Storming into the Sun

Storming in the Sun

As soon as she passed the lastsheltering headland of Chesapeake Bay, the presidential yacht Williamsburg ran into heavy weather. For two days and two nights as she skirted the storm-buffeted Carolina capes, she rolled and pitched and yawed with sickening vigor. The President, who had chosen a sea route to Key West as a gesture of friendliness to the Navy, surrendered to the unfriendliness of the sea and the built-in crankiness of his personal ship; he took to his berth, stopped eating.

Most of the others in the White House party also lay abed. It was not until the morning of the third day that angular Secretary Charles Ross was able to get up to the bridge and into radio communication with newsmen on an accompanying destroyer. He made his report: the only activity aboard the Williamsburg occurred in a horrible nightmare he had had, in which oranges were rolling back & forth, back & forth on the deck of his cabin. Presidential Aide Harry Vaughan had been the sickest man, but there had been a general loss of faith in the seasickness pills offered by White House Physician Dr. Wallace Graham.

How to Lose Weight. Later that day the skies cleared and the Williamsburg's round-bottomed hull slid smoothly through level seas. When the yacht docked at Key West on the fifth day, the President announced that he had lost four pounds, but hardily insisted that it had been a pleasant voyage.

A few minutes after walking into the "Little White House" at Key West's Naval Station, he went to work. With a flourish he signed the bill repealing federal taxes on oleomargarine--one of the Administration's few legislative successes of the year--and tackled a stack of documents which had been flown down from Washington. It was the first of a series of chores he had set for his three-week vacation; he proposed to keep in telephone contact with congressional leaders, to chip away at regular paper work, and to plan 1950 campaign strategy.

Blue Danube, Dark Skies. It was a light schedule, and shortly before noon he was ready to relax. He donned a white pith helmet, strolled to the beach past blossoming frangipani, hibiscus and bougainvillaea, soaked up sunshine for two hours and took a dip in the blue-green waters of the Gulf of Mexico. He went for a dip again on St. Patrick's Day--wearing green trunks. That evening he got out a big batch of phonograph records, gave his staff a canned concert of piano selections--such pieces as the Blue Danube and a Chopin Polonaise.

Two old cronies, Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson and ex-Presidential Adviser Clark Clifford, arrived over the weekend, and with them a tropical electrical storm. Clifford's arrival was embarrassingly ill-timed. The same day newspapers reported that he had landed his first big legal fish since leaving the White House: he had been hired as lawyer for Howard Hughes's T.W.A., whose struggle against Pan American for world air routes will ultimately be settled by the President. The President paid no heed either to the unfriendly weather or to Clifford's awkward status. He had paper work to do: it involved clubs, hearts, spades & diamonds and an occasional nip of bourbon & branch water. After all, early-rising Harry Truman could sleep in the morning at Key West--and sometimes he did, as late as 8 o'clock.

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