Helen Thomas: Interview #1

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Q: Well, I want to, a little bit later, get to Tom DeLay's influence on the town. But, actually, the cab driver that I had from the hotel over here -- I mentioned that I was going to see Helen Thomas, and she said, "Isn't she the woman the presidents love to hate?" [More laughter] I said, "Wait a minute. Are you the same cab driver that Helen Thomas said made that remark, twenty years ago?" And she said, "No, all the cab drivers say that." [Laughter]

Thomas: She's right. If it weren't for the honor of the thing.

Q: At the start, could you tell me -- we're going to do this a little bit out of order anyway-- the sign-off, "Thank you, Mr. President." How did that get started?

Thomas: I didn't coin it. It was my boss -- [Albert] Merriman Smith. It was during the Roosevelt era. He had started covering the White House in 1940, and he really created the role of the White House reporter, the wire-service reporter. Roosevelt had two news conferences a week, believe it or not, during World War II, in his office -- the Oval Office. They couldn't quote him directly, but they certainly could get the drift of everything, and he's the one who coined "Thank you, Mr. President."

Q: And he was with AP at that time even?

Thomas: No, UPI. He was with United Press. It wasn't even United Press International.

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Thomas: No! Bill O'Reilly. I've been dealing with that for the last several days. He was going to "lay me out," they said. That's what I heard.

Q: That's right. But only if he were president -- and that isn't in the cards, in all probability.

Let me put a little more flesh on these stalwart Kentucky bones than I saw in the first interview. You were born in Winchester, Kentucky. Is that --I assume-- a small community?

Thomas: A very small town. But it was a town, not a village. It was a city, but very small. Main Street --

Q: Anywhere near Lexington or Louisville?

Thomas: Twenty miles from Lexington; I don't know how many miles from Louisville, but that's how you always placed it, really.

Q: Right. Is that the great horse country?

Thomas: It's Blue Grass and horse farms.

Q: Do you have the foggiest idea what Blue Grass is? I don't know.

Thomas: I don't know. I guess it looks blue when --

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Q: -- and they changed his name from something like Antonius, was it --

Thomas: That's right.

Q: -- to Thomas.

Thomas: Right. And we were always glad they did. It's nice to have an Irish name.

Q: You used to say in the family, did you not, that you were glad he didn't miss the boat.

Thomas: Right. My brother sort of coined that, and we all picked it up.

Q: Right. But how old a man was he at that time?

Thomas: My father? He was about fifteen years old when he came here.

Q: And did he go to work in Kentucky, right away?

Thomas: Pushcart. Then he had a grocery store in Kentucky. Then they started the big boom -- his brothers also had gone to Detroit, where they were paying five dollars a day on the assembly line. My father never went into the auto factory, but he had a grocery store. It was typical Lebanese, you know. They always were selling things. First he was selling linens, I think, and

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Thomas: -- to the city. They were planted right in the middle of the city. Detroit is always divided East Side or West Side. You can meet a Detroiter and you say, "East Side or West Side," and never the twain shall meet. It was almost like a different city.

Q: And they were on the --

Thomas: -- East Side.

Q: And how did he make a living once they went to Detroit?

Thomas: Grocery store.

Q: Same thing. Right. And had relatives there, of course?

Thomas: Yes. He had two brothers in the area.

Q: And you were born there, in --

Thomas: -- 1920.

Q: And you had a number of brothers and sisters, did you not?

Thomas: We're nine children.

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Q: Do you remember what was the first story you did, that had your by-line on it?

Thomas: I can't. I don't remember. I'm always asked that, but I can't remember.

Q: When you graduated high school -- perhaps it was 1938 -- someone gave you a book of Edna St. Vincent Millay's poems. Do you recall that?

Thomas: I recall the book, yes. I forget the title.

Q: But would you say, at that time, by the time you graduated high school. you were an avid reader?

Thomas: I read a lot, but I should have read more. You have to understand that era. That era was alive. It was going from the Great Depression into World War II. All the world was blowing up, really, but there was a tremendous sense of people who really cared. It was a big difference. We could have had a revolution in the Great Depression. But with Roosevelt's words, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself," I think this country was really the most dignified -- ever -- in going through trauma. And the people all understood, and they were all together. I wish I could describe what I felt about the country at that time -- everybody did, too. Sure, you had your left and your right and so forth -- the right, isolationists and -- but ferment. You had intellectual ferment there. You couldn't escape it.

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Thomas: Well, I knew I wanted to be a newspaperwoman. I had already made up my mind. I was so lucky to have had that sense of direction. One way or another, I was determined. I think it's so important to know where you want to go in life, as young as possible. I think the public schools in Detroit were magnificent. They were great. I hate it when people slam public schools, because there were so many great teachers, and they were so inspiring -- history, English, and so forth. They cared. They really cared.

Q: Could you say the same of the college you went to?

Thomas: The same thing, too. I went to Wayne State, because we didn't have any money, really, to go any further. Two of my sisters did go to the University of Michigan, came along later. But I never felt deprived. As I said, there were great, great professors at Wayne. I always felt that if you didn't learn much it was your fault, because it's out there.

Q: And did you continue to have that interest, in being a newspaperwoman, at that time?

Thomas: I started working on the college paper, and I was pursuing this whole -- yes, I loved it. I spent more time working on the school paper than going to class. It gave me a good impetus to cut classes.

Q: But at that time, Helen, how many known newspaperwomen were there? What had been known to you, for example?

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Thomas: Hell, no! It's only my family that I still have a tremendous pull. I love Detroit. We would never have won World War II without Detroit. It transformed the whole auto industry into tanks and planes and so forth. Rosie the Riveter. They had a tremendous blue-collar sense of dedication. They knew why they were there. No, I'm very proud. We never could have won the war without Detroit.

Q: Do you recall, while you were still in Detroit, in the '30s, the labor unrest there?

Thomas: Oh, absolutely. The strikes and the unions. The unions, I really believed in them, too. I mean-- tremendous struggle.

Q: Yes. Bloody at times.

Thomas: Now they're practically being wiped out -- or castrated -- totally.

Q: Right. Have you been a union member yourself?

Thomas: Yes. Ever since I got into the newspaper business, I joined the Guild. I went to the Washington Daily News, and about eight of us were fired because --

Q: I'd like to get to that. After you graduated university, how far from Detroit -- leaving aside Kentucky and the exodus from Kentucky to Detroit -- how far had you been out of Detroit by the

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Thomas: Almost. Yes.

Q: Tell me what happened there. You graduated university --

Thomas: Yes.

Q: You had that cap and gown on. Did they have caps and gowns then?

Thomas: Yes.

Q: You had the cap and gown on. What happened between the time --?

Thomas: Well, I had a cousin in Washington. She had a good job with the Social Security Administration. I decided I would go visit her, and look around to see if there were any opportunities. So then I started working in a restaurant, knocking on doors --

Q: Working in a restaurant where?

Thomas: I don't know, downtown.

Q: In Washington?

Thomas: Yes. As a hostess. I then got a job as a copy-boy with Washington Daily News.

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Q: Just tell me how you got that job, as a copy-person at the Daily News. You knocked on doors?

Thomas: Yes, of course. You go from door to door, you go from one newspaper to another, and you persist. So I was very happy. I thought I had "arrived," when I got the job -- running for coffee, cutting copy, and being in the ambience.

Q: Were they looking for someone? They needed someone, or you sort of convinced them they needed someone?

Thomas: There was a slot. I was hired. I don't know, but I know they were drafting young men, and if any young man had had that job, they were gone. Anybody who had a pulse was going to war.

Q: Right. Was there a Sunday edition of the paper, also, at that time?

Thomas: No, I don't think for the News.

Q: Do you recall, literally, when you first walked in there -- when you went to work -- the first day you went to work there, what it was like? In the first week or so --

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Q: In your mind's eye, do you see a different Washington, in appearance, than one sees today? Radically different, than one sees today?

Thomas: It was a sleepy, Southern town then. It was very Southern. It was very discriminating. It was segregation. Blacks couldn't even sit down in a snack bar where we used to go to get coffee and a hamburger. I was certainly aware that there was tremendous discrimination. I'm just angry at myself that I wasn't more angry, and did something about it. Everything was kind of accepted as the mores of the place. Little did we know.

Q: Had you not seen that in Michigan?

Thomas: No. I went to school with them, with blacks and whites and so forth (I shouldn't have put it that way). I had a black girlfriend, a school chum, but there was not that much socializing.

Q: But it stood out in Washington, in that era. When you say it was a slow, sleepy town -

Thomas: It was Southern. All the manners were Southern. It had a definite overhang of -- it was "closed down," in a sense. But the war, then, changed everything, it's true. You saw soldiers everywhere. Things began to break through.

Q: And did you, at that time, or even until his death, see Roosevelt yourself?

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Q: Less so today.

Thomas: I do believe it’d be more accepted today.

Q: But, judging from your recent comments, one gets the impression that you think there are some politicians who are mentally handicapped, who are getting around town.

Thomas: They're so limited. I have never seen a time when I though we are so bereft of great people.

Q: We'll come to that. But the Washington Daily News. For someone reading or watching this interview ten years from now -- what could they compare the Washington Daily News to, that exists today? Well, yes, it was like this, or it was like that.

Thomas: The New York Daily News. It was a tabloid; it was lively; the reporters were great. They were "with it," in every sense. Things jumped out of the page, really, and great photographers around, too. Just a tremendous sense of fun and dedication.

Q: Was it independently owned?

Thomas: Scripps-Howard.

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Q: With the same organization -- with Scripps-Howard?

Thomas: Yes.

Q: How could that be?

Thomas: Well, because the editor at UPI called, to check with the Daily News, and the managing editor said, "Give her a chance. She didn't have it here." Meaning, that they had fired everybody.

Q: A big-hearted guy?

Thomas: Yes, believe it or not. I never thought of him that way, but he turned out to be okay. Well, there were a lot of slots at that time. They were really drafting young men then. Everybody was going to the army, if they were not truly a conscientious objector.

Q: But when you were a cub reporter at the Daily News, before moving over to the wire service, what were you covering? Did you actually go out --

Thomas: We were covering a lot of families who had lost a son. You'd have to go there and try to get a photograph. It was very sad.

Q: And interview the families?

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Thomas: No.

Q: This is after the war has ended, is that correct?

Thomas: Yes.

Q: World War II. Are we up to when the Korean War was going on?

Thomas: I was still filing the wires at that time. But it was very, very exciting. History was before your eyes every day. I thought I was very lucky.

Q: And you found yourself mesmerized by the material you were passing on to other people?

Thomas: Absolutely. Then I started covering some of the major departments, like the Justice Department, and some of the agencies, like Health, Education & Welfare, which now is Health & Human Services. Up and down Pennsylvania Avenue, you would touch base with all of them. You wouldn't stay there all day, but you'd pick up the releases, and if they had any kind of a news conference --

Q: At that time, did newspapers have beat reporters at these places, like Justice?

Thomas: Yes. Some of them did. The wire services did. They had people permanently at Justice, Treasury, Pentagon, or War Department, State Department.

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family. Then, after Kennedy won, I was sent, always, to cover him. I covered the N Street house. He was coming out of his door, his very nice house in Georgetown, and making his announcement of the new cabinet people and so forth.

Q: I remember this. Right.

Thomas: Then, when John F. Kennedy, Jr. was born, I was assigned to go to the hospital every day, and Kennedy would come in twice a day, and we would ask him questions about what was going on and so forth, for about ten days.

Q: I want to get to that -- it's fascinating -- but we left off before --

Thomas: I was covering Justice, Health, Education & Welfare, and --

Q: Through the '50s?

Thomas: Through the '50s.

Q: And you also had become president of the --

Thomas: -- Women's Press Club.

Q: How had that come about?

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Q: Did she have her hat on?

Thomas: Always had her hat on. New York Times -- she was wonderful -- what was her name? Anyway, they had very elite women. Ruth [S.] Montgomery, who was New York Daily News.

Q: But these were people who were senior to you -- the names you just mentioned.

Thomas: Yes.

Q: They had, in some sense, broken the mold, would you say?

Thomas: Absolutely. Each one had been president of the Women's Press Club.

Q: But what had they been covering? Do you have any idea?

Thomas: They had been covering the whole town, especially during World War II. Every beat was covered by women, as well, because the men weren't around.

Q: Today, it seems --

Thomas: They were around, I mean -- somewhere.

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So, anyway, it was a historic moment, where they decided to allow thirty women, for the first time in history, to sit on the floor, at a luncheon, with their male colleagues. These are male colleagues, whom they had gone toe to toe with on beats for many years.

But that was it. We attended the Khrushchev; it was a very famous speech. Khrushchev said, "We will bury you." I was at the head table, because I was president of the club, etc. But we were never taken into the National Press Club until 1971, and that was 1959, when we sat down for the first time.

Q: Why?

Thomas: There was a very big male prejudice against women. They said, "This has always been a male club, and you're trying to get into our bar, and you're trying to --" It was very primitive on their part. They needed our money in 1971, for fees and so forth, so that's when they -- It wasn't any big, soul-searching. The scales didn't fall from their eyes. But that's not unusual. Women have had to break down every door, in every profession. The Cosmos Club, made up of Nobels, Pulitzer Prize winners, great physicists, novelists, chemists, blah, blah, voted three times, in the 1980s, against taking in women. Now they take in women; they've had women presidents. Once you're there, you're accepted, but it was so difficult for the old curmudgeons to accept.

Q: Well, you were going, even in the '50s, you were going toe-to-toe with some of these very same people, on stories, right?

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Q: And was that a standard that you would say you had picked up earlier, even? Perhaps even as far back as --

Thomas: Well, as soon as you start writing news stories, it's the first thing you learn -- keep yourself out of it, and even tone down your adjectives or your verbs, so that you don't indicate any kind of bias.

Q: A different kind of world than today, in some respects.

Thomas: Much more interpretive.

Q: Right.

So you found yourself caught up in this assignment with the Kennedys. You were assigned, first, to cover Jackie.

Thomas: Yes. Then they started sending me to cover Kennedy, and it was a metamorphosis, really.

Q: Kennedy had been a senator -- I think only for, perhaps, one term. He had married, I think, in 1956 or somewhere around that time. Was he someone who, as you recollect it, who was viewed

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it. Blacks couldn't go to the hotels. They couldn't go to restaurants, all the public facilities and so forth. This was absolutely the most dynamic decision, and it was unanimous.

Q: Even in the nation's capital. Even in the nation's capital, at that time?

Thomas: Even in the nation's capital. It was sensational. Eisenhower refused to take a stand on it, and say it was a good decision. He danced around, at a news conference. He did not endorse the decision. In fact, he was sorry he had named [Earl] Warren to the head court.

Q: When that pneumatic tube came down, and the UPI man flashed it right away -- do I understand you to say that you were at the Supreme Court yourself?

Thomas: Yes. We were all hanging around. We had little booths, downstairs, below the chamber. Yes, I was.

Q: Why were you there?

Thomas: Because I was just sort of a go-fer. They needed extra help, in case -- somebody to run copy, or whatever.

Q: But you remember getting a thrill from that decision, and seeing that.

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Thomas: But then the "Great White Father," you know. There was Eisenhower, who was the war hero, etc. The country had become more conservative.

Q: But Kennedy, when he came in, gave off an aura that neither Stevenson nor Eisenhower had.

Thomas: No.

Q: Was it clear to you, then --

Thomas: He was young. It was youth. He had been in the war. He had his eyes on the stars. I mean, he had vision. He was handsome. He had wit, he had warmth. He was us. He related to us.

Q: Tell me about your actual coverage. When you're assigned to the White House beat, what actually -- just tell me what you actually would do.

Thomas: Everything. Every bit of tricky-track, every piece of paper they put out, you would call it in or -- call it in, mainly. You never know what a president is going to do, so you're on the body watch. If the president goes out, you go out. Anything they're doing and so forth. So you don't have much depth perception, but you're there, you see things, you watch them in action. Kennedy had a lot of things going. He would be addressing young people in the Rose Garden, telling them to go into public service. There was a lot of excitement.

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Q: Every day?

Thomas: Yes. Well, that was true, too, of Eisenhower and the others. They had press briefings every day.

Q: Well, that wasn't true -- I mean, Roosevelt didn't have -- did [Harry S.] Truman have press briefings every day, do you know?

Thomas: The press officers, yes. One dropped dead--had a heart attack and so forth. These are real pressure jobs.

Q: So the daily press briefings by a press spokesman, unlike the presidential press conferences --

Thomas: They said a lot.

Q: Tell me who -- it was Lucky Pierre, wasn't it?

Thomas: Lucky Pierre [Pierre E.G. Salinger], and he really reflected the newness, and the New Frontier, and the whole -- he had a lot of wit, and he had entrée to the Oval Office. He was part of the team. You definitely had the sense of what was going on. He would also give you the lift of an eyebrow or whatever, a little tip-off of what was going to happen.

Q: Now your job -- He would have a daily press briefing. But that's only part of your job, right?

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Thomas: Yes. But when he comes to work, this one, this one comes like an emperor -- ten outriders; all sirens blazing. You'd think he was an emperor.

[END TAPE 2; BEGIN TAPE 3]

Q: The Kennedy years -- the years between 1960-'61 and '63 -- mean a great deal. You were saying earlier that when Kennedy was making announcement of his cabinet members, I guess, he would come outside the house, on N Street, where they were living -- this is before he went to the White House --

Thomas: Yes.

Q: -- and you were already over there, the press crowd, there.

Thomas: Yes. And we had a telephone right across the street, planted in a neighbors' backyard.

Q: Willingly?

Thomas: Oh, yes.

Q: The neighbor knew.

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Thomas: Oh, yes. It was so much more intimate. It was a smaller island, a smaller group of people. Now you have television, you have twenty-four hour cable. It's blanket coverage in many ways, and you fall all over each other, with equipment and so forth. But it was a much tighter island before, and you could walk down the street with Kennedy, in those days. There wasn't the security. You could throw a question at him, and so forth. Now the president has a whole cordon of a dozen Secret Service agents surrounding him and so forth. You don't get that close. But that's been happening, in recent years. But you had an intimacy.

Q: Well, but wasn't there a great -- Among the people who had gotten to the White House, to cover the White House -- that's a pretty high-ranking place to be for a newspaper person. Wouldn't the competition stifle any sense of intimacy?

Thomas: No. You were all in it together, in many ways. If you had a real exclusive, you had an exclusive, and hats-off. But most of the time you're covering with other people, and you're sharing.

Q: Really. Even the New York Times and the New York Herald Tribune?

Thomas: No, they would be separate. I'm talking about AP and UPI. They went there all the time. They would come for the briefings and the press conferences. No, if you were with the New York Times, you'd get the story, for sure.

Q: You were doing a lot more meat-and-potatoes, would you say?

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Q: As chief?

Thomas: Yes. No. Well, I'm trying to think. Yes, I did. I moved into the -- yes.

Q: And did you have occasion, when Kennedy was present, to travel with him? Go on trips?

Thomas: Yes. I didn't go on the foreign trips, but I went to Hyannis Port, to Palm Beach, all over the country.

Q: Give the future viewer an idea of what these trips to Hyannis Port or Palm Beach would be like. It wasn't just you and the president.

Thomas: A whole entourage of reporters, the family, and so forth. Usually, these were vacation trips, to Hyannis and Palm Beach; so, if anything, they want to get rid of you as soon we landed, wherever we were going. But Kennedy -- he had a good feeling, sometimes, about reporters, and he'd come back and chat. We were in the back of the plane, in the galley, and I just think being on a presidential trip, being on the president's plane -- you don't knock it. You can get a lot of insight -- especially if they want to talk, or they wander back. A lot of times they don't, but when they do --

Q: You're speaking of Air Force One.

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but we did it. He told young people to go into public service. He said it could be the crown of their career. He created the Peace Corps. He went for the first nuclear test-ban treaty. He stepped back from the brink, as did Khrushchev -- two statesmen who understood they could blow up the world. Each had nuclear arsenals; they could have done exactly that. Both of them knew what war was all about. They had a sense of humanity. We were very lucky at that time. Both were being urged by their military people to go for it. So I think his accomplishments have ever been replaced, because no successor has ever given us a sense of great hope, since then.

Q: Well, here was a man who had serious physical ailment, but who exuded, for public consumption, a vigor. But there are some who would say, would they not, that, on the domestic front, he can't hold a candle to Lyndon Johnson.

Thomas: Oh, that's true. Johnson knew where all the bodies were buried. He knew every man's price on Capitol Hill. He had been Senate majority leader. He had been on the Hill for years as a Congressman from Texas. He had been a student of FDR's style -- "Always go for the brass ring." He understood where you play the cards. But I think that, equally important, is the spiritual sense of vision that Kennedy had, that nobody else I've covered has it. Johnson accomplished a great deal -- the most in the last half of the twentieth century; the most on the domestic side, as FDR, really. Those were the only two who really contributed majorly in that sense. But Kennedy gave us something else -- a sense of inspiration, excitement about life.

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Thomas: From where I was living, yes, I could.

Q: Can you get cabs at that hour? Is that how you would -- ?

Thomas: Yes. Cabs.

Q: You would get up at 5:30 in the morning, sometimes, or often, to cover the White House?

Thomas: Absolutely.

Q: When would you go to sleep?

Thomas: Rarely! Midnight.

Q: Let's see. When Kennedy became president, you were forty. You always felt you had the necessary stamina for that?

Thomas: I did. It wasn't “necessary.” I did it. And happily did it.

Q: And on a given day -- just to give me an idea -- first of all, did you feel you had to read the newspapers?

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Thomas: That has happened on occasion, but not often. Kennedy once looked at me in the Oval Office, with a bunch of photographers, and he said, "Miss So-and-So, of the Universal Press." He saw that the others hadn't shown up yet. He had a very quick wit --

Q: Yes, he did.

Thomas: -- and a great sense of observation. He was with-it.

Q: Right. He enjoyed his own wit, I think. But when you would go on these trips -- If he was taking a vacation to Hyannis Port and you went up there, would you stay, as long as he --

Thomas: Oh, sure. We're staying at a motel, right on the ocean, etc. If he's going somewhere, if he was going boating, we'd get a boat and follow him.

Q: And would you always know what he was going to be doing?

Thomas: Sometimes they'd tell you, sometimes they wouldn't.

Q: Did you ever find yourself seriously flatfooted; that something had happened, and you didn't know?

Thomas: Well, a lot of times that could happen, and did happen. But we'd catch up.

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Q: But were you aware of that at the time? Did it have any impact on your ability to cover the president?

Thomas: No! No! We all covered the '60 convention, in L.A. There were about eight people running for the Democratic nomination, presidential nomination, but it was very clear that Kennedy was going to get it. Johnson came with his entourage, of Sam [Samuel T.] Rayburn and so forth, and he was basically told -- he told his delegates and they told him, "If Kennedy offers you the number-two spot, don't take it." Then, indeed, Kennedy was going to get it, so Rayburn went to see Kennedy, and he said -- Kennedy told Rayburn he was going to offer the vice-presidential slot on the ticket to Johnson. Rayburn said, "Well, he doesn't want it. He wants to remain the Senate majority-leader." And Kennedy said, "What makes you think he's going to be that?" So it was kind of a veiled threat. He wanted the South, and so forth.

Q: Right.

Thomas: So Rayburn went back to see Johnson, and urged him to take it -- it was going to be offered to him. "But yesterday you told me not to take it," and he said, "I'm a much wiser man today."

Q: But in terms of your life, how it affected you -- When Johnson came in, who was press secretary at first? Do you remember? Liz Carpenter and George Reedy? Were things different in the press room then, than they had been under Kennedy?

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Thomas: He used to go and visit her. She was on the same grounds, on the ranch. She had a little cottage. Johnson loved her, and used to love to go see her. So he'd take a whole entourage of reporters and cameramen with him, sometimes, because he was moving around. One night we knocked on her door, she padded to the door, barefoot, we went in, and he were chatting with her. So I wrote this story about Cousin Oriole being in a ramshackle house, and coming to the door barefoot. And she said, "Does Helen Thomas sleep with her shoes on?" [Laughs] She was very upset by the story I wrote. But I got a paint job for her house, because Johnson was upset that I said the house was "ramshackle," and needed a paint job. She was a very perceptive woman, and he loved her.

Q: Bush's ranch is down in Crawford -- Where was Johnson's ranch? Do you remember?

Thomas: LBJ -- Johnson City, and Stonewall.

Q: Is that in the hill country?

Thomas: Yes.

Q: Is that west of Austin?

Thomas: About seventy, eighty miles.

Q: Have you ever been there in the spring time? I think there are lovely spring flowers out there.

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Thomas: Well, both great women, I think, really -- in different ways. I think they each made a tremendous contribution. They were different, of course. Jackie was noblesse oblige, very aristocratic; great taste; transformed the White House to its colonial era of elegance. She raised the whole cultural level of the White House. She didn't like reporters at all. She loved children, and she loved high fashion. Lady Bird [Claudia T.] Johnson was much more of a people-person. She was much more down-to-earth, and her national beautification program lives on. She really transformed the country -- took down the big billboards and the auto graveyards. She really made a project out of it, and it stuck. She was much closer to her husband, in the sense of what was going on.

Q: Would you say that Jackie Kennedy was stand-offish, as far as the press goes?

Thomas: Jackie? Stand-offish! I'm still getting the spit out of my eye!

Q: Oh, really. You don't mean --

Thomas: No. She didn't like us. We were prying. She felt we were writing too much focus on her children.

Q: Were you?

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Thomas: They would come for the press conferences and the briefings, but they were not on the body watch.

Q: Do you remember any name of them at that time?

Thomas: Sarah [N.] McClendon, Doris Fleeson, Ruth Montgomery -- I'm trying to think of the name of the wonderful New York Times woman. There were many, many women. There was a Martha Strayer, who was great, from the Washington Daily News. Many of them had attended Mrs. Roosevelt's press conferences, which were for women only; newswomen only.

Q: As late as --

Thomas: For as long as she was in the White House.

Q: You never, of course --

Thomas: No, I wasn't. No.

Q: Were there women reporters who, when the men started coming back from the war, dropped by the wayside; or dropped out of the profession; or were pushed out of the profession, or --

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Q: You mentioned before, May Craig, whom I used to love to watch. May Craig -- I think she was with a Maine newspaper -- the Portland newspaper, in Maine, I believe. May Craig mentioned Dorothy Thompson, who, I believe, was married to [Harry] Sinclair Lewis at one time. Martha -- I don't know if you mentioned Martha Gellhorn.

Thomas: Absolutely.

Q: You've given credit to her elsewhere.

Thomas: I never knew her, but --

Q: Did you ever meet Dorothy Thompson, by the way?

Thomas: No, I never met her. But I read a lot about her. I felt like I knew her.

Q: Right. But the question I really want to ask is this. Here you are, from the time you were a reporter on the high-school newspaper, you wanted to be a newspaper person, and you became one. In fact, you became the dean, so to speak, of the White House press corps. But, maybe you didn't need a model, a woman model, in the newspapering business, to progress the way you did.

Thomas: No, I didn't.

Q: That's the truth of it. You did not.

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Thomas: I don't know. In his sixties.

Q: He was already in his sixties? Right. Okay. [Interruption]

Thomas: -- technicians, reporters, photographers. We had three from UPI, reporters, and I don't know how many photographers.

Q: Did you go only to Beijing?

Thomas: No. Then we went to -- where else? Shanghai, certainly, and then another place -- Han Shun. But it was mainly Beijing, and the last day was Shanghai, which produced the Shanghai Communiqué, which said, "There is but one China, and Taiwan is a part of it." That set the policy. They set the policy that Taiwan's trying to break down now.

Q: That was a joint communiqué? I've forgotten. Was that a joint communiqué?

Thomas: Oh, it was certainly a joint communiqué. Since then, the conservatives have tried to break that down, and are very tied to Taipei, where we're supposed to go to the aid of Taipei, and all these new prime ministers of Taiwan keep pulling the chain, wanting us to get into a war with China.