Lorena Alice Hickok (March 7, 1893 – May 1, 1968) was an
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
journalist and confidante of
Eleanor RooseveltAnna Eleanor Roosevelt was the First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945. She supported the New Deal policies of her husband, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and assumed a role as an advocate for civil rights...
. Her relationship with Roosevelt has been the subject of research.
Lorena Hickok, popularly known as "Hick", was born in
East TroyEast Troy is a village in Walworth County, Wisconsin, United States. The population was 4,500 at the 2000 census. The village is located southeast of the Town of East Troy...
in
Walworth County, WisconsinWalworth County is a county located in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. As of 2000, the population was 93,759. Its county seat is Elkhorn.-Geography:According to the U.S...
to Addison Hickok and Anna Waite Hickok. During childhood, Hickok experienced a troubled family life, characterized by abuse, unemployment, and repeated moves.
Following high school, she enrolled at Lawrence College (now
Lawrence UniversityLawrence University is a private liberal arts college located in Appleton, Wisconsin. Founded in 1847, the first classes were held on November 12, 1849...
) in
Appleton, WisconsinAppleton is a city in Calumet, Outagamie, and Winnebago Counties in the U.S. state of Wisconsin, on the Fox River, 100 miles north of Milwaukee. The population was 70,087 at the 2000 census...
, but left after a year.
Lorena Alice Hickok (March 7, 1893 – May 1, 1968) was an
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
journalist and confidante of
Eleanor RooseveltAnna Eleanor Roosevelt was the First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945. She supported the New Deal policies of her husband, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and assumed a role as an advocate for civil rights...
. Her relationship with Roosevelt has been the subject of research.
Biography
Lorena Hickok, popularly known as "Hick", was born in
East TroyEast Troy is a village in Walworth County, Wisconsin, United States. The population was 4,500 at the 2000 census. The village is located southeast of the Town of East Troy...
in
Walworth County, WisconsinWalworth County is a county located in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. As of 2000, the population was 93,759. Its county seat is Elkhorn.-Geography:According to the U.S...
to Addison Hickok and Anna Waite Hickok. During childhood, Hickok experienced a troubled family life, characterized by abuse, unemployment, and repeated moves.
Following high school, she enrolled at Lawrence College (now
Lawrence UniversityLawrence University is a private liberal arts college located in Appleton, Wisconsin. Founded in 1847, the first classes were held on November 12, 1849...
) in
Appleton, WisconsinAppleton is a city in Calumet, Outagamie, and Winnebago Counties in the U.S. state of Wisconsin, on the Fox River, 100 miles north of Milwaukee. The population was 70,087 at the 2000 census...
, but left after a year. She eventually joined the
Milwaukee Sentinel as its society editor, but moved on to the city beat, where she developed a knack as an interviewer. After working in
New YorkNew York is the most populous city in the United States, and the center of the New York metropolitan area, which is among the most populous urban areas in the world. A leading global city, New York exerts a powerful influence over worldwide commerce, finance, culture, fashion and entertainment...
and
MinneapolisMinneapolis is the largest city in the U.S. state of Minnesota and is the county seat of Hennepin County. The city lies on both banks of the Mississippi River, just north of the river's confluence with the Minnesota River, and adjoins Saint Paul, the state's capital. Known as the Twin Cities,...
, she landed a job with the
Associated PressThe Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
. There she became one of the wire service's most valued correspondents, reporting in a prominent way on such events as the
Lindbergh kidnappingThe kidnapping of Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr. was the abduction of the son of aviator Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh. The toddler was abducted from his family home in East Amwell, New Jersey near the town of Hopewell, New Jersey on the evening of March 1, 1932. Over two months...
.
In 1932, she convinced her editors to allow her to cover Eleanor Roosevelt during the presidential campaign. Through that experience, she and Mrs. Roosevelt developed a close relationship.
Because she felt she could no longer be objective in covering the Roosevelts, Hickok left the Associated Press. Eleanor Roosevelt then helped her obtain a position with
Harry HopkinsHarry Lloyd Hopkins was one of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's closest advisers. He was one of the architects of the New Deal, especially the relief programs of the Works Progress Administration , which he directed and built into the largest employer in the country...
, the head of the
Federal Emergency Relief AdministrationFederal Emergency Relief Administration was the name given by the Roosevelt Administration to a program similar to unemployment-relief efforts of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation set up by Herbert Hoover and the U.S. Congress in 1932. It was established as a result of the Federal Emergency...
(FERA), where she conducted some fact-finding missions. During this time, she also provided public relations advice to the first lady.
During her time with FERA, Hickok developed a dislike of reporters. In one report to Hopkins in 1934, she wrote, “Believe me, the next state administrator who lets out any publicity on me is going to get his head cracked...” Hickok had also vented to Hopkins's secretary, Kathryn Godwin, about how she was “fed-up with publicity”. She said, “I want to kick every reporter I see. Which is a state for me to get into, since I’ll probably be back in business myself after I get through with this.” Two weeks after writing the letter to Hopkins, Hickok saw an article in
Time Magazine, which referred to her in some not–so-ladylike terms. Referring to that article, Hickok had said to the Godwin, “I suppose I am a ‘rotund lady with a husky voice’ and ‘baggy clothes,’ [
Times words], but honestly don’t believe my manner is ‘peremptory.’” Hickok went on to say that, if they felt that way about her then, “Why the Hell CAN’T they leave me alone?” In a letter (February, 1934) to Godwin Hickok admitted that the Time article had upset her: “… that damned article in Time magazine, has made something of a wreck out of me … as I came in, they handed me, with beaming smiles, a copy of Time. I read the thing and wanted to curse until the air was blue.”
March through July 1934 was marked by highs and lows in Hickok’s life. The four months after Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena’s “ill-fated” vacation in the Caribbean, were not the best. In several letters between the women, Eleanor spoke of “longing to kiss and hold” Lorena in her arms. Yet, in another letter from Eleanor, in May 1934, Eleanor implied that she did not like the instability of Lorena’s life, and found it discomforting, “saying that she was tired of the ‘bad things’ that Lorena’s temperamental nature did to her (her being Hickok).” Eleanor even told Hickok that she thought Hickok was in a mental and emotional depression.
Hickok became the executive secretary of the Women's Division of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in 1940, and from early January, 1941 until shortly after FDR's fourth inauguration in 1945, she lived at the White House. During that time she formed an intense friendship with the Honorable
Marion Janet HarronMarion Janet Harron was a United States federal tax judge , and best known for a lesbian affair with Lorena Hickok.-External links:*...
, a
United States Tax CourtThe United States Tax Court is a federal trial court of record established by Congress under Article I of the U.S. Constitution, section 8 of which provides that the Congress has the power to "constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court"...
judge ten years her junior. After the judge's death in 1972 of cancer, her papers were found to contain what can only be described as intense love letters to Lorena, beginning in March 1942. No documentation is available to indicate whether the love was reciprocated.
During her time at the White House, Hickok's nominal address was at the
Mayflower HotelThe Renaissance Mayflower Hotel, known locally as simply The Mayflower, is an historic hotel in downtown Washington, DC located on Connecticut Avenue NW, two blocks north of Farragut Square . It is the largest luxury hotel in the U.S...
in DC, not the White House, and that is where she met most people other than the Roosevelts. An exception to this was Judge Harron, who visited Lorena frequently at the White House, almost the only person to do so.
When Hickok's diabetes worsened in 1945, she was forced to leave her position with the DNC. Two years later, Eleanor Roosevelt helped her obtain a position with the New York State Democratic Committee. When Hickok's health continued to decline to the point where she became frail and partially blind, she moved to Hyde Park to be closer to Mrs. Roosevelt. She lived in a cottage on the
Roosevelt estateThe Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt National Historic Site preserves the Springwood estate in Hyde Park, New York, United States of America. Springwood was the birthplace, life-long home, and burial place of the 32nd President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt...
, where she died in 1968.
Hickok willed her personal papers to the
FDR LibraryThe Franklin D. Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, New York is the first of presidential library built in the United States. It was conceived and built under the direction of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt from 1939 to 1940.- History :...
, in
Hyde Park, New YorkHyde Park is a town located in the northwest part of Dutchess County, New York, United States, just north of the city of Poughkeepsie. The town is most famous for being the birthplace of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt....
, part of the
US National ArchivesThe United States National Archives and Records Administration is an independent agency of the United States government charged with preserving and documenting government and historical records and with increasing public access to those documents...
. Her donation was contained in 18 filing boxes that, according to the provisions of her will, were to be sealed until 10 years after her death.
In early May, 1978, Doris Faber, as part of research for a projected short biography of Eleanor Roosevelt, became perhaps the first person outside the National Archives to open these boxes, and was astounded to discover that they contained 2336 letters from Mrs. Roosevelt to Lorena, most of them dated in the 1930s, and continuing right up to Mrs. Roosevelt's death in 1962.
A key passage from just one early 12-page handwritten missive to Lorena from Eleanor sheds light on their relationship:
- Goodnight, dear one. I want to put my arms around you and kiss you at the corner of your mouth. And in a little more than a week now — I shall!
It is not universally accepted by historians that the two were romantically connected.
External links
- Lorena Alice Hickok at the Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site
- Beasley, Maurine. "Lorena A. Hickok: Woman Journalist" Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism (64th, East Lansing, MI, August 8-11, 1981).
- Hill, Michael. "The Rediscovery Of Lorena Hickok ; Eleanor Roosevelt's Friend Finally Getting Recognition", Seattle Times, December 23, 1999.
- Lorena Hickok & Eleanor Roosevelt: A Love Story
Provincetown is a town located at the extreme tip of Cape Cod in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 3,431 at the 2000 census...
has been performed in Provincetown, MassachusettsProvincetown is a town located at the extreme tip of Cape Cod in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 3,431 at the 2000 census...
every year since 1994.