George B. Cortelyou: Stenographer to 1st White House Press Secretary

Probably, the most influential White House secretary was George B. Cortelyou who served Presidents Grover Cleveland, William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt. Cortelyou is credited with creating systems that are still used today in the modern White House press office.

As a young man growing up in Hempstead, Long Island during the 1870s, Cortelyou was persuaded to study shorthand by his first tutor, Mrs. Ephraim Hinds. While attending Georgetown Law School, he landed a job as a stenographer and typist with the U.S. Customs Service, advancing to clerk in the Postmaster General's office in 1891.

Cortelyou caught the attention of President Cleveland who recruited him to serve as his stenographer. He went on to serve President McKinley, and was with the President when he was assassinated in 1901.

Afterwards, President Teddy Roosevelt cajoled Cortelyou into staying on, and lead White House operations into the 20th century. Cortelyou instituted reforms to strengthen communications between the President and the press corps including creating the White House press room, and being the first White House administrator to host briefings and distribute press releases.

Roosevelt later appointed Cortelyou to Secretary of Commerce and Labor in 1903. He resigned in June 1904 to become chairman of the Republican National Committee and manage Roosevelt’s reelection campaign. Cortelyou went on to become Postmaster General in 1905, and Secretary of Treasury in 1907. Many surmise that Cortelyou would not have reached political prominence had it not been for his childhood tutor, Mrs. Hinds, who later became his mother-in-law.

The Invention of Liquid Paper

In 1956, the debut of Liquid Paper developed by secretary Bette Nesmith Graham revolutionized the work of thousands of clerical workers in the nation's capital toiling over their typewriters. 

Here's a bit of trivia: Graham was the mother of Michael Nesmith, founding member of The Monkees.

A single mother, Graham supported Michael and herself as a secretary at the Texas Bank Trust in Dallas. With the introduction of electric typewriters in the 1950s, she discovered that typos couldn't easily be erased. Her second job painting the bank's windows during the holiday season was the inspiration behind what is now known as "Liquid Paper." Graham noticed “with lettering, an artist never corrects by erasing, but always paints over the error. So I decided to use what artists use. I put some tempera water-based paint in a bottle and took my watercolor brush to the office. I used that to correct my mistakes.” 

A coworker saw Graham using her homemade invention, and asked for a sample. Graham poured it into a bottle and labeled it “Mistake Out." Soon all of the secretaries began asking for samples. In 1956, Graham founded the Mistake Out Company, fine-tuning her formula in her kitchen blender. Michael and his friends helped fill the bottles. In 1957, she sold about 100 bottles a month. The story goes that Graham was fired from her job for a mistake she was unable to correct. By then, demand for the product increased to the point that Graham could afford to pay herself and hire part-time employees. In 1961, 13 years after developing Liquid Paper, Graham hired her first full-time employee. 

In 1968, the company moved into its own plant where operations became automated. One million bottles of Liquid Paper were sold that year. 

In 1975, the company moved again to a larger facility in Dallas. New equipment made it possible to produce 500 bottles a minute. 

In 1976, the company produced 25 million bottles and employed 200 people. Graham sold the company to Gillette in 1979 for $47.5 million. She passed away in 1980 leaving her estate to Michael and charitable organizations. 

In 2000, Liquid Paper was acquired by Newell Rubbermaid. Today, the product line has expanded to include pens and tapes in various colors.

VP Nixon Receives National Secretaries Association's 1st 'Special Award'

On July 19, 1958, the National Secretaries Association presented Vice President Richard Nixon with their first special award "for recognition and understanding of the secretarial profession" at their convention in Minneapolis.

"A determining factor in Mr. Nixon’s selection for the award was his appraisal of the secretarial profession in 'Mr. Nixon Calls Himself Lucky,' in the Saturday Evening Post on Dec. 28, 1957," reported The Pittsburgh Press on July 11, 1958.
 
 
"Mr. Nixon Calls Himself Lucky" was a preface the Vice President penned to an article written by his secretary, Rose Mary Woods, titled "Nixon's My Boss."

Here's what he said:

"Next to a man's wife, his secretary is the most important person in his career. A top-flight secretary has to have an incredible variety of virtues. She has to be flawlessly proficient at shorthand and typing. She has to have the quite different skill of making hundreds of decisions a day for her employer -- and she has to know just what decisions not to make as well. She has to understand every detail of her employer's job; to have unquestioning loyalty and absolute discretion. Unlike her boss, she can never enjoy the luxury of temperament, no matter how tense the atmosphere, how long the hours. She is the balance wheel for the whole office. On every count Rose measures up -- and on top of that she's been a good friend to both Pat and myself. I'm a lucky man." Richard Nixon

Tomorrow I'll profile Best Actress nominee Ann Sothern who had an extraordinary impact on Washington secretaries in her role as Susie McNamara in the groundbreaking sitcom, "Private Secretary" produced by Desilu from 1953-58.