Booknotes

BONNIE ANGELO, AUTHOR, "FIRST MOTHERS: THE WOMEN WHO SHAPED THE PRESIDENTS": Well, you know, I'd covered the White House for a long time for Time magazine, but I remember the exact day it came into my head, and that was in 1968. I was covering the California primary with Robert Kennedy. And I--I asked him--I said--the--the family was deployed all over the state campaigning for him, and I said, `With all the tragedy that your family has suffered at the hands of politics, how do you account for the fact that they're out there again?' And he kind of looked at me under the eyebrows and said, `Have you met my mother?'

And so I spent a couple of days with that formidable Rose Kennedy and saw just how resilient she was, how interested she was in--in--in all of the things connected with pol--how devoted she was to Robert Kennedy, how she said at the time, yes, she would--she would then campaign for Teddy when his time came around, you know. So I got--I began to think about it then, and--and then back in my kind of daily rounds at the White House, I kept hearing presidents talk about their mothers, mentioning their mothers and almost never mentioning their fathers. It began to impress me very much.

Then we all remember that day in August of 1974 when Richard Nixon was struggling through his resignation speech in the East Room of the White House, and in this--the--the--the real effort to kind of keep himself together, he--he sort of blurted out, `My mother was a saint,' and I thought there it is again, thinking of his mother at this most traumatic time for himself. And all these things just settled down in the head, and finally I decided, `Well, stop just thinking about it and do something on it.'

ANGELO:: There are 11. I began with--it's the modern presidency. That's Sara Delano Roosevelt right through Virginia Clinton Kelley. And because our politics started with Roosevelt--our present politics, it was a watershed for the nation, w--both politically and culturally, and it seemed to really--a relevant time to start the book.

ANGELO:: I read more biographies than--than you've ever seen, which I do love doing. And then I talked to--to the three former presidents: Gerry Ford and Jimmy Carter and George Bush. And I talked to daughters-in-law: Lady Bird Johnson and Nancy Reagan; and grandchildren, Margaret Truman and John Eisenhower, both of whom, of course, are writers themselves, and they view their grandmothers very well. So they were wonderful help.

And then I talked to the other siblings. Richard Nixon's very much younger brother, Edward Nixon, which I think--who most people don't even know he has a brother who's still alive. And he was very helpful. Teddy Kennedy, Eunice Shriver, just--I talked to people who were part of the families, and they gave me insights and anecdotes that don't necessarily appear anywhere else.

ANGELO:: Yes. I've met--I met and interviewed Rose Kennedy; well, Lillian Carter--oh, yes, yes, I interviewed Lillian Carter. She's memorable. And I--I--I was around a bit with Virginia Clinton Kelley, but I didn't interview her, but I was very much around when she was there. So those, I--I--I did really get to--to watch and talk to and--and got a feel of their personalities.

ANGELO:: You know, five of them wrote their own autobiographies, and that was wonderful because they then put many st--family stories in that don't appear in other in--more s--president-oriented biographies, stories about the boys when they were little, stories about how they felt about their kids when they were growing up. So those five I just mined endlessly, loved them. And then, of course, there were some books written about the later ones: Barbara Bush--no,

Barbara Bush i--is--I get mixed up myself. She's in the category quite apart from the others in that she might be--might be the only woman, since Abigail Adams, to be both first lady and first mother. So--but she had things about her mother-in-law in it. There was--there was a book about Lady Bird Johnson. There were a few books, but most of all, I loved the books they wrote about themselves.

ANGELO:: Yes.

ANGELO:: Yes, I certainly have, looking--looking ahead. And they are b--the--the premise holds; they are both very strong women. Even George W. Bush's wife, Laura, says that he is just like his mother. She said the--they're both feisty. They are--they're just like each other in that they say funny things. They used to fight as--when--when George W. was just a boy because they were so alike. But he says--at one point, recently, he said, `She gave me a lot of love and advice, and I gave her white hair.' That's how it goes.

Pauline Gore--still alive at 87, still very interested in politics; interesting woman in that she was the product of a tiny town in Tennessee called Cold Corner, which almost sounds like fiction in itself. She was determined to go to law school, worked her way through law school at Vanderbilt University, was the only woman to graduate in the class of 1936, and that was very early for women lawyers, and then married Albert Sr. and threw herself into his political career. She was maybe more a politician than he was. He was more on policy, she was more on people. She would slog through the muddy back roads of Tennessee, knocking on doors, leaving material for them to read. She was a very good politician, and she had the presidency in mind for her son, Al, from the time he was about six.

ANGELO:: In North Carolina.

ANGELO:: Winston-Salem, yes.

ANGELO:: I--I worked there for a while after I graduated from college for the newspaper there, and then I went to Newsday, the Long Island paper, and then went to Time.

ANGELO:: University of North Carolina, yes.

ANGELO:: We're a Tar--I'm a Tar Heel all the way.

ANGELO:: Oh, I was with--I have been with Time magazine about 30 years, which is a long time.

ANGELO:: I started when I was about nine years old being crazy about journalism. I don't know why. Nobody in my family had been a journalist. I put out my little--own little neighborhood newspaper, wrote it all, did the headlines, illustrated it with my own drawings, pasted it up in column form. And I've always said it was probably the best-edited paper I ever worked for, I said. But it--it--it was--it was just in my--in my blood to want to be a newspaper person.

ANGELO:: Oh, Time magazine sent me wonderful places, around the world with presidents, all over the country. I was here in Washington for--with Time for about 11 years and covered the White House, covered a--a lot of very interesting things during the Watergate period. I was with Newsday still when the Kennedy assassination took place and Lyndon Johnson came in. Then Time sent me to London as bureau chief, and it was the first time a woman t--had ever headed a Time bureau abroad. And I got there with the rise of Maggie Thatcher, so that was a wonderful story. She kept me in cover stories the whole time I was there, which was almost eight years, and then I went back to New York as New York bureau chief.

ANGELO:: My mother was a teacher and very--very calm and very rooted. She did--I would not--I was the youngest of four, fourth of four, and I think by the time you're the fourth of four, you just kind of get it out of the air somehow. But she was--they were--my father and my mother were very good about encouraging me to do whatever I wanted to do. My father w--gave me the best piece of advice I think I ever had. When I was out of--just out of college, I had offers of three jobs, and two of them paid much better than the journalism job. One was a government kind of position. And he said, `Take the one that's interesting. Don't go for the one with the money.' And so I went into journalism, and I thought that's the most wonderful advice that you could give a kid coming out of college. And I've never, ever regretted it because it's been a juicy career.

ANGELO:: A dominant woman, Sara Delano Roosevelt. And in--in that picture, you can see that she's with her daughter-in-law, Eleanor, and with Franklin. They were on their way to vote. Now they all looked smiley, but the--the tensions between Sara and her daughter-in-law were there from the beginning, and they never were resolved. That was the--the most prickly relationship between mother and daughter-in-law.

But she was such a dominant woman; put her whole life into her son, Franklin; did not expect him or even particularly want him to go into politics, as a--an aristocratic, Hudson River grand dame. She rather--rather thought politics was beneath the Delanos and the Roosevelts. But once he got into it, she wanted him to win and actually participated in his campaign in a minor way, which is--that was the first person who ever did--a first mother who ever did, yes.

ANGELO:: Sara could not give up her dominance, and Eleanor came into the relationship feeling quite--she--quite inferior. She'd had a terrible childhood, terrible. And--and--and just--she was glad enough at the beginning to let this mother-in-law do all sorts of things for her, but then as time went on, she never began to take over her own life. They lived their entire life in Sara Delano Roosevelt's house Hyde--at Hyde Park, or had a house in the city that sh--that the mother-in-law built for them. But she built an adjacent house for herself with connecting doors.

So it was an absolutely dominant kind of relationship, and I must say I--I fault Franklin Roosevelt for turning a blind eye to this very uncomfortable situation for his wife and not insisting on having a house of their own, where they could have their children and be a family. The children really were closer to their grandmother than to their mother.

ANGELO:: Yes. Yes.

ANGELO:: Well, her husband had died. He died when Franklin was a freshman at Harvard. And suddenly there she was alone, in this big house at Hyde Park, and she moved into--took an apartment in Boston to have a--keep an eye on her son's social life. She just didn't want to leave him, and that was the way she could--she could continue to be almost smother love. And I think that might be one reason that Franklin Re--Roosevelt married or decided to marry and then did marry Eleanor, s--his distant cousin, so early. He was only 21, still a senior at Harvard, when he informed his mother--didn't ask or say--informed his mother that he was going to marry Eleanor.

She was devastated by it. `She's too young.' You know, she didn't feel it was a suitable match. She could see what--I mean, sh--Franklin was a golden boy. And she couldn't really see what Eleanor brought into his life.

ANGELO:: Oh, I re--I knew nothing about Martha Truman when I started this, but she--I believe she was my favorite mother. She was a Missouri woman who was rooted, who knew what sh--her values were. And her Harry was her--her dear friend and her most-beloved child. Martha Truman was the product of the Civil War. She--the--the Youngs were a ve--very prosperous farm family on the frontier there in Missouri. Her father was a wagon master of the--of the--of the wagon trails going west from Missouri to California. So--so they--they had--were very solid.

Well, he was--the father was away, and Ma--Mittie, as they called her, was, I think, about 10 years old, and--and a r--a group of raiders from across the border in Kansas came to their house. Now they were raiders, s--Union sympathizers. They were not regular Union, but they were Union--they wore Union uniforms. They came in, they burned their barns, they killed their--their livestock, taking only the parts that they wanted, just kill the others. As--as Margaret Truman said to me, `Just plain cussedness.' They then made Mittie's mother, Harry Truman's grandmother, bake biscuits for them. She told Harry how she baked biscuits, rolled the dough until she had blisters on her wrists, and then they galloped away finally.

They later--there was a--a law in Missouri that didn't seem to apply anywhere else in the country, where people said to be Southern sympathizers--and that was--seemed to have been pretty much the case with the--with the Young family--had to--they were given two weeks to pack up one wagonload of their belongings and move to a u--a federal Army fort. And I don't think it happened anywhere else in this country. Harry Truman talked about it as president. So she had very harsh memories of the Civil War. So when she visited Harry for the first time in the White House, she said, `Harry, I will not sleep in the Lincoln bed. If you try to put me there, I'll sleep on the floor.' So she was an un--unreconstructed Southerner.

But she was a woman of tremendous confidence, insisted on going to college as almost all of them did, even in the 1870s, which is very early for a farm girl to insist on going to college. But she did. She--I think that Harry Truman is one of four presidents who could not have been elected, who could not have really even gotten to the nomination process, had it not been for their mothers. And--and I trace it back to when he was six, and she noticed that when they were having fireworks on the Fourth of July celebration, there at their little town--little village of Grandview, Harry didn't look in the sky to `ooh' and `aah' over the fireworks. And then she noticed he didn't--couldn't see the horses at the far end of the pasture. So she figured, `There's something wrong with this boy's eyes.'

She hitched up h--the horse to the buggy alone, drove him 15 miles to Kansas City, took him to an eye specialist, who then said he had extremely bad eyes; gave the little boy thick glasses. But from that time on, she could teach him to read, and he was one of the most avid readers that ever inhabited the White House, particular histories. I think Harry Truman was probably the--the most--the greatest historian that we've ever had among the presidents. So she made him a self-educated man--they didn't have enough money to send him to college--and put in his mind that he could do great things. She always thought he would do great things. Even when they lost their home in one of the panics that occurred, she believed in him.

ANGELO:: Three, a younger son and a middle daughter.

ANGELO:: That's right, yes. For a brief time, they were both in the rooming house there in Kansas City. They were both in--starting out in the bank there. And th--that was Arthur Eisenhower, and he wound up as a vice president of that bank. But I believe Harry beat him.

ANGELO:: They were church-mouse poor. They lived on the--again, a frontier town of Abilene, Kansas. It was a hard life, a very hard life; six boys and a seventh who died in infancy. I--Ida Eisenhower, Ha--Ike said, was the most cheerful person he ever knew. And when you look at pictures of her, that smile that we all associate with Dwight Eisenhower came straight from the face of Ida Eisenhower.

Her husband was a dour man, who had had--been a failure, had been--have never quite gotten over failing at business and was very distant from his children and was a very harsh, harsh disciplinarian. But all of this w--w--Ida was very resilient, and she made do when they had no money. She had to send the boys to school with patched clothes. And--and young Dwight, as a schoolboy, had to wear his mother's old high-top shoes which is bound to have been a bit of a humiliation for a boy. You know now why he was such a scrapper on the school grounds, which he was. They earned money from the time they were, oh, 10 ye--eight--oh, even younger than that; six and eight years old the boys had to earn money--did all those things: sold vegetables from their garden. It was a hard life.

But--and--and West Point, of course, gave Eisenhower this access to everything, and she was--she was a total pacifist. So when her boy w--decided to go to West Point, it was a blow to her, but she did not try to stop it. She became--she'd been a very fundamentalist, religionist--a group called the River Brethren--it was an offshoot of the Mennonites, very fundamentalist. And then later she joined the Jehovah's Witnesses, which, of course, have--pacifism is--is kind of square one in--in their tenets.

She was out on the sidewalks distributing anti-war pamphlets when Dwight Eisenhower was leading the greatest Army ever assembled, and one of the brothers or two wrote to Ike and said what she was doing, and they felt she should be stopped. It was not a proper thing for her to do. And Ike wrote back, `If it makes her happy, let her do it.' And I feel that he knew that she couldn't hurt him, and he could hurt her and he wouldn't. And I thought that was a very touching thought for her--for that son to let her--let her distribute anti-war pamphlets.

ANGELO:: It was bad. It was a hot temper. And Ida worked on it hard all--all his life. He got that temper, I--I think, because she had a--was a--great equanimity. I think he must have gotten it somewhat from his father, although his father was not a volatile man. He was a remote, removed man, who would--but he was harsh on his children. So Ike must have gotten it from that direction. But she would lecture him on the temper, and she would say, `You're--you're hurting yourself more than the other person.' And he used to say that he felt that he had gotten it under control, but anybody who was at one of Eisenhower's press conferences when there was a really nasty question thrown at him, they could see a vein throbbing, and they knew, `Whoops, something's gotten to the president this time.'

ANGELO:: I did. I--reading her own book about herself--well, she was--she was a political person from the time of her teens. Her father was the first Irish-American to be mayor of Boston, which was a tremendous breakthrough because, of course, Irish-Americans had been and still are discriminated against in that city. Sh--her mother didn't like politics. And so Rose went with the father everywhere and l--s--lapped it up.

She then met Joe Kennedy a--very--when she was just about 18, quickly fell in love with him. Her father did not want her to marry Joe Kennedy, but she insisted and been pr--and prevailed. But there--one of--she--she implanted in her children a sense of duty, a sense of public service. Joe Kennedy wanted a president, and he wanted the others to go into business, but she wanted them to be--to give back: `To whom much is given much must be returned,' or something that--she had such an influence a--on her children that it even--her grandchildren are all--virtually all of them, and there are a lot of them, are in some kind of public service. So her--her influence goes to the third generation.

She had to--she had some hard times with the discrimination against the Irish-Americans because she was well-educated, she went to finishing school in Holland. She went to--graduated from Marymount, which was a--a very good college for a--affluent Catholic girls. She was a great reader, spoke three languages, was a mu--tremendous musician; could play the piano wonderfully. She us--she said that if she hadn't found the right man, she would not have married, but she might have been a music teacher, which ob--obviously did not come to pass. But--but her commitment to public service was unending.

ANGELO:: Yes.

ANGELO:: He did not tell her.

ANGELO:: Joe Kennedy did not tell Rose Kennedy, who had been the caretaker of this young woman, whose mental condition was becoming more and more grave.

ANGELO:: The daughter, Rosemary, the oldest girl. She was able to be presented at court with the other older girls when the--when Joe Kennedy was ambassador to the Court of St. James in London. So she was able to have her Paris gown and--and curtsy to the queen. But it began to be worse and worse. Eunice Shriver told me that she thinks that perhaps Rosemary also was suffering from epilepsy because some of the--some of the marks of it seemed to be that.

Joe Kennedy simply had it done. It was--the lobotomy at that time was one of the operations that was supposed to be one of the great--not a--it wasn't a cure, of course, but it was supposed to be something that really helped a schizophrenic person to live with themselves. Now, of course, it's been disused since then, but at that time, it was seen as a great breakthrough--cover of Life magazine, all of those things. He didn't tell her. She didn't find out for years, and she was really heartbroken that this decision had been made without her.

ANGELO:: Oh, yes.

ANGELO:: They did travel together.

ANGELO:: Mi--the three went to Europe together on a--on a--on a cr--not a cruise; they were going to Paris for some sort of event: Gloria Swanson, Joe Kennedy and Rose Kennedy. Gloria Swanson and her daughter were their house guests in--when they were still living in Bronxville, a New York suburb. Rose Kennedy had to turn a blind eye. She had to know that if she left Joe Kennedy, it would destroy their family, which both of them were devoted to. She simply decided within herself that this was something she would have to tolerate, and so she looked upon Gloria as their--their--good friend and that her husband was just trying to help her with her Hollywood career. He was a producer at that time, and--and she simply swallowed it.

But there was a time earlier than that that she actually went home to her father. There were dalliances of--of other kinds. And she went home, he--she told her father what it was all about. And he said, `Rose, this was your decision,' but he didn't--he didn't say, `I told you not to marry him.' He--he was much nicer than that. He said, `But this is your decision, and you must go--go--you must live with it. Go home, Rose. Go home to your family.' And so she did. But it was--it was that close a thing, and it was her father saying, `You must go back and--and be with your family.' Therefore, she simply saw what she wanted to see, heard what she wanted to hear.

ANGELO:: Rose was 104 years old.

ANGELO:: 1995.

ANGELO:: No.

ANGELO:: No, she didn't. And that's a pity, because she was a political person, really political. And her father had run for Congress and been defeated from the very seat that--that Lyndon Johnson then won as a young man herself--himself.

Rebeckah Baines Kennedy--Johnson was a woman with great aspirations. She loved poetry. She was a great reader. She wanted Lyndon Johnson to be the fine sort of man that his grandfather was. His grandfather had been quite a scholar, a lawyer, a--an editor. And--and Rebeckah's own grandfather had been president of Baylor University. A--so she sent--she sent Lyndon to take dancing lessons, and she sent him to take violin lessons, and they didn't take. But she was a great friend and admirer of Eleanor Roosevelt. That was sort of her idol. So at--as this picture shows, at one time, Eleanor Roosevelt was in Texas, and the two had this lovely meeting together. And I think that was probably one of the high spots of Rebeckah Baines Johnson's life because she so admired Eleanor Roosevelt.

ANGELO:: Ah, Lyndon Johnson would never have been president without his mother. Sh--he--she was a great believer in education, a tremendous interest in--in all things literary. She insisted on going to college, even when in last year she had to pay her own way through because her father had lost his money. When Lyndon graduated from high school, he said, `That's it. No more education for me. That's it. I'm finished with it.' Well, she was heartsick because it meant so much to her. He went off, h--had a year in California of just knocking about and then came back to Johnson City in Texas and worked with pick and shovel on the road gang. It broke her heart. He would come home at night--he would carouse at the roadhouses at night. He would come home drunk. He was clearly going down, down, down.

And Lady Bird Johnson told me about one--the worst night, I suppose, when his friends brought him home and poured him into bed, and Rebeckah stayed at the bedroom door and said, `Oh, my firstborn, my firstborn, to think that this could happen to you.' And a short while later, on another terrible day of road building, Lyndon came home exhausted, threw himself on the bed and he said, `Mama, I've tried it with my hands. I'm ready to try it with my head if you'll help me.' She flew into action. She called the president of the little college down at San Marcos, not too far away, to see if he could get i--get in; it was a bit late. She then rounded up a loan for him from a bank that ha--said, `Any grandson of Joseph Baines'--that was her father--`was--was good for a magnificent $75 loan,' which is what he needed to get into--to college.

She then sat up all night with him, coaching him on geometry so he could pass the college entrance exam, which he did barely. He squeaked by. He got into college and blossomed. From that time on, Lyndon Johnson went from success to success, absolutely directly as a result of his mother's help and determination.

ANGELO:: I think it was just so-so. You get--you get stories that they didn't get along at all well. I think his father, especially in the later years, was certainly not a character to be admired. He was an alcoholic, and he was seen around town really inebriated. He was kind of--never home. An--and--I--I think--I think it was not an easy relationship. And yet, when Sam Ealy Johnson put his boy on the train, the new congressman, to go to Washington, he kissed him on the lips. You know, it was--you see that picture, and--and you think, `All right, there was something--something there.' But the love was to his mother.

ANGELO:: Ah, that was a--that was a very uneven couple. Hannah Nixon was a--a--a--a wonderful, sincere Quaker, quiet at the core, a woman who never raised her voice. Frank Nixon was exactly the opposite. He was a bombastic man, full of Sturm und Drang. He was the kind--full of opinions, a man very hard to get along with. The people in--when he had a--a general store, people would wait to se--Reb--have Hannah wait on him because they didn't like his--all his opinions. And now that picture--the--the--of Hannah and--and Frank shows them in a wonderful moment, when they were hearing over the telephone that their son had been nominated as vice president in 1952. So that was a great mo--moment in all of their lives. She was--Richard Nixon was so like her. His brother Edward told me that he was the son that was really like his mother, looked like her, was reflective as she was, very much--very much a close mother-son bond.

ANGELO:: I--I don't think of traits precisely. I think of--of her--her calmness, her always backing him. When he was in trouble, for example, on the Checkers speech, she sent him, you know, a telegram when he was agonizing over that speech, just hours before he was to give it, saying, `We're thinking of you,' which just, you know, reminded him that his mother was down there prayerful. She then sent a telegram to Dwight Eisenhower, kind of a starchy telegram, saying that, `I know Richard Nixon better than anybody, and I know that the--all the truth of this will come out, and I'm sure you will'--I mean, you know, Eisenhower then read that telegram to a big rally that he was having the day after the Checkers speech. So she took some action, even in her quiet way.

ANGELO:: What a--what a contemporary kind of story that is. Dorothy Gardner was a society girl in a--in the little town of Harvard, Illinois, went to a finishing school, met the brother of a--a friend at the school--of the college. And he was the son of a wealthy Omaha--big businessman. She--it was a big wedding. They went to--on their honeymoon on a train to the West Coast. Before they got to Oregon, he--to Portland, Oregon, he had beat her on their honeymoon. He then--they went from Oregon down the coast of Los Angeles. He abused her physically and emotionally on that part of the trip--the trip altogether. And this on the honeymoon.

She got back to Omaha, where they were to live, and she went straight home to her parents in Illinois. And then he--then--then Leslie King, the--the husband, came after her and promised he would, re--you know, never do it again, change his ways. She went back to him. She became pregnant and had the baby. Sixteen days after that little boy, little son was born, who was named for his father, Leslie King Jr., the father attacked the mother and the son with a butcher knife. With that, she escaped that night with her baby nurse keeping watch, because this man had such terrible temper. She escaped, went across--and there was a river where her parents were waiting for her, never saw the man again.

They had--she was ostracized. She knew that she was--it was a--it was a--Gerry Ford was very tender when he told me about this. He--his voice quavered, as he re--re--recounted those facts. And he said, `It was an act of courage,' and it was indeed. She knew she would be ostracized. It--divorce--from--at that--right after the baby was born, it was just unthinkable in those--but she knew sh--that even though she thought a boy should have a father, she knew that she would be taking him into a life of fear and abuse and she decided that leaving was the only thing she could do. So her father, who was extremely supportive, gave up his very profitable business and moved to Grand Rapids. They decided that would be a good city to bring up this little boy. She met, in a couple of years, a very nice man named Gerald Ford and were--married him. And he was the finest stepfather that any child could ever hope to have.

ANGELO:: Oh, he--that was such a mean, mean story. He--Gerry Ford, in Depression, had to--their--their family had had quite a good paint store--I mean, a good living. But then in the Depression, nobody painted their houses. So he had to work at a luncheonette to help just pay his way through high school. He was flipping hamburgers and he said to me that he saw this man standing by the door, and it was not somebody he'd ever seen before. And when there were no customers, he came over and said to young Gerry, he was, like, 17 then, `You Gerry--you Gerry Ford?' And he said, `Yeah.' He said, `I'm your father.' Just like that.

Now somebody who had never, ever been in touch with him. It was quite shocking. He--he did then take Gerry out--out to lunch and wanted to--at--I guess he saw what a fine boy he was--the father had a ranch in Wyoming and, obviously, was doing very well, because he'd come to Detroit to pick up a new car and then just co--made this swing up to Grand Rapids to--for this purpose.

He said, `Why don't you come live on the ranch with us,' his second wife an--and Gerry Ford said, `No, my place is here.' And there wasn't a minute's thought that he would go to live with this man. But my feeling is that Leslie Ford saw this strapping, wonderful teen-ager--I mean, he was--he was everything in high school. He was just the--the best of students, the best football player, the finest young man, would be a very good free ranch hand. But Gerry Ford knew where--who he was. He knew who his father was. His real father was Gerald Ford Sr.

ANGELO:: Oh, my. She is the--she is a Georgia original. Lillian Carter was--I--she's another one that I--I feel confident that Gerry--that--that Jimmy Carter could never have been elected president, had it not been for his mother. And that--the reason I say that is that from her earliest days, she was totally open-minded on race. And in south Georgia, that was not an easy thing. Jimmy Carter said that his mother--he says, `My mother had no--knew no color line.' And that was implanted in him. His father was a classic Georgia segregationist, who died before the Supreme Court decision. Her great--she was a great baseball fan. Her great hero in 1947, that early, was Jackie Robinson. Now in Plains, Georgia, that was not a popular hero. But tha--but that's how strongly she felt about the racial equality and tolerance. And she--without that, he could not have been nominated, much less elected.

ANGELO:: He was a very successful peanut warehouseman and farmer. Very much a--a--a man of his place and his time. He was--he was very glad that his son went to Annapolis. That was Jimmy Carter's dream from the time he was six years old, which is quite amazing. Earl Carter was a leading man in his little town of Plains, Georgia, but he was--his attitudes were very, very much those of--of early--early '50s south Georgia.

ANGELO:: Yes.

ANGELO:: That's a--a--the why is a very good question. I think it was a feeling of wanting to--wanting to broaden her horizons, of wanting to serve. She was a nurse, and nurses have to want to serve. She was--had retired from nursing, at that point, and she tells a very funny story, that she was watching Johnny Carson it--on "The Late Show," and she was lying in bed with--she said, `I was looking at Johnny Carson through my feet,' and--and then came on a public service announcement, you know, to join the Peace Corps, and age is no criterion. And so she said, `I think I'll do it.'

And so she told her children. She said, `I thought they'd say, "No, Mama, you can't do that."' But they didn't. They all said, `What a good idea.' She said, `Then I had to do it.' And so she went. She--it was very hard. Very, very hard. She stayed her full two-year term, and most of the older Peace Corps volunteers do not. She--it was brutally hot. The poverty was really very depressing to her, but she--after she had done those two years, the--lost weight, could hardly wear her own shoes. You know, it was physically very hard. She said she knew the Lord had sent her there, and that she could not imagine her life if she had not gone to India. It was that big a fundamental experience in her life.

ANGELO:: It's a family stalked by cancer. Now and--and Ru...

ANGELO:: And breast cancer. Stalked by it. No, I don't think--I don't think medical science yet knows, but it's clear that there are families that have cancer. I mean, they always warn on--particularly breast cancer, if there's a history of--of breast cancer, you must be much more careful about, you know, you--what tr--treatments you get. I--I think that's something that medical science has to--has to determine yet. But it was--it wa--there was just a lot of sadness for Jimmy Carter, as one after another--and there's--you know, his much younger brother and his sis--both of his sisters. I mean, it was--it was quite tragic.

ANGELO:: Yes. And I--I'd like to phrase that a little bit different, because it was when--when Ronald Reagan went to Hollywood, became an actor. And after the first year, Warner Bros. renewed his contract. And that's when you feel safe as an actor. The first thing he did was call his parents and ask them to come to Hollywood. They--he wanted his parents there. I thought for a bachelor--handsome bachelor, Hollywood star on the rise, to want to have his mother there--he bought them the first house that they ever had. And as you can see, he always, as I said, watched over his mother. There are no letters in the Reagan Library between the two. No letters. Reagan Library knows practically nothing about her. But I had the good luck of finding somebody who did have a lot of letters. But he...

ANGELO:: Lorraine Wagner in Philadelphia.

ANGELO:: Yes. She had 276 letters from Ronald Reagan and she had another whole packet from Nelle Reagan. She had been the president of his fan club and went to Dixon, Illinois, for one of the big `Welcome Home, Ronald Reagan' events and became a family friend and saw them in--in Los Angeles, had an ongoing correspondence with--with Nelle. It was--it was quite remarkable.

ANGELO:: Oh, yeah. At--at the--at the big deal in Dixon, Illinois, where it was the homecoming parade, and Ne--Nelle pulled Lorraine Wagner, the--this--who was a very young woman then, aside...

ANGELO:: Yes. Pulled her aside and said, `What I want more than anything is to dance with my son. Will you ask him for me?' Well, Lorraine did. And Ron said he didn't want to do that. He said--then everybody else--you know, he just didn't want to start it. And Lorraine persuaded him that it would really mean so much to her. And so he said, `OK, come on, Nelle,' and they did indeed dance. Well, then Ronald Reagan turned to Lorraine later and he said, `OK, you've got to do something for me. When Nelle gets up to introduce me, she will go on talking forever. You have got to make her sit down. I don't care how you do it. You've got to make her sit down.' And so Lorraine was the one who had to kind of tug at Nelle's coat to make her cut her remarks a bit shorter.

ANGELO:: Oh, Ronald Reagan writes of his mother that she was the greatest elocutionist in Dixon, Illinois. Now that's not--that's not a big region, but she was a wanna-be performer. She would write church plays. And when Ronald Reagan was just five or six years old, she'd have him at her plays. And he liked being in her plays. And then she and he became--when he was about nine or 10, became a team. She played the banjo, they--he sang. They sang together. He did recitals. They played such places as the local mental institution. And they played in some of the prisons. But they were a team, Reagan and Reagan. She would then coach him when he was in high school plays and college performances. He was--he was keen on it. She really would--and--and her voice coaching, I think, was probably very, very instrumental in Ronald Reagan's distinctive, magical whispery kind of intensity that you will remember, that sound of Ronald Reagan, as we will remember Jack Kennedy's Boston cadencies and--and Roosevelt's aristocratic tones, as long--you know, long into history.

ANGELO:: His father died not too long after they were in Hollywood. His father had been...

ANGELO:: Ye--yes. In the early 40s. Maybe 43, something like that. I don't remember exactly, but his early 40s. His mother lived quite a--a longer time. She then died before he got into politics at all. And she died of Alzheimer's. So we--we see another mother to son. But Jack Reagan, Ronald Reagan used to say, was a great storyteller. Great Irish raconteur. And--and Ronald Reagan says he got that trait from his--from his father. I think he got from his mother--in addition to the love of acting, he got from her a sense of optimism and confidence that was the hallmark of his personality and I think the hallmark of his approach to the presidency. And that came directly from--from Nelle. His father was a shoe salesman, not very successful. They moved about 11 times. Therefore, never were--were quite as rooted as some of the others. But always in small towns.

ANGELO:: In the state of Illinois, yes. And some--some towns they lived in twice. So they--they ma--moved 11 times, but the number of towns was not quite that great. But then when he took them to Hollywood, Jack Reagan lived a kind of a better life there and enjoyed that--those years, did die. But in the meanwhile, he'd gotten to know people like Pat O'Brien in the movies, and that was very exciting to him. So Ronald Reagan gave him a happy time, as well as his mother.

ANGELO:: Oh, yes. What a dynasty they're building. Dorothy Bush was the daughter of a wealthy St. Louis mercantile family. She had--she had a golden life. No rain fell on Dorothy Bush. Wonderful parents, wonderful husband, wonderful children. But she could have sat back and just been a debutante or a bridge prayer. Not at all. She was a competitive sports woman, a real athlete. She played tennis with such vengeance. She was the National girls junior champion and was serious about it. She was competitive. If it was Tiddledy Winks, if it was swimming.

And they tell a story within the family that at Kennebunkport, she was--they were playing softball, and she hit a home run and was trotting around the bases and touched--touched home plate and then went--trotted right off and went straight to the hospital and had her first child. Now that may or may not be polished up a little bit, but--but basically, it was just about the--the way she was. She was so competitive and so--and at the same time, so concerned about sportsmanship. So she--if her boys began to sound like, `Hey, we won--you know, I won this or that.' And she'd say, `Well, now what did the rest of the team do?' She would not let them boast. When George Bush dedicated his presidential library awhile back, he was telling, quite rightly, some of the accomplishments of the Bush administration. And at one point, he stopped and he pointed his finger to heaven, and he says, `I can hear mother up there now saying, "Stop bragging."' And so--so she wanted them to be gentlemen of--and sports--with great sense of sportsmanship.

ANGELO:: Oh, yes. Everything, staff, everything. Big house. They didn't suffer at all during the Depression, which is--which is quite amazing, because most of the families had to weather some hard times, but they di--they had a wonderful life. And the chauffeur would take them--take the boys to the day school there. It--and when Ronald Reagan was selling--just told me the story. When Ronald Reagan heard George Bush telling about how the chauffeurs would race to take the kids to school, Reagan just would kind of roll his eyes, because in his really poor, poor growing up years, he'd walk through, you know, two feet of snow, whatever length of distance it was to school. Nobody took him. He couldn't even, you know, ride a bus. So their lives were so different. We--there was a tremendous range in these women of wealth to poverty, and yet, they all had this innate resilience. They overcame, and even the wealth sometimes had tragedies.

ANGELO:: Virginia Kelley was--was a totally different kind of creature. She was the only, really, 20th century girl. She--her--she wrote an autobiography that was so candid and spared herself not at all. She's a--she was kind of a rhinestones and racetrack lady. She loved nightclubs. She loved partying.

ANGELO:: And that hair.

ANGELO:: On purpose. She called it her skunk stripe. She had it done that way because it looked--she wanted people to look at her. She said, `I want people--when I walk in a room, I want everybody to look at me.' And she said, `If--if--if everybody but one person likes me, I've got to have that other person like me.' Now Bill Clinton is just like that. Just like that. Everybody's got to like him.

ANGELO:: Four times. Well, I mean, she had four husbands. She was actually married five times because she married Clinton twice. And their--Bill Clinton's father was killed in an automobile accident before he was born. So that was a very, very brief wartime marriage. Very brief.

ANGELO:: Hated her. Hated her. Really did not like her mother at all. And--and says so in--in her book. She was ano--all of these girls were daddy's girls. All of them. And she loved her father. I mean, just--you know, they were just so close and she--she was Ginger to him. They were such a--there was such a bond between them, as there was a bond, a special bond, with every one of these women and their own fathers. And I think that's where their self-confidence came from. That's where their sense of independent thinking came from, which enabled them to feel confident about bringing up these boys without a Dr. Spock, without anybody telling them what to do. They just did it on their own gumption. But it was the father to the daughter to the son.

ANGELO:: Two. Virginia Kelley? Two.

ANGELO:: She--oh, that--h, she said when she went to see him in prison when--on a Christmas Eve, because she felt he had to have something for Christmas, you know. And she went--a friend went with her. And they stayed in a--couldn't find anything but what was a sorry roadside motel, and they--she said, `We couldn't--there wasn't anything. It was Christmas Eve. There was nothing--nowhere we could get food. We got a Snickers bar out of the machine,' and she said, `We--we ate the Snickers bar, and--and I guess a Pepsi-Cola and--waiting to see my son in prison.' And she said, `That was when I realized my life is like a country song.' And it was. It was all of these kind of terrible things that happened: bad husbands, abuse, alcoholism, a--a so--one son who was a tremendous success beyond anybody's dreams, one son who went to jail.

ANGELO:: I think she gave him the sense that he could do anything. She backed him in every way. He wanted to go to Georgetown University, an expensive university in--in Washington. It would have been much cheaper to send him to the university in Arkansas. She--she sent him there because she was the breadwinner in the family as a nurse anth--anesthetist. She made him feel he could do anything. But she also maybe made him feel--she said about herself, `Rules are not meant for me.' And I think that maybe she im--imbued that a bit with Bill Clinton, that he didn't have to play by some rules.

ANGELO:: Ah, I think that where there was a younger of two sons, there was jealousy.

ANGELO:: Now Neil was older. Neil was older, and so there was coolness there, but not quite the dis--the degree that--on the ot--there was coolness. They were never close.

ANGELO:: Son--Sam Houston Johnson was a reprobate. He was Ly--Lyndon's quite younger brother. The girls, incidentally, never had any problems with it. They were always supportive. They were not--there was not any sibling rivalry there. Interesting. But he was such a--a roust-about, round-about, that he--they kept him in the White House for most of Lyndon Johnson's term, on the third floor as a guest. And I said it's kind of like house arrest, because there they could keep an eye on him and kind of know what he was up to. And he knew that. He would go through the gates of the White House joking with the guards, holding his hands up as though they were in--in handcuffs.

ANGELO:: Billy Carter, much younger--again, much younger. He actually did business with Libya, the outlaw nation of Libya.

ANGELO:: Yes. Yes, it was quite a lot of money. And the idea that with his brother in the White House, that he would have anything to do with a nation that was an--in--in--an outlaw in every sense--you know, with terrorists, with all of the things that were anti-American, that he would do that to his brother, to me, is an--is an incredible way of getting back at--at big brother.

ANGELO:: I think--I'll put her right up there with Dolley Madison. And I actually think her influence on the country might be more lasting, because she was one of the early ecologists. When people ha--hardly knew the words environmentalism and eco--ecology, she called it beautification. She didn't like the word, but that was the best she could come up with. And it was to tell communities to make--to--to treasure their natural resources, their--and make their communities more beautiful. Get rid of the junkyards, tear down those billboards. Her imprint is seen today all over this country. Highways in North Carolina, in Georgia, in California are sprinkled with wildflowers, which takes some--takes some doing. It's too--it's much easier just to mow them.

ANGELO:: She did--she did a lot.

ANGELO:: The least? Oh, Brian, I don't look at people that way. I--I would say which one I like the best. And I--and I think that Martha Young Truman was just such a--such a--a steadfast person with a sense of humor and a--and ki--kind of full of vim and vigor. She talked politics on her deathbed.

ANGELO:: Yes.

ANGELO:: Do you know, I--when I--when there was a negative, I think I put it in. I certainly put some negatives in about Virginia Clinton Kelley, because I think she--her values were less firm, shall we say, than the rest of them. But when there was something negative, I really--I really tried to put it in. But these were positive women. And I guess that's why I wanted to write the book.

ANGELO:: Thank you, Brian.