Lorena Hickok Papers, 1913-1962 | Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library & Museum

Title: Lorena Hickok Papers, 1913-1962

Primary Creator: Lorena Hickok (1893-1968)

Extent: 7.34 Cubic Feet

Arrangement: Three series: the first and second arranged chronologically and the third alphabetically.

Date Acquired: 00/00/1958

Lorena Hickok was born on March 7, 1893, in East Troy, Wisconsin. Throughout her childhood, she traveled with her family through the upper Midwest as her father followed his itinerant buttermaking trade. Her mother died when Miss Hickok was thirteen. Three years afterward she went to Battle Creek, Michigan, to live with her mother’s cousin, Ella Ellie. There she attended High School, finishing three years.

After a brief attempt at college, Miss Hickok took her first job with a newspaper, collecting personals for the Battle Creek Evening News. After a second and a third attempt at college, she decided to pursue a career in journalism. In the summer of 1919 she was appointed Sunday editor of the Minneapolis Tribune. The paper’s managing editor, Thomas J. Dillon, gave her opportunities that were seldom given to a woman. He gave her a by-line and made her the paper’s chief reporter, and for the next six years she covered politics and football and prepared editorials.

In 1926, Miss Hickok left the Tribune and. After a period of travel and ill-health, she went to New York. She worked, first, for about a year, for the Mirror. Then, in 1928, she began work with the Associated Press, where she again found an editor, Martin A. White, who did not restrict her to the few areas of the profession traditionally allotted to women. Her specialty was political reporting, and she often shared campaign trains with dozens of her male colleagues.

In the summer of 1928, while she was covering the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in New York City, Miss Hickok was introduced to Eleanor Roosevelt by Mrs. Roosevelt’s secretary, Malvina Thompson. Mrs. Roosevelt was head of the Women’s Division of the Democratic National Committee during the 1928 campaign, and Miss Hickok would on what she called “dull days” at Democratic National Headquarters wander down to the Women’s Division and look for a story. The two women formed during this period a slight acquaintance.

Four years later, Miss Hickok was assigned by the Associated Press to cover the Presidential campaign of Franklin D. Roosevelt. She suggested that someone be assigned to cover Mrs. Roosevelt, but the A. P. resisted the idea until very late in the campaign when Roosevelt’s victory appeared certain. In October 1932, Miss Hickok was assigned exclusively to Mrs. Roosevelt. For the final month of the campaign, and then for the four month interregnum period, the two women went everywhere together. By inauguration day, 1933, they had become close friends.

Miss Hickok’s press coverage of Mrs. Roosevelt ended on inauguration day, and she returned to New York. She found that her friendship with Mrs. Roosevelt had compromised her ability to continue her work. As a consequence, she resigned from the Associated Press in late June 1933.

After a motoring trip with Mrs. Roosevelt through upstate New York, New England, Quebec and the Gaspe Peninsula, Miss Hickok began work, probably August 1933, as a Chief Investigator for the Federal Emergency Relief Administration. Her major duties in this position were to travel around the country and to report on both the effectiveness of local relief administrations and the physical and mental condition of those receiving relief. She also accepted from President Roosevelt in the spring of 1935 a special investigating assignment in connection with the administration of the National Emergency Council. During this period, Miss Hickok made two other extended trips with Mrs. Roosevelt: the first, in March 1934, to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands; the second, in July 1934, to San Francisco, Sacramento, Yosemite National Park, and Nevada.

Miss Hickok resigned from the Federal Emergency Relief Administration in late November 1936. In January 1937, she accepted a position as director of promotion for the New York World’s Fair. In her first few months with the Fair, Miss Hickok established the pattern of living – that is, of commuting from her Manhattan apartment to her weekend and holiday retreat at Moriches, Long Island, the “Little House” on the estate of William S. Dana – which is much in evidence in her correspondence with Mrs. Roosevelt during these years.

She left the New York World’s fair in late January 1940, to take a post as assistant to the publicity director of the Democratic National Committee. Sometime shortly after the 1940 election, she transferred to the Women’s Division of the Democratic National Committee to become its executive director. She lived, during these years in Washington – as she occasionally had during her work with the Federal Emergency Relief Administration – at the White House. In March 1945, she resigned her post because of ill-health.

From March 1945 until sometime in mid-1947, Miss Hickok lived in partial retirement, dependent for income primarily on the proceeds from her writing and on the generosity of her friends.  She helped Eleanor Roosevelt and Congresswoman Mary Norton with several writing projects and was entered for a time on the latter’s staff payroll. Sometime in mod-1947 she took a position with the women’s division of the Democratic State Committee of New York. She may have held this post through 1952.

Beginning with Ladies of Courage (1954), which she wrote with Mrs. Roosevelt, Miss Hickok wrote several books, including The Story of Franklin D. Roosevelt (1956), The Story of Helen Keller (1958), The Story of Eleanor Roosevelt (1959), The Touch of Magic: The Story of Helen Keller’s Great Teacher, Anne Sullivan Macy (1961), Reluctant First Lady (1962), and The Road to the White House (1962).

Miss Hickok gave up her Moriches, Long Island cottage sometime in the mid-1950’s (maybe 1955) and moved to Hyde Park. She may have lived at Val-Kill cottage for several months in the fall of 1955, and perhaps longer. In late 1957 she was living in a cabin in the Lakewood Motor Court in East Park; by early 1960, she had moved to 19 Park Place in the village of Hyde Park, an address which she kept until her death on May 1, 1968.

Repository: Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library & Museum

Access Restrictions: Material which might be used to embarrass, harass, or injure living persons has been closed.

Use Restrictions: Miss Hickok donated her copyrights in the papers to the United States Government. Copyrights in the writings of Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt in the papers have been retained. Information concerning them should be sought from her literary executor, Mr. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr.

Acquisition Source: Lorena Hickok

Acquisition Method: The papers were presented to the Library by Lorena Hickok in 1958. They were kept closed until ten years after her death (until May 1, 1978) according to a provision in her deed of gift.

Related Materials: Selected files in the Personal and Official Files of the Papers of Franklin D. Roosevelt as President of the United States, and in the papers of Mary Dewson, Harry Hopkins, Eleanor Roosevelt and Aubrey Williams.