She was from the
South. Her name was Edith Bolling Wilson and married President Woodrow Wilson
after his wife Ellen Wilson died. They were only married four years and then
Woodrow had a massive stroke and Edith took over the White House. This was in
1919 and from here on Edith Wilson ran the government until 1921. She had only
two years of school and had run a successful jewelry company after her first
husband died. She owned one of the first electric cars in Washington and was
given the first drivers license in the District of Columbia. She was fifteen
years younger than Woodrow Wilson and considered very attractive.
They necked in the
presidential limousine when they were courting. Edith deciphered top secret
codes for the President. When he had a stroke she controlled who saw him and
who didn't. She oversaw legislation and secured appointments for his
cabinet. All this while her husband was on deaths door and many thought he
would die. She saw the Vice President only once and told him his services
weren't needed. She oversaw the end of World War I and was in the middle of the
fight to get the United States into the League of Nations.
She would show her
husband movies and wheel him outside to the South Portico for air. She had him
put in the presidential limousine and propped up so people would know he was
still alive. She outlived him by forty years and was at John Kennedy's
inauguration. She wrote a memoir in 1939 and denied running the White House. In
the National Archives are correspondence that was never opened during her
Presidency and discovered in the 1950s. She just couldn't get to it.
Order from Barnes and Noble Madam President
