ROOSEVELT, Franklin D.

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Photograph inscribed to his personal secretary Grace Tully. Inscribed by Roosevelt to Grace Tully, "For Grace, bearing gifts, Franklin D. Roosevelt", showing Roosevelt working through a stack of papers along with Tully and Marguerite LeHand, together Roosevelt's principal secretaries during his years as president.The use of female secretaries broke with tradition, with all prior presidential secretaries men. But LeHand's connection with FDR went back to 1920, before his polio attack, and she was a consistent and loyal companion through the gruelling early years of his recovery. Tully's tenure dated from his 1928 campaign for governor of New York. When he won the presidency in 1932, Roosevelt had no hesitation about bringing these two loyal, trusted and discreet assistants - both Irish Catholics from humble, working-class origins - into his inner circle at the White House.Tully "occupied a front row seat at momentous events as secretary and friend to the man she called 'the Boss'. To her, he had dictated letters to kings and to generals, manuscripts for his radio fireside chats and such historical speeches as the one he delivered to Congress on Dec. 8, 1941, asking for a declaration of war against Japan" (New York Times obituary, 16 June 1984). Tully recorded in her memoir "Franklin Delano Roosevelt was my boss for nearly seventeen years. In that span of time - final years for him - I watched him emerge from the twilight zone of poliomyelitis convalescence to move from one pol

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