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Mary LaskerMary Lasker
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Agency and is a very plesant man, but no Director of the Budget ever wants to hear that more money is needed for anything and he did not have great sympathy for the subject of research. Later, in the '50s, I became a member of the National Cancer Council, which he was then on, having retired from the Bureau of the Budget, and I liked him, and told him confidentially, without realizing who he was at the first meeting, that of course all directors of the Budget were bastards and sons-of-bitches, and that we never got enough money from them. He looked a little bit surprised, and later I found out why.

Q:

I guess he was accustomed to that kind of complaint though.

Lasker:

Not from me.

I did not know Mr. Webb in the fall of 1948 and I knew no one else in the Budget, so I finally decided when I went to the second Heart Council meeting to ask President Truman to intercede with the Bureau of the Budget for us. I had an appointment with him on the morning of December 10th and I recall that he looked very handsome and was very pleasant. He had been elected President of the United States on his own and this election caused a change in his whole being, his whole manner, and the whole atmosphere around him changed, and he had a kind of self-confidence that was unbelievable as compared with what he had been like before. He really looked like a President.

I told him about the needs for research in mental health





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