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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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when Truman saw her.

Interviewer:

She did not attend the swearing-in?

Perkins:

Oh, no. No. She was on her way to Warm Springs. I forget whether Dr. McIntire went with her or not. Somebody went with her, of course. I don't remember who it was.

At any rate, the Vice President called the Cabinet in to tell them.

Now then, I was the first one to arrive. They called me in my office, which is down town, you see, and I got right over there. I don't think I was told “Dabinet meeting at six,” I think I was told to “come right away,” and I went over. Then the others began to come in. Some of them had not heard it. Some of them had just heard it--had just barely heard something on the radio, or someone had brought them a message saying it was on the ticker-tape. They couldn't believe it--I mean, it was that kind of thing. They came in sort of rejecting the idea. Someone had told them it was on the ticker-tape that President Roosevelt had died, and they said, “Why, that's ridiculous. It can't be.”

They arrived in that half-believing state of mind. When Henry Stimson came, I remember that he looked like a broken old man. He came, one of the last ones to come in, and he had had news of the death brought to him from someone





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