COVETED JOB
WHITE HOUSE POST
FOR WOMEN
"ZIPPER-LIP" SECRETARY
By MALVINA STEPHENSON
WASHINGTON.
The coveted job of private secretary to the President of the United States has been won by Miss Rose Conway, who has hit the top in a hurry, after coming to Washington from Kansas City less than three months ago. A small, shy woman, known affectionately as "Zipper-Lip" among her business associates, Miss Conway early adopted the motto: "Never talk shop after office hours."
Officially, Miss Conway is listed as an administrative assistant in the executive office of the President, but it adds up to the position of private secretary. She has the same general duties, and occupies the same desk assigned to Miss Grace Tully in the latter Roosevelt administration.
Compared with the tall, middle-middle-aged Miss Tully, Rose Conway is a slight, youthful woman, with only a touch of grey in her blonde, upswept bobbed hair. She has thin, fine features, and a wise little look in her hazel-coloured eyes.
A heavy work schedule limits Miss Conway's outside Added to that is the midnight deadline for beaus at the Governmentgirl hotel where she makes her home. Promptly at 12 o'clock, a heavy silk cord ropes off the parlour, which is then jokingly referred to as "no man's land." Miss Conway says it's just like boarding school days again.
Before eight o'clock every morning, this woman, who in a few minutes will be working at the side of the President, travels obscurely to work with the Government clerks and early shoppers. Recently, a well-dressed matron, sitting beside Miss Conway, asked her if she had heard the President's address the night before. Miss Conway just nodded pleasantly, without a hint that she had laboured over the preparation of the manuscript and then sat in the immediate audience at the White House during the radio delivery.
"Well," the lady persisted to Miss Conway, "was the speech any good?" Miss Conway kept a poker face, and responded brightly that she liked it.
' Miss Conway • was born in Emporia, Kansas. For the last ten years, before coming to Washington, she worked for the Federal housing agency in- Kansas City. Assistant director of, the office is Mr. J. Vivian Truman, the President's brother. He is reported to have been urging Miss Conway to come to Washington for some time, and finally she arrived at the VicePresident's office on March, 15, along with the income tax collector. Miss Conway was just learning her way around Capitol Hill when the lightning struck her employer and put him in the White House. Quite a record for three months in Washington. —Auckland Star and N.A.N.A.
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Bibliographic details
COVETED JOB, Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 174, 25 July 1945
Word Count
439COVETED JOB Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 174, 25 July 1945
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