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John Gfroerer lives in Concord.
In a nutshell, former New Hampshire Governor Sherman Adams is best described as a gruff, tough New England Yankee. He began working in the forests of Vermont and New Hampshire for the Lincoln-based Parker Young Company. There can be no doubt.
I once heard a recording of him telling a story about a man named Charlie Henderson, whom Adams called the toughest, meanest woodland man who ever lived. On a particularly cold morning in the Whites, a group of workers decided it was too cold to cut down the trees. Henderson burst into the cabin, wanting to know why they weren’t working. “It’s too cold today, Mr. Henderson.”
“It’s too cold,” growled Henderson. “Well, I’m working. And I’ll tell you, you’re working too. He went to the cupboard and he took out three sticks of dynamite and put them together. Then he opened the wood stove door and said,
Sherman Adams was elected Governor of New Hampshire in 1948, a position he held until January 1953 when he became Chief of Staff to President Dwight Eisenhower. In Washington, like Charlie Henderson ran crews in the mountains of New Hampshire, he took command at the White House and his reputation grew.
Adams became, in the opinion of many, the most powerful person in the country. A joke circulated in Washington, DC when Eisenhower was hospitalized with a heart attack. Wouldn’t it be horrible if Eisenhower died and Richard Nixon became president?Well, yes, but it wouldn’t be as bad as if Sherman Adams died and Eisenhower became president.
Sherman Adams was forced to resign as White House Chief of Staff in September 1958 in a scandal involving vicuña courts, hotel stays, regulatory deals, and a businessman from Lebanon, New Hampshire named Bernard Goldfein. was involved in Defeated and humiliated, Adams returned to his home in Lincoln. However, the shaman still did not diminish his Adamic strength. Within a few years, he wrote a book and built his mountain ski area in Loon.
Gruff, New Hampshire Yankee, that would be Sherman Adams.
Sherman’s beloved was his wife, Rachel. They married her in 1923 and spent most of her life in Lincoln. Together they shared the ups and downs of life, from the factory in Lincoln to the power heights of Washington DC and back to Lincoln.
The title of Adams’ book about the Washington era is direct reportRachel continues with her own book, aptly titled, on the other handRachel passed away in 1979. Adams himself died seven years after him.
In 1990 I made a documentary about Adam’s life. As the project entered the final stages of completion, it was the usual scramble for photos. One day, I was with Sherman and Rachel’s daughter Gene, who lived in Lincoln, looking through the albums and scrapbooks across from the house where she grew up.
Even the vicuña coat, which was emblematic of Adams’ departure from the White House, saved a lot. “He wore it bare,” Jean told me. There was an entire album of handwritten notes and cards that President Eisenhower sent to Sherman after he left Washington. Most of the time, Jean felt her father didn’t respond.
The topic of conversation changed to the relationship between her mother and father. She entered that very room one day, years after her mother died, and found Sherman sitting in front of the fireplace, reading all the letters he and Rachel had exchanged together over the years. I remember it burning in an orderly fashion.
Of all I learned about Sherman Adams, that image of him alone in front of the fireplace struck me the most. , is an old man nearing the end of his life, perhaps with only his most cherished memories. It was sad at the same time, and something that had to be respected.
Fire is so final. There is no resurrection from the ashes. I still wonder what was going through Sherman’s mind as he sat there and threw each letter into the flames. We will never know, any more than we will know what was written in the letter. he confirmed it.
What I do know is that even tough guys have their vulnerable spots and their toughness doesn’t last forever.
Do secrets become jeopardized when shared? Do the moments they remember become less important when we let others know? , do we need to be vigilant to protect our private lives, even if they have perhaps become a bit elusive?
Sherman Adams was clear about what he intended to take to the grave, and made it clear that no one would intervene in his most precious set of memories. I left my personal papers at the Baker Library in Dartmouth. However, these letters were different and not meant to be shared, not even with his own children.
Like Charlie Henderson trying to throw three sticks of dynamite into his wood stove, Sherman made sure his wishes were granted. No one had a peek at the private moments he and Rachel shared.
Was it for love? Was it privacy? Or maybe it was just part of Yankee’s “it’s nothing about you” attitude. Tears spilled over the man. And those tears confirmed that he really lived a fulfilling life.
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