ROOSEVELT, Franklin D.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

On Our Way. First edition, presentation copy, inscribed by the 32nd President on the front free endpaper "For Jules A. Rodier, Merry Christmas from Franklin D. Roosevelt 1934". In On Our Way, Roosevelt analyses the state of the nation and outlines and defends his New Deal program.Rodier (1871-1963) worked as a communications officer in the White House from 1900 to 1949. In her memoir of working for Roosevelt, Lillian Rogers Parks wrote, "The White House pet among the men was a stately old white-haired gentleman, Jules Rodier, who had come to work in the attic telegraph office of the White House in 1900... In 1941, when Jules was 70 years old, Franklin Roosevelt, very fond of the old gentleman who still handled secret messages sent and received by the President, told him his job was secure - and that he was giving him a 'lifetime extension'... Jules, the oldest living White House employee continued coming to the White House until he died at age ninety-one in 1963. He hadn't continued working all that time, but he never missed returning every year for the annual White House Christmas party, where he was the star of the show. He decided he'd had enough work in 1949, and voluntarily resigned. As he told me, 'I don't want to be like Franklin Roosevelt and die young'. At the time he said it, he was seventy-eight" (Parks, pp. 44-5).

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