Stokes: Mrs. Dewey’s day
By Thomas L. Stokes
Sapulpa, Oklahoma –
“You know where she’s from, don’t you? She was born in Sherman – she’s a Lone Star girl.”
He was a tall, rangy fellow, with a big hat and a drawl Texas pride would out, just like Oklahoma pride. And Oklahoma pride bubbled through the crowd that jostled about, under a hot sun, around the flag-draped stand in front of the courthouse, men, women and children, thousands of them.
She sat quietly on the stand, her head just showing over the rail, with that strained, suppressed look she always wears on public occasions, whenever her husband speaks. But today she had more occasion to look that way, as if holding herself in tight, for this was her day among the homefolks of Sapulpa. There was a smile, a cover for the strained, intense look.
She had ridden through the streets of her hometown in an open auto, smiling graciously upon the throngs which had come from miles around to pay her homage – and, of course, to see her husband. She had ridden under a great banner stretched across Dewey Avenue, the main street named for Adm. George Dewey.
It reminded her of girlhood days, of high school, and the eager thrill that came the day she left here to go to New York to study voice, with visions of a career on the concert and operatic stage.
Career diverted
That career was diverted into a different channel that brought her here today in the role she could never have imagined then – the wife of a handsome man running for President of the United States.
The tall Texan spoke again: “He wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth and he ain’t money-made.”
“He” sat at his wife’s side on the stand, When he was called to the front to speak, he thanked the people for taking in the little girl who had come from Sherman, Texas, to live with them at the age of 11, for bring nice to her, and most of all “for letting her go to New York where I met her.” She had been going around for many years as Mrs. Tom Dewey, he explained, and this was his first experience as “Mr. Frances Hutt.” He seemed to be enjoying it.
Her high school mates were there, sitting on a special stand to the left – the class of 1921 – rising one at a time as their names were called, a little awkward under the public gaze,
There was, too, to introduce Mrs. Dewey, a short, plump, nervous woman, the efficient arranger type known to every community. She presented Mrs. Dewey with a bunch of orchids, stepping over to where the guest of honor sat. But Mrs. Dewey did not come to the front. She kept in the background throughout.
A fine-looking couple
Later she and Governor Dewey went to the high school and had their pictures taken together on the steps, as fine looking a couple as you’ll see.
As they drove up to the school, two young girls – free from high school for the event – ran along, shouting shamelessly, “We want Roosevelt.” And when two high school boys tried to shush them, they shouted back, “This is America, a free country, isn’t it?" And one of the boys said to the other, “That’s a woman for you.”
It was Mrs. Dewey’s day, but it was like so many. Patiently she goes through the routine of campaigning – appearing with her husband on the back platform of trains, on the platform at meetings, at the receptions held for her at every stop, at press conferences where she is always asked the same questions by excited lady reporters.
Her face lights up when they ask about her two boys. That’s where her heart is, there at home, with her husband and the boys.
But she goes cheerfully through the show, like the trouper she might have been, had she not met another singer in New York who decided to study law as a backstop and found himself eventually in that profession.