The Rock

Up the steps of Fitzsimons Army Hospital in Denver bounded a lean, taut man carrying a briefcase. To the photographers who flashed and clicked at him, he cast a cold glance of recognition and offered the slightest suggestion of a wave with his right hand. Hurrying into the hospital to see Patient Dwight Eisenhower, the visitor was confirming the estimate of a White House staffer who had said: "We'll have a taut ship now that old gimlet eye is here."

Old gimlet eye is Sherman Adams, Assistant to the President of the U.S., who last week settled into his newly adjusted position as the link running between the President and the presidency. Adams had established residence in a two-room bachelor officer's suite at Denver's Lowry Air Force Base, and had taken an office right across the hall from the office the President used before he was stricken. By 7:30 a.m. on each working day, Sherman Adams was at his plain metal desk in the uncarpeted, uncurtained office that seemed as flintlike and efficient as the man who was occupying it. Seated there, Adams fitted the nickname that he acquired back in New Hampshire: "the Rock."*

"O.K., S.A." Adams' Denver day usually began with a round of telephone calls to Washington, in which he reported on President Eisenhower's condition and talked business with Vice President Nixon and other officials. Each afternoon, after a careful check with the presidential physicians, he visited the patient for ten minutes or more. Before he went in, he decided what matters should be brought to the President's attention; then he cleared his agenda with the physicians. When he submitted a paper for signature, it was in as good order as was possible, it had been cleared by the Government department concerned, and it bore the "O.K., S.A." that President Eisenhower watches for on papers submitted to him in the White House or in the hospital.

At midweek, with his briefcase in one hand and a cardboard-roll carton containing his favorite fly rod in the other, Adams boarded a United Air Lines coach flight for Washington to attend meetings of the Cabinet and the National Security Council. When he arrived in Washington, reporters asked him why he had traveled coach rather than first class or by Government plane. Said Adams (who used to carry his lunch to the office in a paper bag when he was governor of New Hampshire in 1949-53): "You can save a lot of money that way."

The "Chief of Staff." By 7:30 the next morning Adams was at his desk in the White House, ready to meet with Vice President Nixon and to give the Cabinet and the NSC a detailed report on the President's condition. Throughout two days in Washington he conferred with members of the White House staff to question, discuss and weigh matters connected with the problem of keeping the executive department running.

Under Dwight Eisenhower and Sherman Adams, the White House staff is organized more tightly, works more efficiently and more importantly than at any other time in U.S. history. As chief of staff, Adams has wider powers of decision and direction than any other presidential aide who has ever served in the White House. He is the channel through which most matters reach the President; he runs the staff with a firm hand and issues many an order in the President's name. While the President convalesces and gradually begins to do more work, Sherman Adams, the man at the President's door, will be even more powerful than he was before.

-Mrs. Adams, a bright, charming and sociable woman who has become a favorite at Washington gatherings, is known to friends as "the pebble."

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