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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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who watched the ticker-tape in his outfit. He believed it. I mean, he accepted it, and he arrived in a very broken sort of state of mind and spirit.

Claude Wickard, I remember, arrived very badly shattered. He sat beside me, We were already gathering at our places at the table, and I said, “Did you hear it before you got here?”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “I didn't hear anything down town, but I was going home in my car, and when I got to the door of my house, there was Louise out on the doorstep wringing her hands and crying, just sobbing, saying to me, 'Oh, Claude, Claude, you must go.' And I thought when I saw her that something had happened to one of the children. But she had either been told on the telephone or had heard it on the radio, somehow or other, between the time I left my office and the time I got there. They had called my house looking for me, that was it. She knew this and she said, ‘You must go right back to the White House. There's a Cabinet meeting.’ So that's all I know,” he said. “The President is dead. Is it possible?”

Kind of unbelieving--“is it possible? how is it possible?”

It was a dreadfully shattered group of people, very upset. Henry Morgenthau was there, but curiously, he seemed to be in good possession of himself, although he'd seen the President more recently than anybody, you know. He took occasion to announce later on in the meeting, saying, “It may be





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