At the Elbow of Power

By Hugh Sidey

The Presidency

Bill Hopkins gives a melancholy sigh when he reads about the security barriers around the White House and about the huge budget ($23 million) and staff (322) that serve the President. As a clerk for the Bureau of Naturalization in Herbert Hoover's Administration, he used to amble out of his office on G Street for lunch as just another pedestrian with no security pass other than his amiable attitude. He would walk all the way through the old State, War and Navy Building (now the Executive Office Building), climb the steps beside the West Wing of the White House, where the President worked, trudge on by the front of the mansion and under the North Portico and out the northeast gate. Nice shortcut through pleasant surroundings. Anybody could do it.

He joined the White House correspondence staff in 1931, answering presidential mail and taking shorthand. Herbert Hoover had an appointive staff of four people, plenty large enough to run the place in those days. Occasionally Hopkins would get a hurry-up call to come to the White House late at night to transcribe Hoover's writing, which he would do on the spot. During the day in his office Hoover would stand I with a cigar in his mouth and his back to Hopkins and dictate. Hopkins had a tough time extracting I phrases muffled by Hoover's cigar I and high collar and directed at the ; opposite wall, but after a while he got the knack. He also deciphered Hoover's handwriting, no easy task. The President wrote many of his speeches and messages to Congress in pen on legal sheets. The problem, as Hopkins recalls it, was that Hoover's words began legibly enough but tended to end with a straight line as his mind outraced his fingers.

In the early days of Franklin Roosevelt's Administration, Hopkins was summoned to the White House to take what was termed "important" dictation. Louis Howe, the gnomelike aide who was chief secretary, did the dictating that night while Roosevelt listened. It was a statement announcing the closing of all U.S. banks. Hopkins got it down in shorthand and said he would rush to get it typed. No time for that, insisted Howe. So Hopkins sat back down and penned a declaration that signaled a firmer Government hand in dealing with the effects of the Great Depression.

F.D.R. was a jovial fellow, Hopkins remembers, and often he would offer Hopkins a beer or a cigarette or both, which were the last things Hopkins needed while taking dictation. F.D.R. usually had his own cigarette going, with its long holder tilted up at the jaunty angle that photographers loved to snap. Howe frequently lurked near by with his head in his hands, a gloomy, silent witness to the enterprise.

One day during World War II Hopkins was working diligently in his office in the West Wing when the door suddenly flew open and there in his blue siren suit stood Winston Churchill, looking smaller than life. He wordlessly gave his benediction to the White House aides by raising his arm and forming the victory sign with his chubby fingers. The door closed as suddenly as it opened. For Hopkins, now 73, it was a singular frame in his own remarkable march of time.

By 1948 Hopkins had progressed to executive clerk, the man who managed the internal White House machinery. Lyndon Johnson made him a full executive assistant, and by 1971, when Hopkins retired, "Check it with Bill" was White House code to all new employees, meaning "Go to Hopkins before you goof."

Friends from many years and many Administrations now gather and listen to Hopkins reminisce about the great days and great times around the White House. There's not a sour note in his narrative. Bill Hopkins never met a President he didn't like.