Lillian Rogers Parks

My Thirty Years Backstairs at the White House Lillian Rogers Parks

This book should be required reading for every serious student of American history. The authors were eye witnesses to some of the great events of history and offer different prospectives from that found elsewhere. For example, we learn that when Calvin Coolidge announced in 1927 that he did not intend to run for re-election, he was playing hard-to-get. He believed that the people would insist that he accept a third term of office. He expected to be drafted. He actually wanted a third term in office. Coolidge was disappointed when Herbert Hoover was nominated as he disagreed with Hoover's ideas and policies. We learn that in the last year and a half of the presidency of President Woodrow Wilson, he had to be wheeled around the White House in a wheel chair and was often engaged in "sickbed rambling". The unique prospective offered by this book arises from the fact that the authors are two White House domestic servants, each of whom worked for 30 years in the White House. As there was an overlap of ten years that both of them worked there together, that means that they were in the White House for a 51-year span from the end of 1909 until 1960, when Lillian Rogers Parks retired at age 64 in the concluding days of the Eisenhower Administration.