Lorena Hickok, Eleanor Roosevelt's devoted friend, mentor,
and pioneering journalist, was born March 7, 1893, in
East
Troy, Wisconsin, to Addison Hickok, a buttermaker, and
Anna Wiate Hickok, a dressmaker. Violence and instability
characterized
her early life. Her father beat Lorena and her sisters,
had trouble keeping a job and forced the family to move
as he sought work, thus interrupting Hickok's education
as she traveled from school district to school district.
She left home at fourteen to work as a maid, living with
nine families in two years, until her mother's cousin
Ella
Ellis asked Hickok to live with her. Under Ellis's guidance,
Hickok finished high school and, in 1912, enrolled in
Lawrence
College in Appleton, Wisconsin. Ridiculed by her classmates,
Hickok never adjusted to college and flunked out after
one
year. The Battle Creek Evening News hired her
to cover train arrivals and departures and to write personal
interest stories for $7 a week.
Hickok's role model, the novelist Edna Ferber, began her
career as a Milwaukee reporter, so Hickok joined the staff
of the Milwaukee Sentinel as its society editor,
"the only position available to most women on newspapers."(1)
Bored by society assignments, Hickok convinced her editor
to assign her to the city desk, where she quickly made a
name for herself as a skilled interviewer. She transferred
to the Minneapolis Tribune in 1917, only to move
to New York City to pursue her hopes of covering World
War I. Hickok had trouble adjusting to such a large
city, was fired after a month, and returned to Minneapolis
to rejoin the Tribune as a rewriter and enroll
at the University of Minnesota. Her college education ended
when she left the university after the dean tried to force
her to live in the women's dormitory. Thomas J. Dillon,
the Tribune's managing editor, recognized Hickok's
talents, tutored her, and offered her assignments rarely
given to women, including politics and sports. "The Old
Man," as Hickok called Dillon, taught her the "newspaper
business, how to drink and how to live."
(2) In 1928, the Associated Press hired Hickok
to write feature stories for its wire service. Quickly making
a name for herself by covering politics and dramatic stories
like the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, Hickok surpassed her
male colleagues and won the coveted right to have her name
appear as a by-line atop her articles.
Hickok met ER in 1932 when the reporter convinced her
editors to assign her to cover ER during the 1932 presidential
campaign. The two women quickly trusted one another, with
ER speaking honestly about politics and social issues and
confiding her fears about her life should FDR
win the election. They become so close that Hickok let ER
see her stories before she submitted them to her editor,
and in one case, agreed to ER's request that a story be
delayed. Their campaign experience led to a lifetime of
devotion to one another.
In 1933, Hickok left the Associated Press because she
could no longer be objective when covering the Roosevelts.
ER recommended that Harry Hopkins
hire the reporter to investigate conditions average Americans
confronted for the Federal Emergency Relief Administration
(FERA). For two years, Hickok visited thirty-two states
and provided detailed, salty reports on New Deal policy,
living conditions, and politics to FDR, ER, and Hopkins.
An astute, engaged observer, Hickok could assess the problems
a community faced quickly after arriving and could solicit
trenchant comments from locals that helped the Roosevelts
and Hopkins see their policies from the citizen's point
of view.
Hickok also provided invaluable advice to ER as ER struggled
to adjust to living in the White House. She recommended
ER hold press conferences with only women reporters and
encouraged her to resume her writing career, most notably
ER's monthly column "Mrs. Roosevelt's Page" and her daily
column "My Day,"
and she edited the articles ER submitted for publication.
She also served as ER's trusted sounding board, especially
after
Louis Howe's death in 1935.
Her intense concern for unemployed coal miners spurred
ER's
concern and played a key role in introducing ER to the
West Virginia community later known as
Arthurdale . In the early years of the New Deal, the
two women vacationed together and Hickok accompanied ER
on her official visit to Puerto Rico. When Hickok became
executive secretary of the Women's Division of the Democratic
National Committee (DNC) in 1940, ER invited her to live
at the White House.
Hickok's diabetes worsened in early 1945, forcing her
to leave the DNC. In 1947, ER helped Hickok secure a job
with the New York State Democratic Committee. Hickok's
health continued to decline, and in 1954, a frail and
partially
blind Hickok moved to Hyde Park to be closer to ER. The
two women collaborated on Women of Courage, a
portrait of women political leaders, and ER tried to
stabilize Hickok's
finances. Hickok wrote Reluctant First Lady,
a biography of ER, and six children's biographies before
her death in 1968.
Notes:
- American National Biography.
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 740.
- Ibid.
Sources:
American National Biography. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1999.
Cook, Blanche Wiesen. Eleanor Roosevelt: Volume One.
New York: Viking Press, 1992.
Lowitt, Richard and Maurine Beasley. One Third of A
Nation: Lorena Hickok Reports from the Great Depression.
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981.