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Whether the year is right or not, it was the year that Roosevelt died, and one of my close business friends was (he's now gone) Leonard Reinsch. Leonard was given to the Democratic party by Governor [James M.] Cox, who ran the Cox newspapers, who really owned the Cox newspapers, and in those days it was not unusual for businesses to release somebody, keep them on their payroll, but let them work for the campaign. Cox was called by Roosevelt to get some help, not only on writing for the campaign, but he wanted somebody who could handle this crazy thing called radio. This was '44. The man that I had known from 1935 on, in business, Leonard Reinsch, was sort of pushed out of the nest and sent to Washington for the Democratic National Committee.

Because everybody wanted to work in the Roosevelt camp, and nobody had any regard for Truman, because he was a haberdasher from Kansas City, my friend ended up being pushed into working for Truman. At that time, the vice president was the low man on the totem pole. [Henry A.] Wallace had been the vice presidential candidate who was dismissed, so to speak, and Truman was a political compromise. But, in the months following Truman's election, he leaned more and more on Leonard Reinsch, who in the meantime had gone back to the Cox papers. But, whenever he needed somebody to help write a speech or to travel with him and take care of arrangements -- This sounds crazy in today's world, but at that time nobody paid any attention to the vice president!

My friend spent a lot of time with Truman. Leonard called me on a Saturday night in April, or whenever it was -- May -- of that year and said, “Do you still have your suite of rooms at the Ambassador Hotel?” Now, the old Ambassador Hotel was on Park Avenue. It was sort of a landmark building, just a couple blocks north of the Waldorf. I had taken the