This and That

Life was simple in Junction City. For water, a windmill had been built into the house. For milk, the fat, good natured milkman drove to the alley entrance and rang a big hand bell. The cook took out a milk pan to be filled. Instead of a gate there was a stile, two big steps up and two down. As my name was Mary, our genial milkman thought I should have a little lamb. This tiny bundle was irresistible. Mother had to feed it with a baby bottle and nipple. Soon everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go. To get over the stile, which took the place of a gate, was quite an effort.

As children, we had the Stricklands next door. We must have seen a Ringling circus because we had tight-ropes from tree to tree and performed all kinds of athletic feats. Later, we had a grass tennis court which we marked out after every rain. Before there were telephones, some inventive member of the family ran a cord between our house and the grandparents'. A tin can was attached at each end for receivers and this contrivance worked fairly well.

For quail hunts, Father drove us all to the nearby hills in our surrey with two horses. He shot the quail and Mother plucked them while still warm when the feathers came out easily. No one has ever broiled quail as well as Mother. As Father would never return by the same route, we were always getting to some unexpected stream that couldn't be crossed. I believe I must have inherited this strong dislike of repetition.

I joined the officers and wives who did this "passear" on horseback on the beach. No sensation will ever equal galloping on a hard beach to music in the tropics at sunset.

At the Raffles Hotel in Singapore, we were told that a dinner and "baile" had been planned for General Chaffee and his wife and staff in the great open-air dining room. The highlight of this party for me was that the Maharaja of Japore asked me for a dance, explaining that he had not learned the American two step so we would sit it out. He was just back from Paris where he had had his two front teeth set in diamonds. He was young, tall and handsome and the diamonds really went well with the purple velvet collar of his tuxedo.

Our next stop was Colombo, capital of the island of Ceylon. At some point, I rode a rickshaw on a seashore of perfectly white sand. The memory of this sand years later caused me to acquire beautiful beach property on Siesta Key in Florida.

Our ship's captain was big, fat and jolly. I have the ship's log he kept for me every day of our trip. He let me spend hours at the wheel and tried to teach me something of navigation and the stars. At 4 a.m. I could go up on the bridge and have a royal breakfast with the officer on duty, beef steak and fried potatoes. The captain let me have a carpenter and we made the ship's hospital into a library and card room. When we entered the Red Sea and Suez, we moved the piano onto the top deck and had some real concerts with our professional singer.

It was during this trip home from the Philippines that I decided someone needed to improve the design of buildings used by our government abroad. I made up my mind to go home and study architecture. The next year found Bertha and me in Chicago. She was studying painting and I entered the architectural department of the Art Institute. I was the only girl in the department of architecture.

We found an apartment and a nice little French maid. The apartment was a two-story studio on the seventh floor of 238 Boulevard Raspail, with a bedroom and bath, plus a "souspente," or balcony bedroom, and a roof garden overlooking all of Paris. We were allowed to use the elevator going up, but never down as it cost the owner of the apartment house two sous each time it was used.

Through Kitty's acquaintance with Marcel Auburtin, I arranged to study architecture at his atelier in Paris. He had seven Americans enrolled, all graduates of Yale and Princeton. When these boys heard a girl was coming they didn't like the idea. They decided to name me "Liz". It turned out that we all became lifelong friends. These boys worked three years before they passed all the examinations to enter the Beaux Arts.

We all took the first examination. I learned that I was the second woman who had ever taken an examination at Beaux Arts. The other woman was Miss Morgan of San Francisco who later devoted most of her life to the building of the Hearst palace of great renown in California. None of us passed the first one, but what a memorable day! They put me in a big library with guards and locked the door. Hundreds of French boys begin to take these exams every six months, beginning at 14 or 15 years of age. All day I could hear them yelling and singing. When the day was over one of the American boys came to rescue me. He said he would take me by the back way because all day the French boys had been planning to throw buckets of water on me as I entered the big courtyard. He had a taxi waiting and we ran, falling into it with our drafting boards, "T" squares and triangles.

A bicycle trip in any country means coming down to barest essentials and involves a lot of preparation and careful planning and ends in being the most carefree experience of a lifetime.

I wanted to go into an architectural office. My father consented if I would go as a student and not receive a salary. The first architectural firm I approached was Wight & Wight. I was told, "We're sorry but we could not take a woman. You can't swear at women and they can't climb all over full sized details." The next firm, which was Howe, Hoit and Cutler, were delighted to have me. They had twelve draftsmen. They never needed to swear and I could manage full size details. They had just completed the R.A. Long Building and were working on the R.A. Long residence which is now the Kansas City Museum, and the R.A. Long farm. The head draftsman, a young man by the name of Simpson, asked, "Tell me, what does a butler do in a butler's pantry?" He later became a partner in the well known architectural firm of Keene & Simpson. Mr. Howe often asked me to come to his private office to see something he was designing.

A young man named J.C. Nichols was just laying out a residential development. My father bought the first lot in this development for me so that I could build my first house on it. This lot was located at 53rd and Brookside, which had a stream on it and lovely trees. This house followed the latest trends of California cottages. The living room walls were covered with brown and gold wallpaper and my sister Bertha did a mural in three sections, of Kansas wheat fields. My aunt, Mrs. William B. Clark, and I lived in it a month to try it out.

When I started to work on the house for my family, we were living in one of the large Nelson houses on 47th Street. My father said, "This house is very satisfactory. Can you duplicate this one?" When I showed him the plans, he said "No, it looks more like a Charles Platt or James Polk house." Father asked where he could see one of those. "Oh," I said, "probably in Mt. Kisco, New York." He was going to New York and took time to go to Mt. Kisco. He liked what he saw.

The house I designed was a long one with porches on each end. At one end was my sleeping porch where I awakened many times with snow all over my bed. But in summer what a view I had of the polo field at our country club, now Loose Park! On the back of the house was a porte cochere with a deck on top. The garage in the basement was the first inside garage which the insurance company had met up with. To have a car with a tankful of gasoline inside a house would definitely raise the price of insurance.

The fireplace in the living room was made of native stone and took up most of one side of the room. Into the stone I had carved on one side the Rockwell coat of arms; on the other, the Snyder coat of arms. The dining room was a large square one done in blue-green tile. On the side walls above the tile, Bertha painted scenes from Italian villas. To the east of the dining room was a breakfast room where Gino Venanzi painted a blue sky with branches of orange blossoms on the ceiling. A fountain and pool were done in mosaic tile. A niche held a green goblet near a pushbutton. One pushed it and got ice water.

Each member of the family wanted a room of his own so with these and two guest rooms and servants' rooms, we needed eleven bedrooms. The third floor was a big play room where we created our own entertainment. In front of the big west window was a stage with a balcony where we produced plays.

A racing colt was bequeathed to me by my uncle, Dr. Finlaw, of Santa Rosa, California. I had helped the men break the colt on my uncle's private race track in California. They told me that St. Hubert would never make a riding horse. Men at the stable tried to break him to the saddle. He threw them off. He was the most beautiful black horse I had ever seen.

St. Hubert was shipped to Kansas City and I asked Paddy Magill, the head of polo at the Kansas City Country Club, if he would break him. He did, but was thrown daily, and agreed with the men in California that he would never be ridden. However, I had to ride him, come what may, but I was never hurt when thrown and the horse always came back to pick me up. We were close friends for eight years. There was a race track at Blue Hills Country Club. He showed off well there and could beat every other horse.

One day I got as far as the polo field when St. Hubert began a buck jump. I knew I couldn't keep the saddle for more than five bucks. When I fell, I lay on the ground and cried. I was not so physically hurt as I was discouraged. Paddy came out and picked me up and I said, "Look, this is too fine a race horse to sell. His sire cost $50,000. I couldn't sell him, but I will give him to you." Paddy said, "You think that over and don't decide anything now." A few days later I gave the horse to Paddy. After that I didn't see St. Hubert or ask where he was. Then one day, at a Fourth of July parade in Swope Park, I saw my precious horse ridden by a man in a fancy costume. I went to the gate where the procession would exit and spoke to the rider. I said, "Is this horse yours?" "Oh, no," said he, "he belongs to the riding stable at the Country Club Plaza!"

The next morning I was taking a train to New York. When I returned, I went at once to that stable. "Oh," said the owner, "that was the best horse that ever came into this barn. But yesterday we sold him to a man in Atlanta, Georgia, and we have already shipped him there." I had lost my best friend.

I had been told to get off the train at Hazard, Kentucky, where someone would meet me. The boy who did meet me told me he had brought two "nags" which would be our mode of transportation the 30 miles we had to travel to reach the school. I changed into riding clothes and soon discovered that my horse was a nag, the boy's a smart young colt. I suggested that perhaps he could manage my horse better than I could, and he said, "Well, there ain't never no female ever rid this nag, but maybe you could." My adventurous young mount started up all the wrong trails, but by dark we had reached our destination. The teachers who greeted me were horrified that I was wearing riding breeches, a costume that had never been seen in the Kentucky mountains. Ladies wore divided skirts.

After the long, tiring day of riding through shallow streams and following twisting paths through dark forests, we longed to go to bed, but our hostess for the night continued to sit in our bedroom, in front of the fire, smoking her corncob pipe. "Do you all strip yourselves off naked at night?" she asked. We said we did. "Well," she replied, "I just kick off my boots and lay down."

Pine Mountain was an enchanting spot. The hills were covered with tall trees and rhododendron, with clear streams of water racing along below. In order to inspect these 450 acres of untouched mountain land we had to cross Greasy Creek, grossly misnamed, as it was a clear swift stream of pure water. There was little level land and we realized at once that these precious level spots must be left for crops and grazing pastures.

After Miss Pettit's house was completed, I planted large bushes of wild rhododendron below the long living room. When Uncle William Creech, who was the godfather of this school, saw them he refused to speak to me for three weeks! Rhododendron was the wild weed which had to be dug out of their fields. Uncle William felt the same way about rhododendrons that most people feel about the poor dandelions.

The next building to be constructed was "Laurel House." To give it the feeling of the out-of-doors, Laurel House was built around a courtyard. Water from one of the mountain streams was carried by pipe under the house and emptied into a pool in the center of the courtyard, then through a drain pipe and back into the stream.

From the top of the mountain, there was a zigzag path down but I would often take a short cut by sliding straight down; this took about two and a half to three hours, if one were a good slider.

My brother-in-law, Gino Venanzi, who was an architect and an artist, longed to own this old monastery. He learned that it would have to be bought from the Roman Catholic Church, with the provision that the two chapels would be re-consecrated and free to be used when desired by the Church. My sister, Bertha, was most excited over the prospect of owning this treasure of a place which was only an hour's climb from their house in Assisi. A Wellesley classmate, Susan Huntington, and I were in Assisi at this time and we both wanted a share in the monastery, too. So we each had a fourth interest in "Le Carcerelle," and soon proceeded with repairs.

On the end wall of the two-story refectory there remained only a little paint of a destroyed mural, so Gino took a long string as a guide and drew a half circle to conform with the vault of the roof. In it he painted a mural. When visitors came they invariably said, "Oh, this must be one of the original murals." Gino, who loved a good joke, would solemnly reply, "Yes, of course." So the visitor convinced himself that he was a connoisseur of ancient Italian art.

Later, Gino painted a mural over the altar, of his wife and child. Susan Huntington was painted on one panel as "Beata Susanna." I was in the other panel but Gino said I wasn't worthy of being "Beata" so he made me "Santa" Maria. Susan's vocation was indicated by a book she was holding in her hand. My main interest was represented by a small figure of a black horse.

While I was there I restored a wing of the monastery and slept on an open loggia where the clouds drifted through one arch over my bed and out through the opposite end. I went back to Madrid with Susan, but when World War I was declared, we returned to Paris and caught the last ship sailing from France to the United States.

Royalty of both nations decided to make their headquarters on their respective trains, so "Casa Venanzi" was reserved for "Il Duce," Mussolini. Royalty would have been a great honor; a dictator meant a great responsibility.

When the day arrived, in midafternoon a black limousine stopped in front of the house. Cesira (the maid) had arrived with her master's luggage. Cesira was a well known character in those days. It is hard to describe her position in the Mussolini household. Probably she ruled it! She definitely told her master, the dictator, where to get off! She arrived, unpacked Mussolini's luggage, hung a jacket on each of the three chairs in the room, put out his pajamas and dressing gown, and descended below. As she got to the foot of the stairs, the head of the Province of Perugia (in those days a most important person) who had come to receive "Il Duce" officially, noticed her and called her by name. She scarcely deigned to acknowledge him and proceeded to inspect the kitchen! A little later a screech of tires announced "Il Duce's" arrival. He was a fast driver and loved high powered cars. The Venanzis were introduced to him and … dismissed!

One day the Fascist police appeared at the door of the Venanzi house and demanded to search the house. In a closet was a radio, quite a novelty at that time as it could be used with a battery instead of electricity. They had never seen the like so suspected at once that it was a transmitting radio! Another terrible piece of evidence was found: Giuliana's address book full of American addresses (mainly of college friends!). At this point the police had no more doubts: the Venanzis, besides being anti-Fascists, were also spies!

Bertha had been asked to stay in her room while they searched the upstairs. When they entered her room she at once noticed the address book in their hands and suddenly realized that her own address book was on a little table beside her. If Giuliana's had plenty of American addresses, hers had plenty more!!! So, using the excuse that she felt chilly, she went to the closet and slipped a coat around her shoulders and then, sitting down again, let part of the coat rest on the table. When she finally got up, the coat was left behind and … under it the address book!

After that day, Bertha decided that Mussolini's photograph should descend from the top of the closet where it had been confined and resume its place in the living room. This decision helped her later when, during the German occupation, the "new" Fascists wanted to requisition the house and use it for barracks. There on the main table stood Mussolini's photograph with his signature and a few words of thanks for a kind hospitality! The sight of it awed them! "Did you have this honor?" they asked Bertha. There was no more discussion on the possibility of requisitioning the house. Mussolini had stayed there!

In New York, a new trafficway had just been completed along the Hudson. When I drove over it, I thought of our lovely Missouri River lined with storage buildings. I consulted my Republican lawyer husband about getting an audience with our powerful Democrat city boss. Inghram had a friend in St. Louis, Edward White, who was vice-president of the Missouri Pacific Railroad. Mr. White was a good Democrat who was attending a meeting in Texas at which Mr. Pendergast would be present. Mr. White made an appointment for me with Mr. Pendergast, so when he returned to Kansas City, I went to keep the appointment. While I was sitting in the outer office, the door of his private office opened and six large Democrats filed out, glaring at me over their big cigars.

Mr. Pendergast received me most cordially. He said, "Mr. White has told me that whatever Mrs. Hook wanted I must be sure to do." This was a good beginning but when he heard my ideas about river development, he said, "This I would like especially to see done, and it could be, but if I did it people would say I had done it for the votes of the North End, but you, Mrs. Hook, are the one to promote this." Unfortunately, that was the end of that.

My next effort was a new city plan for downtown Kansas City, which I discussed with a developer, J.C. Nichols. This resulted in a Committee of 100 being appointed by the Mayor, for civic improvement. This, of course, was death to any accomplishment.

From April 1920 to April 1921 I lived in Coucy-le-Château, France, working for the American Committee for Devastated France. This committee had been set up by Anne Morgan, the daughter of J. Pierpont Morgan, to help hundreds of families in the wrecked Aisne district to re-establish their means of livelihood. The principal industry of this area was raising beets for sugar. The fields were full of unexploded bombs which had to be cleared so that the people could make a fresh start.

We acquired some American barracks which we set up and furnished. Years later, I used army barracks at the jungle lodges I built on Siesta Key in Sarasota, Florida. Anne Morgan brought in the first gasoline operated tractors ever used in that area. She made me director at Coucy and sent me a Ford that had to be started by cranking.

It was in March of 1921 that small planes, holding two passengers, were offering a half hour ride over Paris to those who wanted to experience the thrill of flying. The daughter of General Leonard Wood who was also working in one of Anne Morgan's relief centers and I shared the excitement of seeing the Eiffel Tower and the Tuileries from aloft. Recently, I recalled my flight in this light craft, when I watched the astronauts land on the moon, forty-eight years later.

Our good old friend Ted Cooke was Episcopal Bishop of Delaware. We telephoned him, and he said he would certainly come up to Philadelphia to marry us. He suggested Christ Church, the oldest Episcopal church in America. The sightseers in Christ Church stopped to watch when they saw our little wedding party coming down the aisle. Just Father and Mother, Aunt Katie Clarke of Kansas City, and Helen Chaffee were with us. My uncle, Dr. Hawley Rockwell, head medical director of Equitable Life Assurance Company in New York, had given me a bottle of champagne, so everything fitted together! This was the most important event of my life.

We had been married two years before I found the courage to ask my husband if he had any objections to my doing architecture professionally. When I finally did ask him, he said, "Certainly not, go ahead." I asked Mac Remington if he would be interested in forming a firm which we did and called it Hook and Remington. Fortunately, this little firm became popular almost at once so that we were able to choose our clients instead of vice versa.

The property I had selected for us was part of the Ward farm which later became the Sunset Hill district. It was a heavily wooded hillside, and at this time there were no roads cut through it. On the top of the hill an old man had built a shelter of boxes and tin cans where he lived with his chickens and hogs.

On this hill at 50th and Summit, I built what I called the "Pink House." The exterior was pink plaster, which I had seen for the first time at the World's Fair in San Francisco. One of the interesting features of this house was the dining room floor and fireplace made of highly polished native stone. Using the native stone had been suggested by a man who sold stone and marble on Southwest Boulevard. "You're always doing odd things," he said and showed me slabs of this stone which he had cut and polished fourteen years earlier but hadn't been able to get anyone to use. It was exactly what I was looking for.

While I'm writing about this house, I am reminded of the day when a taxi drove into our circular drive. A man stepped out and said, "Excuse me. I'm from New York, and I had a little time to drive around Kansas City. When I saw your interesting chimney I asked the driver to stop. Where did you get the idea for that balcony enclosed with spindles?" "Oh," I said, "I saw that in a movie." He said, "Well, I designed that movie!" I failed to ask him where he had found the idea.

There was room for two more houses on our property so I began a second house for ourselves which later Father and Mother decided they wanted. This was 5011 Sunset Drive. The city was tearing up the street car tracks and discarding the paving blocks of Colorado pink stone, almost as hard as marble, which I was able to use with the native stone. I wanted to use metal casement windows in this house. These had to be ordered from England, as they weren't made in the United States. The entire end of a two-story living room was to be glass, looking out from the hill over Brush Creek.

When our two sons were still young we started to build our own house at 4940 Summit Avenue, in Kansas City. This we knew would take several years to complete so first we finished the dining room, kitchen, basement and a couple of bedrooms. Then we had to decide as to whether the living room or a swimming pool should be finished next. All votes were for the pool. This, I believe, was the first private pool built in Kansas City. It had been our stone quarry and after that, a nice abode for a riding horse.

Most houses built in 1925 had a living room, sun porch, library, music room, study, breakfast room, dining room, pantry and kitchen on the first floor. I decided to have just two rooms, living room and dining room, both of them large and high, and a kitchen, of course, built around a courtyard. The south end of the living room has three steps going up, thus forming a stage which has been used many times for amateur theatricals. The grand piano is on one side; book shelves on the other.

In the living room I used a fireplace which had been taken from my Aunt Katie Clarke's house at 1016 Central Street, where there is now a fire station. In the dining room, I used an Italian fireplace dating from about 1500, which my brother-in-law, Gino Venanzi, had taken out of an Italian home in Assisi for me. The two-story factory windows I had originally used in the "Pink House," I took out and put into this room. This room which has an Italian flavor, actually has wooden beams from an old railroad bridge over the Kansas River. The staircase paneling was taken from an old house which was torn down to make room for the Bellerive Hotel. This paneling had been originally shiny mahogany beams; these we stripped to the natural wood. The lanterns were outdoor street lamps and came from Perugia, Italy. The furniture came from Arezzo, Italy.

We were building this house by degrees. I became very excited over using old materials out of razed buildings. With the native stone quarried out of our own place, we used second hand brick. This we bought for $6 a thousand; now it's called "antique" brick and sells for $45.00.

Our courtyard was designed for outdoor living and affords easy access to both the kitchen and swimming pool. It is paved with white marble taken out of the old National Hotel in Topeka, Kansas. The outside stairs, the terrace and a T-shaped dining table are all made from old white marble, also. This house is made of discarded materials, relics of the past, to house our Italian and French treasures.

When we moved into the part that was finished, the water had a disagreeable taste. The boys said, "What is it?" I said, "Our new pipes." And Dick said, "Oh Mother, why didn't you use old pipes?"

There was a young artist in Kansas City, Larry Richmond, who was so far ahead of his time that he wasn't appreciated. He made our house interesting with his murals. In our living room, there are three double doors, about nine feet high, with rounded tops. He painted grey figures on them in a Botticelli style. In the front hall, he painted two long mirrors with garden scenes of two of my favorite Italian villas. During that summer he would paint a while, then he'd play the piano, drink a beer and swim.

That summer we decided to give a French play in our courtyard. Our stage was at the end of the pool. The actors entered from an upper terrace, singing or speaking as they came down the white marble stairs. The play was a great success as were other outdoor performances that we gave.

At this point I am reminded of how the Hooks have lived for 45 years under guidance furnished by Italian mottoes built into our home. When one enters the front hall, over the door to the living room, is this wise quotation: "La fortuna favorisce gli audaci." This came from the Latin, "Fortune favors the bold." Built in over a door in the courtyard is a tile saying "Pax et bonum." This same motto in Italian tiles is built into several concrete window sills and over doors and bath tubs. An Italian plate reminds us "Col cuore che vince ogni battaglia" (with heart, which wins every battle).

The Spaniards furnished us with many wise proverbs expressed on ash trays. These are now scattered in the mountain cabin in Colorado, the beach house in Hopetown in the Bahamas, and at "Open House" in the Kentucky mountains. From Spain, I brought a large brass "brazier" which once was the heating system of a large house in Toledo. The fuel used for heating in this "brazier" was ground up olive pits. This is now in our front hall.

While swimming off the lovely Lido Beach in the Gulf of Mexico, I decided that we must have an acre of beach and sunshine. Lido Beach, I found out, was all tied up in the Ringling estates. Dick was returning to Boston by train and while he was buying his railroad ticket at the Francke Travel Agency, I had been talking to a woman in the office. I told her that I had been looking for an acre of shore land to buy but hadn't found one and now I had my car packed to return to Kansas City. I learned later that I was talking to Bertha Francke, a woman who had just received a prize for being the best realtor in Florida. The result was that she sold me 55 acres of Siesta Key.

The 55 acres I bought was covered with trees: palms, oaks, Australian pine and cedars. It was divided into two parts by a wide bayou that had been excavated by three developers who had dreamed of developing it into a village. They called it Whispering Sands. This was the time of total collapse in Florida land values and the three had lost it. The Gulf of Mexico, breaking gently over a wide beach of hard packed white sand, brought back memories of gliding along the beach outside Colombo, Ceylon, in a rickshaw.

I drove back to Kansas City and told my family that I'd bought this land in Florida. They were all kind but horrified. I sold my Caterpillar stock in order to pay for it. Later when the price of Caterpillar stock went up, they said, "Poor Mary!"

A neighbor down the beach was Cissy Patterson who owned the Washington Times Herald. A friend of hers wanted to rent our house but her name was not to be revealed. It turned out to be Evelyn Walsh McLean of Washington society fame and owner of the Hope Diamond. She arrived with six servants. They brought pink satin sheets and a chinchilla bedspread.

There were hotels for the wealthy in Florida but it occurred to me there was no place for painters, writers and other creative people. The carpenters needed work and our Dick Hook, out of school, needed something to do.

Whispering Sands tried hard to be a little tropical paradise. Its wide beach of fine white sand was a joy to walk or drive on. The entrance road followed the bayou through the palm trees. One entered through a citrus garden and the front door opened into a tropical courtyard. Bunches of bananas hung on each side of the door. Eight very large metal bowls on metal bases, kept filled with oranges and grapefruit and green leaves, were spread about the courtyard and added their decorative note.

In the two-story dining room I decided to experiment with a fireplace in the center of the room. This I placed on a base of travertine at chair height so that the guests could sit on it with their backs to the fire and drink coffee on a chilly morning. The man who was contracting to build the metal hood over the fireplace was rather skeptical about this new idea. Chuck always liked to tell everyone that I said, "Well, hurry and build it so that we can tear it down if it's not a success!"

Another feature of the dining room was a citrus bar where anyone could make his own fruit juice. A solar heating system supplied hot water. Breakfast was served in the room, if one so desired. Whispering Sands Inn was so unlike a hotel that the same people kept coming each winter from Canada and the frozen northern states. Artists and writers came, and returned year after year.

I am reminded here of an incident that occurred several years after Whispering Sands opened. According to Chuck, he and his assistant Jay Findley were repainting the chimney in the off-season. Chuck was on a ladder, and both of them were barefoot and shirtless. Chuck looked down at the floor, saw two feet and said, "Those feet could only be the feet of Eleanor Roosevelt." And so it was! She had been spending a week with her relatives, the Grays. She had wanted to go nowhere and the Grays had respected her wishes. But on her last day they had said, "We would like to show you the most beautiful, the whitest, finest sand beach there is in the world. Near it, is an interesting little inn." They came and Mrs. Roosevelt insisted upon seeing every room. She was particularly intrigued by the fact that each room was decorated throughout in one color, and that is how Whispering Sands got into "My Day."

At the end of World War II there was still no lumber to be had. Then I remembered my experience in France of converting army barracks. At an army encampment in nearby Venice, Florida, I secured eight army barracks. In remodeling these barracks I put in two-story windows and table-height fireplaces and large sun decks which made them very interesting houses. Also left over from the war were bolts and bolts of parachute silk, and this, when dyed in the washing machine, made the curtains for the tall windows. Each house had its own color.

In 1945, we had sold half of the Whispering Sands property, including the inn. On the thirty acres remaining was dense forest with a beautiful white beach. It was impossible to get into it so I had a bridle path cut along the bayou and the beach. It seemed quite appropriate to call this place Sandy Hook as there was nothing but sand and Hook. Also, yachting at Sandy Hook Yachting Club in New York had many pleasant memories for me.

I designed the first two houses that were built on this property. The first one was for Dick Hook and his family, and the second one, the "Round House," was built for us. The Round House is really an octagon with each pie-shaped section forming a room. The center circular section served as a coat closet for the entrance hall, a fireplace area for the living room, the little kitchen for the dining room, and the two baths for the two bedrooms. The outer wall was almost entirely of glass, giving a feeling of being out-of-doors, which was a bit advanced at the time. We used this house for several years, and enjoyed the wide deck, built out over the bayou, which we shared with the herons, ducks, and the other birds.

Paul Rudolph designed the third house for me. Paul and this house were widely publicized. He was the first person to attempt bending plywood into rounded roofs. This kind of roof has since been used for all types of buildings everywhere. About this time I was considering using part of this property for a small school of architecture. That summer Paul was teaching architecture in the summer school at the University of Pennsylvania and he gave his class the Sandy Hook Architectural School for their summer project. I've been told that he later used this same project at Cornell University. The architectural school did not develop but we have tried to make Sandy Hook a place where the original ideas of young architects might find expression.

It seems to me that "glass houses" deny the occupants of any privacy if they are located on a city boulevard but when they command a breathtaking view, like the Gulf of Mexico, they can be very pleasant.

I once thought that the water around the Grecian Islands, as seen from a plane, was the most beautiful blue in the whole world. But the Atlantic Ocean, which rings the tiny island of Hope Town, in the Bahamas, has a blue which is unbelievable.

There are no automobiles in Hope Town so everyone walks. The houses are built in two rows, facing a concrete walk. Our very first morning there, a real estate agent had shown us a house but he had no key so we couldn't go inside. We bought this little unfurnished Bahaman house, facing the walkway next to the Methodist church, without ever seeing the inside; the agent promised that the furnishings would be removed. However, when we finally took possession, we discovered to our surprise not only that the house was filled with furniture but also that there was a large rowboat in the living room! Ultimately, we moved the house, by hand, up the slope behind it and turned it so that we had a view of both the ocean and the bay. We added four porches to the house; the front one overlooked the ocean, the main entrance to the house through another one, the back porch was my bedroom and the fourth one we used as a dining room. We built an outdoor grill where, at one end, we could cook steaks and the other end provided storage for wood. While the cement was still wet we wrote in it "EST, EST, EST." (It is, it is, it is.) Because we agreed that "this is the place." There never was a lovelier beach or bluer ocean.

One day we lunched, as everyone does, in the Tivoli Gardens. The day was cool so we went reluctantly indoors. When we came onto the porch after lunch every table was occupied. Overhead electric heaters supplied heat for the diners. This I haven't seen in the United States. One of my great regrets is that Americans care so little about dining in the open. In fact, Kansas City has a law against dining on the sidewalk. Air conditioning will never lure the Hooks inside for dining.

Miss Nichols had found a driver for us who, she said, spoke some English but we soon discovered he had only one expression! As we wound among the mountains, seeing an occasional donkey led by a woman on foot, and using a stick for a cane and whip, I said, "What a marvelous road!" Smiling, he said, "Marshall Plan!" I said, "But so dangerous," pointing to the edge of the highway where a car could drop thousands of feet. He said, "No Marshall Plan!"

Now that I am blind, I spend my days listening to the wonderful recordings of books supplied and sent out to the blind by the government. The waking hours of my nights I spend on imaginative designs. Among other things, I have even located and planned a new capital for France! And, too, I have planned changes at the White House; these consist of a new two-story wing surrounding an Italian garden designed for outdoor entertaining. The two-story wing would have very modern, very American guest suites overlooking the garden, for V.I.P.s. It would connect at the further end with a possible, whole new White House done in white marble and glass, the old building to be kept as an historic "national treasure." In the garden would be a large paved area for receiving guests and beyond that would be a small Greek theatre. An outdoor kitchen would be provided for barbecues and "al fresco" dining; this area would open into a two-story high green house with tropical plants and trees and with tables and chairs to accommodate the guests in case of sudden rain.

Another favorite project of my imagination is an all year round school of architecture for the combined use of Wellesley and M.I.T. to be built on the ninety acres of lake front property given Wellesley College by the Honeywell family. The water from the lake would be utilized for fountains, swimming pool, skating rink, and a "water curtain" for a great outdoor theatre, and then return, through cascades, to the lake.

I have derived and am deriving great pleasure in planning other projects, including a modern town in western Kansas with a park complete with prairie dogs and tumbleweed, and making over the park in Junction City, Kansas, with sun flowers and various wild flowers.

And so we come to the end of the account, to date, of some of the this-es and the that-s of one woman's experiences. I hope you will enjoy the reading of them as much as I have enjoyed, and continue to enjoy, the living of them.