When the Cheering Stopped Read Online Free PDF Page B

their official engagement they talked constantly on a direct telephone line from the White House to her home, went golfing together (she consistently won), and took long walks and drives. The Secret Service men, who, embarrassing though it was, had to follow everywhere, agreed among themselves that she was a stunner with a wonderful figure complete with the prettiest ankles. They also said it was hard to believe the President was almost fifty-nine years old, for he acted like a boy, dancing off the curbs when he walked from the White House to her home and leaping over obstacles on the golf course. He whistled, tapping time with his feet. He was animated and gay; he played the fool for her, bending over with arms dangling to shuffle along like an ape when she put a golf club across his shoulders, and then leaning forward so that it slid over his head, to be caught with a flourish. He was proud to show her off and had his Princeton class of ’79 come to dinner in the White House so they might meet her and, as it turned out, elect her an honorary member. They went to the Army-Navy game at New York’s Polo Grounds and she marched with him across the field at half-time. There was a roar of applause and she thought to herself that everyone was her friend and his.
    The wedding was to be at her house and they did not send invitations, feeling this would make it clear to allpublic officials and others that no gifts were to be given them. But when the State of California sent a gold nugget with the request that the wedding ring be fashioned from it, they accepted the present and had a plain band made. A minister from his Presbyterian church and an Episcopalian from hers would perform the ceremony and only a very few old friends and servants would join the families as witnesses. The head usher of the White House, Ike Hoover, took over the decorating of her home and arranged the catering of the buffet supper with an outside concern. Hoover had all the furniture removed from the lower floor of her home and in the drawing room, where the ceremony would be, he put in a wedding bower made of a background of farleyense and maidenhair fern extending from the floor to the ceiling, with overhead a canopy of green arranged in the form of a shell, Scotch heather forming the inner side. There was a mirror framed with orchids and the corners of the canopy were also caught up with orchids— Dendrobium phalanopsis, Vanda coerules and Laelia anceps alba . Above the mirror were South American Cattleya trianae, and sheaves of long-stemmed American Beauty roses were on both sides of the canopy. In the dining room there were roses and ferns; a small band of U.S. Marine musicians would furnish the music.
    December 18 was clear, crisp and bracing. At eight in the evening the President came to Mrs. Galt’s sitting room, alone save for a Secret Service man, and a while later Hoover tapped on the door and said, “Mr. President, it is eight-thirty.” Bride and bridegroom smiled and both called out, “Thank you,” and they went downstairs together. Margaret, Jessie and Nellie were there, of course, and both sons-in-law, and Aunt Annie and her daughter, and Ellen’s brother and Altrude and Grayson. Some of Mrs. Galt’s relatives by her first marriage were there, and all of her brothers and sisters with their wives and husbands. She wore a black velvet gown with a velvet hat trimmed with goura; her only jewelry was a brooch of diamonds the groom gave her. The President wore a cutaway coat and grey striped trousers.
    When the minister asked, “Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?” Mrs. Galt’s mother took thehands of both of them and put them one in the other. And so they were married. The buffet supper was served and then they left for their honeymoon at The Homestead in Hot Springs, Virginia. They went out of her house past aged Negro servants of both families standing in the hall calling, “God