Marguerite “Missy” LeHand (1898–1944) was born to an Irish family in Potsdam, New York. During her childhood the family moved to Massachusetts, settling into the small working-class town of Somerville just outside of Boston. It was here that she contracted rheumatic fever at the age of 15. She was lucky to survive the illness, as many did not, but it would damage her heart and eventually lead to her premature death. But before she died, nearly a year before the Japanese surrender in World War II, her personality, skill, and perceptiveness would draw her as close as anyone to the man who would lead America through the drama of the Second World War.
LeHand was trained in secretarial science at her high school, where upon graduating she held several positions in clerical work. The year the United States entered World War I, she moved to Washington, D.C. and accepted a position as a clerk for the Department of the Navy. Her skill and attentiveness was quickly noticed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s assistant, Charles McCarthy. Roosevelt had been the assistant secretary of the Navy during the Great War, and though McCarthy knew LeHand well, Roosevelt and LeHand had never met. When they did, the two developed an unbreakable friendship.
