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Mary LaskerMary Lasker
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hasn't got time. I don't mean that he wouldn't read or that he isn't bookish if he had time to read, but actually in the last 10 years that I've know him--I've known him well in the last eight years--he's really had time to read very little but parts of the news and his own speeches. He literally doesn't have time. He's with people all the time, or in motion all the time. But he at the same time has great refinement and cultivation from the past. He never was interested in art but he got rather interested in art after we spent some time looking at pictures, and he became more interested but doesn't know anything about the history of art.

Well, the Inauguration in '61 had a quality of extreme liveliness and youthfulness that was a great pleasure. Just two nights before the Inauguration itself Florence Mahoney gave a dinner in honor of the President and Mrs. Truman. The dinner was for about 24 people in her house in Georgetown, and the Wrightsmans were there, as well as Ribicoff and various others. About 10:30 the door of her house in Georgetown opened and the new President, Kennedy, entered, followed by three or four people, one of whom I think was Earl Smith and another was Afdera Fonda, a pretty girl who was one of his friends. He circulated in the room for maybe 20 minutes and went on to some-place else. But it was extremely informal, the kind of thing he didn't feel able to do later on. Somehow or other when you get to be President it's very difficult to make short calls on your friends unexpectedly, at home.





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