Marguerite “Missy” LeHand (1898–1944) was born to an Irish family in Potsdam, New York. During her childhood the family moved to Massachusetts, settling into the small working-class town of Somerville just outside of Boston. It was here that she contracted rheumatic fever at the age of 15. She was lucky to survive the illness, as many did not, but it would damage her heart and eventually lead to her premature death. But before she died, nearly a year before the Japanese surrender in World War II, her personality, skill, and perceptiveness would draw her as close as anyone to the man who would lead America through the drama of the Second World War.
LeHand was trained in secretarial science at her high school, where upon graduating she held several positions in clerical work. The year the United States entered World War I, she moved to Washington, D.C. and accepted a position as a clerk for the Department of the Navy. Her skill and attentiveness was quickly noticed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s assistant, Charles McCarthy. Roosevelt had been the assistant secretary of the Navy during the Great War, and though McCarthy knew LeHand well, Roosevelt and LeHand had never met. When they did, the two developed an unbreakable friendship.
When Roosevelt was running on the ticket with James Cox, the Democratic candidate for the 1920 election, LeHand became his secretary. Though the election ended in a landslide victory for the Republican ticket of Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge, LeHand remained with Roosevelt. She continued as his personal secretary while he practiced law and when he became vice president of the Fidelity and Deposit Company. Her work proved invaluable, but her friendship even more so.
In August 1921, Roosevelt contracted polio. LeHand remained by his side during his efforts to recover. She joined him on trips, hosted events for him on his houseboat, learned to play poker and make his favorite cocktails, provided emotional support during his physical therapy, and encouraged his return to politics. She thought, however, that his return was too soon when he decided to run for governor of New York in 1928. She possibly suffered a nervous breakdown as a result.
Regardless, when Roosevelt entered the governor’s mansion, LeHand strode in as his secretary. She learned the subtle art of scheduling visitors or turning them away. She had become adept to the type of people Roosevelt preferred to see and developed a sharp eye for opportunists. She understood that the then-governor did not waste time. Her gift for being the gatekeeper to the active executive would play a crucial role when he entered the White House in 1933.
When the Roosevelt administration began, she became the first woman to be secretary to the president and was termed as the president’s “super-secretary.” The following year, she was on the cover of Time Magazine. That same year, after White House renovations, she was given the only office with a direct entrance into the Oval Office.
When Louis Howe, an advisor to Roosevelt, died in 1936, she became what would now be considered the president’s chief of staff (the position was not created until the Eisenhower administration). She was present every morning at the bedside meetings with Roosevelt’s key advisors. Her executive permission to refuse visitors to the president made her one of the administration’s most powerful people. From 1933 to 1941, she became known as FDR’s “Right Hand Woman.”
For 20 years, she worked tirelessly for Roosevelt, as well as his family. She was by his side during his struggles with polio, when he entered the New York governor’s mansion, and through the troubled and demanding years of the Great Depression and World War II. On June 4, 1941, however, her weakening health caught up with her, which led to her collapse at a White House party. It is assumed she suffered a heart attack and a stroke simultaneously. She was bedridden for weeks and missed the opening ceremony of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum—the nation’s first presidential library. It was a project that she had been intricately involved with.
Suffering from her debilitating stroke, LeHand soon moved back to Somerville. Roosevelt and LeHand kept in touch through letters and phone calls, but the war kept the president too busy to visit. In July 1944, she suffered a fatal stroke.
Her funeral, held Aug. 2, 1944, was attended by 1,200 people, including Eleanor Roosevelt, Joseph P. Kennedy, and Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter.
