new press
secretary never got off the phone.
"The phone was in the kitchen and it had a long cord," she says. "And that's the only way I
ate that day. I could reach the refrigerator."
Judgment Calls
Tate pulls her legs up in her office chair. She is dressed casually on an off day in khaki
pants, a cardigan sweater and loafers. She is trying to decide which first lady throughout
history she would have most liked to represent.
"It must have been hard for Bess Truman," she finally says, "following on the heels of
Eleanor Roosevelt, to say, 'I'm just Harry's wife and I'm not doing anything.' She was a gutsy
lady. She knew herself."
And what about Nancy Reagan? How will history judge her?
"Well, after eight years as first lady, II she says, "I think she'll have made quite a mark. She
did some things she knew were going to cause her some criticism, and she took it. You
fumble and stumble and keep trying to figure out how to do something worthwhile, that's
all. She could have changed her style to conform to press or public expectations, but she
stuck to her guns. And as a result, I think she'll be judged as a good first lady. She won't
have been an activist like Eleanor Roosevelt, but neither would a lot of other first ladies. "
And the most interesting first lady?
"A male first lady, II she says, and laughs. "Consider the difficulties of covering the
activities of Mrs. President's husband. That would be wonderful."
GRAPHIC: Picture 1 and 2, Tate listens as the first lady talks to reporters last year; Tate in
her office in the Easts Wing of the White House. By Ray Lustig--The Washington Post
November 13, 1983, Sunday, PM cycle
SECTION: International
BYLINE: By HELEN THOMAS, UPI White House Reporter
DATELINE: SEOUL, South Korea
President Reagan flew home today ending a week-long trip to Japan and SouthKorea that
a top adviser called "an outstanding success" in cementing relations with two Pacific allies.
Aides prepared a gala noontime welcome for him and first lady Nancy Reagan on the
South Lawn of the White House, The two Korean children Mrs. Reagan brought to America
for heart surgery were to attend before leaving for a New York hospital.
Reagan was exuberant about his dramatic excursion Sunday to the Demilitarized Zone
dividing North and South Korea where he talked to heavily armed Gls and ate a
cheeseburger and cherry pie with them.
"I am filled with pride," Reagan told the troops as he viewed North Korean artillery less
than a mile away from a guardpost at Camp Liberty Bell.
When he later met with President Chun Doo Hwan, the South Korean leader both praised
and chided him for the potentially dangerous foray right up to enemy lines. North Korea,
which Reagan blamed for the "barbaric" bombing in Burma Oct. 9 that killed 17 South
Korean officials, had threatened to kill the president.
"This is a big event, this is a surprising development, it is an unprecedented visit by the
president of the United States," Chun said. "Personally I had hoped you would not visit such
a dangerous place."
Chun told reporters he was so worried when the president was on the front line that he
ordered his forces "to be prepared at all times to place an artillery barrage between you and
the enemy."
"I think the trip has been an outstanding success," said Secretary of State George Shultz.
"It's been very important for the president to come here to north Asia to meet with the
leaders of Japan to discuss the opportunities and problems we have, and resolve the
process further."
He said the same was true in Korea, but Shultz added that he thought the main
significance in Seoul was recognizing the importance of Korea to the United States.
Reagan, wearing a fur -collared green Army parka, told the Second Infantry troops in the
DMZ they were "on the front line of freedom."
"Your presence here is the most effective theme in keeping the peace. Your readiness is the
most necessary thing to see that young men never have to die in war. The fellow on the
other side knows better than to take you on," he said.
In Japan, Reagan set an "agenda for progress" in the contentious trade negotiations and
offered that country a "partnership for good."
He also sought to allay fears that he is "trigger happy" with nuclear weapons.
In his speech to the Diet in Tokyo, Reagan said, "The only value in posessing nuclear
weapons is to make sure they can't be used ever."
In Korea, house arrests of dissidents coinciding with Reagan's trip brought the human
rights issue to prominence an put officials of both governments on the defensive.
Shultz flared up at one point with reporters when questioned on the subject. He insisted
there has been progress, adding, "I think that the situation is moving in a very positive
direction," especially considering the threat from North Korea.
Copyright 1985 Newsweek
Newsweek
January 7, 1985, UNITED STATES EDITION
SECTION: PERISCOPE; Pg. 9
LENGTH: 158 words
HEADLINE: The First Lady Unwraps Her Fur
BYLINE: EILEEN KEERDOJA with bureau reports
BODY: What a difference re-election makes. Four years ago, when she and her
husband first came to Washington, Nancy Reagan was assailed for wearing a fur coat
and fueling the notion of "a rich man's presidency." She switched to cloth. Now, with her
husband safely returned to the White House for another term, the First Lady has taken
her fur out of storage. She recently wore a mink coat at a welcoming ceremony for the
president of Venezuela, and the White House heard not one word of protest. Aides say
that if it's cold in Washington on Inauguration Day, she will probably wear fur then,
too. Mrs. Reagan's favorite coat is made of ranch mink -- an animal raised for its pelt,
and not an endangered species. But while the First Lady feels that is an important
distinction, animal-protection groups do not. A spokesman for one of the groups once
told the White House that to distinguish between the two amounted to racism toward
animals.
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
The New Republic Copyright (c) 1988 Information Access Company;
September 16, 1985
SECTION: Vol. 193; Pg. 16
BYLINE: Barnes, Fred
BODY: NANCY REAGAN doesn't hold back. During a two-hour visit to Granville, Ohio,
on a cool day last July, she threw herself into the activities of the National Conference
Training Teens to Say "No" to Drugs and Alcohol. It was as if her family's future were at
stake. She cried. She hugged. She held hands. She chatted animatedly with dozens of
teenagers. She ate a lunch of chicken, potato salad, and corn on the cob from a Styrofoam
plate. (She passed up the baked beans.) At the end of a skit about peer pressure on a high
school girl to take drugs, one of the actors asked, "Everybody composed here?" "Everybody
but me," said Mrs. Reagan, wiping tears from her eyes.
It was boffo stuff, and also very good politics. Not that Mrs. Reagan is insincere in her
barnstorming against drugs. Who doesn't oppose teenage drug abuse? But as luck would
have it, she's devoted to a cause that is good for her public image. And so she emphasizes it
relentlessly. Last year alone, she showed up at 110 anti-drug events and gave 14 speeches.
This year President Reagan's recovery from cancer surgery didn't keep Mrs. Reagan from the
Granville conference or a drug or a drug seminar aboard an aircraft carrier, the USS America.
He insisted she go, she says.
And why not? Mrs. Reagan's crusade against drugs is a crucial part of one of the greatest
political turnarounds in modern times. In fewer than three years, she was transformed from
a frivolous clotheshorse and chum of the idle-rich--the least popular president's wife in
decades--into a compassionate friend of the troubled young and a trusted adviser to her
husband. Now she is the most popular first lady of the last seven, topping even Jacqueline
Kennedy. Once a political liability, she's become a distinct asset.
This did not happen serendipitously. Some of the best political strategists the White House
could muster were enlisted, including four of the president's own advisers, Michael Deaver,
Stuart Spencer, Richard Wirthlin, and Joseph Canzeri. Meeting after meeting in late 1981 and
early 1982 was devoted to plotting the remaking of Mrs. Reagan. "They worked out a
scenario of how to turn her image around," says a senior White House official.
The idea was to minimize her contact with the fashion world and glitzy friends, and to
portray her as a serious person doing unexpected things. "Whenever people see her doing
something they didn't expect, they say, 'Hey, there's more to this woman than we thought,"
says James Rosebush, Mrs. Reagan's chief of staff. In February 1982 she took a full
contingent of reporters along on her first foray into combating drugs. They sat through three
and a half hours of excruciating confessions of drug addiction, crime, and family breakup at
a St. Petersburg, Florida, rehabilitation center. In 1983 during a trip with the president to
South Korea, she whisked two children in need of heart surgery to the U.S. on Air Force
One. It was not by chance that the Korean kids turned up. "We had our advance people
over there looking just for that kind of situation," says Sheila Tate, Mrs. Reagan's former
press secretary. Last year she went horseback riding in Rock Creek Park with White House
Press Secretary James Brady, still disabled by wounds suffered in the 1981 assassination
attempt on Reagan. And a few months ago she took a stab at breakdancing with the Dance
Theatre of Harlem. "People love to see her breakdancing with kids," Rosebush says.
He also insists that "there's been no PR campaign to sell Nancy Reagan. But through the
drug campaign, people have gotten to know her better." The real Mrs. Reagan, he means.
Well, maybe. Some parts of her new persona are indisputably real. She's now seen as a
major influence on her husband, especially on personnel matters and on dealing with the
Soviets. Washington is strewn with victims of her displeasure, including two former national
security advisers, Richard Allen and William Clark. And she is seen as tougher for having
endured presidential crises like the assassination attempt and cancer surgery. "I don't think
I've changed in what I believe in or in my fundamental values," she said in an interview. "I
think I've grown. I hope I've grown. I don't know how you could be in this position and
not grow. You're in the middle of history. How could you not grow?"
Grow more popular, at any rate. Mrs. Reagan is now more popular than the president. A
New York Times/CBS News poll in January found that her approval rating was a robust 71
percent; his was a mere 62 percent. And his disapproval rating was substantially higher--29
percent for him to 14 percent for her. An NBC News poll last spring pegged her
approval/disapproval ratio at nearly eight-to-one--69-to-nine percent.
But her advisers say that the most breathtaking evidence of Mrs. Reagan's repaired image
comes from a polling device that Richard Wirthlin, the president's pollster, calls the "feeling
thermometer." It doesn't measure approval, but how warmly or coldly one feels about a
public figure. "As a rule, most organizations and individuals fall in a range of 50, 53, 54 [on
a zero-to-100 percent scale]," says Wirthlin. "If you get in the 40s, that doesn't bode well. If
you're in the 60s, you're doing very well." In 1981 and 1982, Mrs. Reagan was mired in the
40s. One's standing on the thermometer rarely changes by more than two or three
percentage points. Mrs. Reagan defied this. In a Wirthlin poll conducted nationally in
mid-August, Mrs. Reagan scored 66 percent, the same as the president. She was well ahead
of every member of the president's Cabinet. When respondents were asked what they most
liked about her, the most frequent answer was that she supports the president and acts like a
first lady should.
Back in 1981 and 1982, polling results like these seemed unattainable. Newspapers were
filled with stories of her lavish White House redecorating, her fondness for couturier
fashions, and her hobnobbing with wealthy, society-page friends like Jerry Zipkin, whom
Time called a "full-time Manhattan partygoer." Some of her rich pals forked over $ 800,000 to
refurbish the White House. Another $ 209,000 was donated to buy new china. She wore
$ 5,000 Galanos dresses. She had three hairdressers. (She still does.)
"The CBS Evening News" juxtaposed a story about an improverished widow's eviction with
the first lady's acquisition of an expensive new dress. News of the purchase of china at the
White House broke the same day that the
Agriculture Department declared catsup a vegetable in school lunches. In a cover story in
December 1981, Newsweek suggested that the real Mrs. Reagan was revealed when she
savagely dressed down a Los Angeles hotel manager for delaying her and the president's
arrival at the presidential suite to allow the prior occupant to pack up and leave.
"It was a very unpleasant period, a very rough period," says Mrs. Reagan. "The press was
just part of it. Oh, gosh, there was the shooting incident and my father being ill [he died in
1982]. Everything seemed to come all at the same time. And maybe part of it was my fault.
I'm certainly not advocating this because I don't think it's right, but it's my way when I'm
hurt or troubled--my tendency is to pull back and be quiet. So there built up a
misunderstanding. On the other hand, I think perhaps the press jumped a little too quickly
without knowing me."
What to do? Mrs. Reagan and her staff--and the president's aides--were distressed over
what Rosebush calls her "sagging image." The obvious step was for her to adopt a cause, as
other first ladies had. Lady Bird Johnson fostered "beautification," Betty Ford plugged the
Equal Rights Amendment, Rosalynn Carter pressed for better mental health treatment. Mrs.
Reagan took up drug abuse, although she claims that a first lady isn't required to have a
cause. "You do what you feel you want to do, what you're interested in," she says. "Bess
Truman didn't [have a cause]. I think you have to be yourself. If you try to do something
that really isn't you, then you're going to get in trouble."
Mrs. Reagan was keen on the anti-drug crusade well before she reached the White House.
Children of two Reagan family friends, actor Ray Milland and TV personality Art Linkletter,
had died of drug-related causes in the 1970s. When Sheila Tate initially talked to Mrs.
Reagan in December 1980 about being her press secretary, Mrs. Reagan told her that "the
thing I want to get involved in is drug abuse, particularly related to kids."
A few weeks after Reagan was inaugurated, the subject came up again. "Nobody was as
keen about it as I was," says Mrs. Reagan. One of her aides dismissed it as "a Betty Ford
issue." Michael Deaver, the White House aide closest to Mrs. Reagan (he became a
Washington consultant last May), didn't like the idea. Neither did Tate or Ann Wrobleski,
then Mrs. Reagan's projects director. They said it was depressing, a downer. Instead, they
proposed that she get involved in "can-do" projects such as self-help schemes. That idea,
Tate says now, was "too unfocused." Anyway, Mrs. Reagan balked.
She went ahead with a few private meetings with anti-drug leaders. "I should have fought
for press coverage of those meetings," says Tate (who resigned last February). "We paid a
price for not being visible when we were doing our homework." It wasn't until the fall of
1981 that the White House came to grips with its Nancy Reagan problem. When Peter
McCoy left as chief of the first lady's staff in October 1981 to become an assistant commerce
secretary, a veteran political operative, Joseph Canzeri, entered. Canzeri worked for Deaver,
and he brought the first lady's staff in close touch with White House aides. Canzeri is
credited with getting the anti-drug campaign off the ground.
THE ALARM with which Reagan aides viewed the first lady's lack of popularity was
underscored in early 1982 when her plight was discussed at Camp David at a political
strategy session. Two of them, arguing Mrs. Reagan was a hopeless liability, recommended
that she be kept out of the public eye as much as possible. But Deaver and Wirthlin,
insisting she could become a help, prevailed. They conferred with Mrs. Reagan privately on
February 6, 1982. It was a somber meeting until Reagan walked in wearing sunglasses with
windshield wipers. He'd gotten them for a birthday present.
Deaver already had asked Rosebush, who was running the ballyhooed private sector
initiatives program, to take over the first lady's staff of 24. "It was kind of an aberration from
my career," he says. But after two months, he agreed. By the time he arrived in February,
Mrs. Reagan's anti-drug crusade was ready to go on the road. The first stop was St.
Petersburg, where teenagers at a rehabilitation center had gathered with their parents to
discuss drug abuse.
"I'd never heard anything like that before, ever," recalls Mrs. Reagan. "And you're just
sitting there dissolved with what you're hearing. The number of drugs they'd been taking
was mind-boggling, and what they would do to get them. They would steal. They would
kill. They would prostitute. Anything, anything." Mrs. Reagan was not told she would be
asked to speak. "I got up and managed to get out a few words, but it was hard."
Soon the first lady was appearing on television to talk about drugs. The first show was
"Different Strokes," a sitcom in which she played herself. She spent a day and a half
rehearsing at Universal Studios in California. Late in 1983 she cohosted "Good Morning
America" on ABC. Then she narrated a two-hour PBS special called "The Chemical People."
In all she's done 23 TV shows to talk about drugs.
Most of the appearances were in 1983, the year set aside in long-range planning for her to
do television. In 1982, according to Rosebush, she devoted her energies to traveling to drug
treatment centers. In 1984 she got involved with international service organizations like
Lions and Kiwanis and Rotary, addressing their conventions to warn about the drug peril.
This is the year for going international all the way, and she has many contacts overseas. "On
trips of foreign dignitaries who came here, when I would be talking to their wives, the wives
would always start to talk about drugs," she says. In April she invited 17 first ladies from
foreign countries to a drug summit in Washington and Atlanta. (A second is scheduled for
October at the United Nations.) Later last spring she preached against drugs across Europe
while accompanying the president on his ten-day trip that included the Bitburg cemetery
stop. In Rome she conferred with Pope John Paul II; she went without Reagan, to stress that
the war on drugs is her fight, aides said.
She got far more favorable press coverage in Europe than Reagan. In Spain she took a
flamenco lesson as TV crews filmed every step. Donnie Radcliffe of The Washington Post
wrote, "As the distinctive flamenco beat filled the hall she began moving her feet from front
to back and waving her hands windmill-fashion. Though doubtless hampered by the absence
of castanets, her footwork showed promise and her movements were fluid."
FRIENDLY STORIES about Mrs. Reagan have become commonplace this year. In January
Time did a cover story on "Nancy Reagan's Growing Role." It concluded that "in the last two
years she has probably become an outright political plus, winning friends and influencing
people." In April Lesley Stahl, usually a tough critic of the Reagan White House, did a
laudatory piece on "The CBS Evening News." "Even while Mrs. Reagan's critics were accusing
her of insensitivity,"
Stahl effused, "she was quietly devoting herself to fighting school-age drug abuse, a cause
she says she embraced after raising two children in the 1960s."
The best coverage came last June, when NBC News broadcast an hour-long special on her.
Mrs. Reagan and her advisers were delighted. Correspondent Chris Wallace said Mrs.
Reagan was "at the peak of hr power and the peak of her popularity. In the polls these days,
she does even better than her husband. In Washington's corridors of power, she's a
respected and feared political operative." Not bad for a former social butterfly.
The first lady's aides had every reason to be overjoyed with the show. "I worked very
closely with Chris," says Rosebush. "We helped as much as we could on the concepts." NBC
asked for special access to Mrs. Reagan--at Camp David, at the Reagan ranch in California,
during one of her visits to her 89-year-old mother in Arizona--and got it. A TV crew was
allowed to return a second time to film her mother, since she was sick on the first visit. It
captured the most touching moment of the show, when Mrs. Reagan's mother is shown
mouthing the words "I love you" to her. At the White House, word was sent out that aides
should talk to NBC for the show. Three of the four Reagan children made themselves
available for interviews--even Michael, only recently reconciled with his stepmother. What's
more, the White House policy of putting Mrs. Reagan on view in unusual informal settings
was once again vindicated. She was shown dancing, washing the dog, talking to then-Soviet
foreign minister Andrei Gromyko.
But perhaps the finest moment in Mrs. Reagan's image overhaul came in 1982. It was
aimed at the ever-impressionable Washington press corps. In early March, a few weeks
before the annual Gridiron club dinner (at which reporters flatter politicians by poking fun at
them), Tate asked Helen Thomas of UPI if the club might like an appearance by Nancy
Reagan. "It was a very modest proposal for a cameo appearance," says Tate. "I didn't know
if she would do it." Oh, yes, the Gridiron was interested.
"The first suggestion was that I make fun of the press," says Mrs. Reagan. "I said, 'No, uh,
no, I'm not going to do that. If I'm going to do it, them I'm going to make fun of myself."
She had already tried, to good effect, a touch of self-mockery a few months earlier at the Al
Smith dinner in New York. "There's now a picture postcard of me as a queen," she had said.
"Now, that's silly because I'd never wear a crown. It messes up your hair."
The Gridiron bit was holder. She would mock her jet-set tastes, appearing in what she
called "a crazy bag lady's outfit." A White House speechwriter, Landon Parvin, wrote a song
to the tune of "Secondhand Rose." It was called "Secondhand Clothes," and it went, in part:
Secondhand clothes
I'm wearing secondhand clothes
They're all the thing in spring fashion shows
Even my new trench coat with fur collar
Ronnie bought for ten cents on the dollar
The china is the only thing that's new
Did Ronnie have to buy me that new sewing machine?
Secondhand clothes, secondhand clothes
I sure hope Ed Meese sews.
Mrs. Reagan practiced for days, sneaking off to the Capital Hilton Hotel one afternoon to
try out the song-and-dance routine on the dinner stage. The night of the dinner, after the
president had been roasted, she slipped away from the head table. A publisher sitting near
Tate muttered, "Nancy Reagan's leaving. I'll bet she's ticked." When the curtain opened and
she appeared on stage, a gasp went over the crowd. Then the journalists and their guests
stood and applauded.
Her exit line failed--she tossed down a china plate, which didn't shatter--but that didn't
matter. Three years later, Washington reporters still talk admiringly of her performance,
though most hadn't seen it. Mrs. Reagan says she was extraordinarily nervous when she
went on. "I was relieved when they applauded at the end," she says. That applause is now
reflected in polls. What about her surge to popularity? "Everybody likes to be liked," the first
lady says with a grin.
Copyright (c) 1989 The New York Times Company;
The New York Times
December 4, 1989, Monday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section D; Page 11, Column 1; Financial Desk
LENGTH: 866 words
HEADLINE: THE MEDIA BUSINESS; Fur Industry Assails Critics in National
Campaign
BYLINE: By KIM FOLTZ
BODY: Responding to intensified protests by animal-rights advocates, the American
fur industry has begun its first national advertising campaign in an attempt to reassure
consumers that no one has the right to take away their "freedom to buy and wear fur."
The ads are part of an estimated $2 million public-relations campaign sponsored by a
coalition of fur-industry organizations. They come at a time when animal-rights groups
are running their own biting anti-fur ads to protest the killing of animals.
"We want to tell consumers what these groups are really after," said Sandy Blye,
executive vice president of the American Fur Industry, which has banded together with
the Fur Information Council of America and Fur Farm Animal Welfare Coalition to
fight the animal-rights movement.
Defining the Issue
"The issue here isn't whether people should wear fur, but whether anyone has the
right to intimidate the public," Ms. Blye said.
The fur industry's campaign is trying to persuade consumers that animal-rights
advocates want to limit the choices beyond the issue of whether it is humane to wear a
fur coat, Ms. Blye said.
The headline on one ad, for example, declares: "Today fur. Tomorrow leather. Then
wool. Then meat."
The series of five print ads are currently running in The New York Times and
newspapers in Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and Phoenix.
Fur sales are in the doldrums. The industry's yearly sales had more than tripled from
1979 to 1987, when they reached a peak of $1.8 billion. Since then, sales have stagnated.
It is difficult to determine just how great a role the anti-fur movement is playing in
discouraging sales.
"The protests are having some effect, but no one really knows for sure just how
much," said Bernard Groger, co-publisher of Fur World, a trade publicaton. He noted
that sales had also been dampened by the stock market crash in 1987 and the warmer
winters of the last few years.
Bigger Ad Campaigns
Anti- fur advocates assert that they are having a significant effect on public opinion
and they have expanded their advertising and public-relations campaigns this year. Such
animal-rights groups as Trans-Species Unlimited and People for the Ethical Treatment of
Animals are placing an increasing number of hard-hitting ads in newspapers and
magazines, on billboards and on cabs and buses in New York City and other large cities.
The Friends of Animals, for example, has put up thousands of posters in New York
City showing an animal's paw caught in a trap with the headline: "Get the feel of fur.
Slam your hand in a car door."
In its lastest advertising campaign, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals spoofs
the well-known "What becomes a legend most?" campaign for Blackglama furs. The
group's ad, which is running in current issues of Interview, Details and L.A. Weekly,
show a startled, mink-wrapped Casandra Petersen (the actress who portrays the character
Elvira in horror-movie parodies) beneath the headline "What disgraces a legend most?"
Peter Rogers, president of the advertising agency that bears his name and created the
Blackglama campaign, said he considered the group's ad libelous and had turned the
matter over to the lawyers at American Legend, the company for which the campaign
was created.
Impersation of Nancy Reagan
Unintimidated, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals are now preparing a new
campaign that takes a potshot at a former First Lady. The ad features the actor Terry
Sweeney posing as a fur -swathed Nancy Reagan, an impersonation he originated for
skits on NBC's "Saturday Night Live."
Earlier this year Mrs Reagan had agreed to pose for a Blackglama ad, but she later
changed her mind without giving a reason.
Animal-rights advocates are not worried that the fur industry is fighting back. "It's a
tribute to how educated the public is becoming," said Jolene Marion, staff lawyer for
Legal Action for Animals.
For the last few years, animal-rights groups have been trying to discourage the buying
and wearing of fur by telling the public that animals caught in traps suffer greatly and
that animals like mink that are bred on ranches for their furs are mistreated and
inhumanely killed, Ms. Marion said.
Behind the Fur Campaign
The fur industry's decision to start a campaign to counteract the anti- fur movement
is based on a consumer research study it conducted last summer that showed that a
majority of the public was aware of the animal-rights groups' protests.
"The study showed that people needed to be reassured that the fur industry was
treating animals humanely," said Richard Parsons, executive director of the Fur
Information Council of America.
In the long run, the fur industry is hoping to keep the animal-rights movement from
having the kind of success that similar movements have achieved in Europe.
In West Germany, anti- fur protests have virtually destroyed the fur business, once
the largest in the world. And animal-rights activists in England, the Netherlands and
Denmark are gaining substantial ground by using such violent tactics as bombing of fur
stores and throwing red paint on people wearing fur.
SUBJECT: FUR; ANIMALS
NAME: FOLTZ, KIM