Essentials of the Job

One day last week blonde Clara Jo Proudfoot, 4, of Miami called on the President of the United States. Born with an imperfectly closed spine (spina bifida) and paralyzed from the waist down, Clara Jo was promoting the Easter Seal drive of the National Society for Crippled Children and Adults. As he saw the little girl laboriously making her way into his office on heavy steel braces and pink crutches that matched her well-starched dress, the President uttered an involuntary gasp. He started toward the girl as if to pick her up and carry her to his desk, then checked himself and said in a firmly encouraging tone: "That's a good job, a very good job."

For Ike, Clara Jo had a sheaf of Easter Seals and a lapel pin; for Clara Jo's cause Ike had $5, and for her stuffed dachshund he had an autograph. Pulling open a drawer of his desk, the President looked at the contents and remarked, "I'm afraid most of these things are for boys." (Actually, many of them are for the President, e.g., half a dozen bottles of assorted potions and pills.) But he found an 1890 (the year of his birth) silver dollar and a white ballpoint pen for the girl, and a penknife for her eleven-year-old brother. As the other people who were promoting the cause filed out of the room, the President and the little girl were still rummaging happily in the big drawer.

Late & Long. Throughout the week there were other visitors and other causes. In the White House Rose Garden one grey, 43DEG day, the President met 291 national councilors of the U.S.O., told them how important their work is even in peacetime, and welcomed one of them, retired Admiral John Leslie Hall Jr. (who commanded amphibious landings under General Eisenhower during World War II) as "the old Viking admiral." On another day the President entertained Ireland's John A. (for Aloysius) Costello, who identified himself as a "very unimportant Prime Minister of a very important country," and presented his host with a silver bowl full of shamrocks; in return, he received a framed picture of Ike.

With Mrs. Eisenhower the President went out one night to the opening of the movie Richard III. He found Producer-Director-Star Laurence Olivier worried that he might not enjoy the show, which was taking up some three hours of his leisure. "If it displeases you," said Olivier, "I will be outraged with myself." The President was not displeased. Even if he had been, this first trip to a theater since his heart attack was more than an evening out: the affair was a benefit for the Washington Heart Association.

The President kept in touch with the problems as well as with the people. He met with Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson and Admiral Arthur Radford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and later with the full J.C.S., to hear reports on the Puerto Rico conference on defense planning. Slipping out of the White House one night, he dined with members of the Commerce Department's Business Advisory Board, and listened to a briefing on North Atlantic Treaty Organization problems by his old friend and aide, General Alfred Gruenther. Ike added a new meeting to his schedule: for the first time he attended a session of the "sub-cabinet," made up of the deputies and assistants to Cabinet members.

Through Acting Secretary of State Herbert Hoover Jr., the President received continuing reports from the traveling Secretary, John Foster Dulles, as well as several briefings on the troubled Middle East. He conferred with Republican leaders from Capitol Hill about strategy on legislation. On two afternoons he talked politics with Republican National Chairman Leonard Hall; Ike's special interest was the list of Republican candidates for Congress.

Patient but Not Complacent. At his news conference the President, with as much force and clarity as he has ever shown, outlined his own views of the U.S. position on the whole top layer of domestic, international and political issues, e.g., civil rights, the farm bill, trouble in the Middle East, the crisis on Cyprus, and the political status of Vice President Richard Nixon. "I have been working long hours lately," he said, "going far into the evening."

In the tone of a man deeply concerned, President Eisenhower urged a calm but positive approach in the troubled field of civil rights. His Administration will work for continued progress under the Constitution and the decision of the Supreme Court, he said, but it will not use coercion or force. Said the President: "If ever there was a time when we must be patient, without being complacent, when we must be understanding of other people's deep emotions, as well as our own, this is it . . . The people who have this deep emotional reaction on the other side were not acting over these past three generations in defiance of law. They were acting in compliance with the law as interpreted by the Supreme Court of the U.S. under the decision of 1896.* Now that has been completely reversed, and it is going to take time for them to adjust their thinking and their progress to that. But I have never yet given up my belief that the American people, faced with a great problem like this, will approach it intelligently and with patience and with understanding and we will get somewhere; and I do deplore any great extreme action on either side."

Near week's end the President rode through a cold rain to his farm at Gettysburg. With him, for weekend study and revision, he took a draft of his message on foreign aid, due to go to Congress this week. Dwight Eisenhower's doctors had told him, and he clearly seemed to believe, that hard work coupled with sensible living does not necessarily injure a recovered coronary case.

* Plessy v. Ferguson, in which the Supreme Court set forth the doctrine of "separate but equal" facilities for whites and Negroes.

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