Henry Morgenthau III: Crashing F.D.R.'s Party
[Henry Morgenthau III, a retired television producer and writer, is the author of “Mostly Morgenthaus: A Family History.”]
Cambridge, Mass.
FOR those of us with long memories, crashing a White House party, as a Virginia couple did when they sneaked into a state dinner last week, is nothing new. Consider something that happened nearly 71 years ago, on New Year’s Eve.
That night, Dec. 31, 1938, my kid brother, Robert, and I were invited to join our parents and a small gathering of Roosevelts and friends upstairs in the White House family quarters. My father, Henry Morgenthau Jr., was secretary of the Treasury, a job that included supervision of the Secret Service. He took his responsibility for safeguarding President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s life very seriously. A few weeks before his first inaugural, the president had narrowly escaped an assassin’s bullet, which killed Mayor Anton J. Cermak of Chicago, who was sitting next to him in an open touring car.
Around 11 p.m., escorting Eleanor Flood and young Eleanor Roosevelt, the first lady’s niece, Robert and I headed to the White House after a night on the town to join our parents to see in the new year. When the four of us arrived at the North Portico, we were questioned by a Secret Service guard much more closely than I had recalled on other occasions. After we were escorted upstairs, my father came to greet us in a state of high agitation.
Earlier that night, a 16-year-old high school student named Joe Measell; his date, Beatrice White; and his 14-year-old brother, Donald, had driven up to the White House. Their friends had dared them to get the autographs of the president and Eleanor Roosevelt. As Measell recounted in a newspaper article published in the following days, “We just walked right up to the main door of the White House and I told the policeman there we wanted to see the president.”
Because my father had instructed the Secret Service detail on duty to expect my brother and me with our dates, Measell was mistaken for a Morgenthau son. So, as Measell described it, he and his date “were ushered right in, and someone took our coats and led us upstairs.” ...
Read entire article at NYT
Cambridge, Mass.
FOR those of us with long memories, crashing a White House party, as a Virginia couple did when they sneaked into a state dinner last week, is nothing new. Consider something that happened nearly 71 years ago, on New Year’s Eve.
That night, Dec. 31, 1938, my kid brother, Robert, and I were invited to join our parents and a small gathering of Roosevelts and friends upstairs in the White House family quarters. My father, Henry Morgenthau Jr., was secretary of the Treasury, a job that included supervision of the Secret Service. He took his responsibility for safeguarding President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s life very seriously. A few weeks before his first inaugural, the president had narrowly escaped an assassin’s bullet, which killed Mayor Anton J. Cermak of Chicago, who was sitting next to him in an open touring car.
Around 11 p.m., escorting Eleanor Flood and young Eleanor Roosevelt, the first lady’s niece, Robert and I headed to the White House after a night on the town to join our parents to see in the new year. When the four of us arrived at the North Portico, we were questioned by a Secret Service guard much more closely than I had recalled on other occasions. After we were escorted upstairs, my father came to greet us in a state of high agitation.
Earlier that night, a 16-year-old high school student named Joe Measell; his date, Beatrice White; and his 14-year-old brother, Donald, had driven up to the White House. Their friends had dared them to get the autographs of the president and Eleanor Roosevelt. As Measell recounted in a newspaper article published in the following days, “We just walked right up to the main door of the White House and I told the policeman there we wanted to see the president.”
Because my father had instructed the Secret Service detail on duty to expect my brother and me with our dates, Measell was mistaken for a Morgenthau son. So, as Measell described it, he and his date “were ushered right in, and someone took our coats and led us upstairs.” ...