Before Franklin Roosevelt’s first presidential inauguration in 1933, his secretary, Missy LeHand, received a letter pleading President-elect Roosevelt to find a position for a young woman in his new administration. …concerning Miss Toinette Bachelder.I do hope that the Governor will not forget this young lady, as frankly, I understand her need is very great.Please tell him for me that her physical disability of which he is aware in no way hurts her efficiency. I am only sending this further note to indicate my recommendation in possibly a more positive manner, so that you can bring this to his attention.1 Toinette Bachelder was born in Cleveland, Ohio to Frank and Mabel Bachelder on August 6, 1911.2 She was named after her mother’s sister, Toinette Reed Stanley. As a child, Toinette’s family moved to Chicago, Illinois where her father worked as a civil engineer and consultant. In September 1923, at the age of 12, she contracted infantile paralysis. Both of Toinette’s legs and her abdomen were at least partially paralyzed by polio.3 For almost a year, she received treatment in Chicago and exercised under the direction of the Visiting Nurses Association; she also traveled south to swim in the warm waters of Florida’s beaches for two years hoping to aid her recovery, but with no result.4 Like many polio patients at this time, she began a rehabilitation routine to learn to walk with leg braces and crutches known as corrective walking. In July 1926, Toinette, then 14, again travelled south, this time to a resort spa in Georgia. She was one of the first 23 “test patients” in the dilapidated resort with spring fed pool said to cure polio.5 On her first evening at Warm Springs, Toinette was invited to play a game of bridge with other patients. She was partnered with the resort’s new owner, Franklin Roosevelt, who earlier discover the resort also seeking a cure for paralysis brought on by polio.6 Bachelder and Roosevelt became friends and regular bridge partners during their shared time at Warms Springs, he gave her the endearing nickname “Toi.”7 Well, I had polio when I was twelve years old, and I had gone to Warm Springs, Georgia, for treatment. At that time they handled only polio patients. It was a spa, a health spa that President Roosevelt, when he was a plain citizen, had found and bought and was trying to run, with the help of medical people, to alleviate the after-effects of polio, and I knew him there before he was governor. And as a matter of fact, I was in Warm Springs in the Meriwether Inn, which was the old hotel there, the day of the evening, I don’t remember now which, when President Roosevelt, Mr. Roosevelt, went down a long hall to the only telephone in the building and talked to Al Smith and agreed to accept the governorship, the nomination for governor. He spoke so loudly I heard him.8 
In 1927, Dr. LeRoy W. Hubbard, Surgeon-in-Chief at the developing Warm Springs Foundation, wrote to FDR and described the condition of the facility during Toi’s initial stay and the treatments that the “test patients” received between June and November of 1926, before the Foundation was officially incorporated:9 The treatment consisted of sun baths, directed and general exercises in the water of the special pool, instruction and training in walking, and general supervision in regard to rest, diet, etc. At the end of the season a detailed report of each case was prepared by the orthopedic surgeon, showing what improvement each patient had made, not only in muscle power, but also the functional gain, which was in some cases more than appeared on the muscle charts. This report was submitted to three prominent orthopedic surgeons, and each one individually approved of the work done, and advised, the establishment of the Center on a permanent basis as a valuable addition to the methods of treating poliomyelitis.10 
Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library. These early experimental treatments for polio patients at Warm Spring proved to be so effective that 16 of the 23 patients returned in 1927; the others could not return because of financial barriers. Patient housing and other facilities at the aging spa were in poor condition: heating was insufficient, doors and windows would not close, all of the roofs leaked, none of the cottages had indoor toilets or electric lights, and none of them were initially accessible. Early accessibility improvements were completed by October of 1927, when ramps and were constructed to connect the cottages, and the Meriwether Inn.11 
Digital Library of Georgia Dr. Hubbard noted the significant progress that each of the patients made under the experimental treatments at Warm Springs, including Toi. Between her arrival in July and the end of her treatment in November, paralysis in Toi’s left leg improved and she was able to walk with a brace on just her right leg: Toinette Bashelder—Age 15—Chicago, Ill. Onset 1923. This girl has been somewhat under the supervision of Dr. Baer of Baltimore, but not regularly. She spent two years in Florida swimming in the salt water. Both legs and trunk were involved, the right leg completely and the left partially. When she came she was walking with a long brace attached to a corset. She has been under treatment since July 26th. The left leg had partially recovered, but very little improvement or power in the muscles of the right. Under treatment she has improved considerable and is able to walk on the platform with a brace on the right leg. Both she and her mother state that the right leg has improved much more during the few weeks’ treatment at Warm Springs under directed exercises than during the two years she as merely swimming about in the water by herself and not using that leg. Right leg practically totally paralyzed, no muscle having more power than a trace. Cannot walk unaided. Uses crutches and crutches and brace attached to a corset. Under treatment July 26th to November 1st. Expects to remain in Warm Springs most of the winter. Six [muscle] groups remained stationary and seventeen improved. On the platform she learned to walk quite well without any support except a light brace in the shoe for toe drop.12 After Al Smith’s call to Roosevelt, which Toi had overheard at the Meriwether Inn, FDR was elected governor of New York. As a popular governor serving two terms between 1928 and 1930, with successful policies to combat the Great Depression in a critical state, Roosevelt was a strong contender for the party’s nomination for president. The Democratic National Convention was held in Chicago in 1932, where Toi had returned to finish high school and to continue her education pursing classes in business. Toi attended the convention and reunited with FDR, who had flown to Chicago to accept the party’s nomination in person. She offered her services to assist Roosevelt’s candidacy and took a position with the campaign’s finance committee.13 Following FDR’s landslide election, Roosevelt was preparing to settle into the White House and form his Cabinet and administration. Toi was determined to continue supporting her friend and asked about open positions on the White House staff. It appears that Missy LeHand was contacted in December of 1932 and again in February of 1933 before successfully bringing the matter to the President’s attention. In June, Toi received hoped for news: “we have found a place for you on the White House staff.”14 She would be employed with the secretarial staff in the West Wing. And with that I came to Washington with my face hanging out, my bag clutched in one hand and my face hanging out. I arrived here at 8:30 in the morning. I went to the Mayflower Hotel until it would be a seemly time to telephone the White House, and I telephoned Miss LeHand, Missy, and she said “come over at 10:30.” I went over at 10:30 and I was sworn in and saw the President very briefly. He welcomed me and said, “So glad you are here,” and Missy said, “Do you have someplace to stay?” And I said, “Oh, no.” I was quite green about it. So she said, “Well, I think you had better take the rest of the day off and find some place to live.”15 Housing that met the needs of disabled American was not easy to find. Following her rehabilitation at Warm Springs, Toi no longer needed crutches and was now able to walk only with a cane and a brace on her right leg.16 But navigating stairs remained a challenge. Prior to the Disability Rights Movement of the 1960s, and the resulting federal legislation such as the 1988 amendments to the Fair Housing Act and Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, multifamily housing units and public buildings were not yet subject to accessibility standards.17 Inclusion of ramps, automatic doors, the absence of thresholds, bathrooms arranged to accommodate use of wheelchairs, and covered walkways were among the pioneering features that architect Henry Toombs and FDR would adopt at Warm Springs to help make patients “largely self-sufficient.”18 But these accommodations that Toombs later described as “thoughtful of a polio patient’s point of view,” would not be widely available for decades.19 I had a friend here [in Washington] whose brother helped me find a place. He drove me around in a car. She had had polio down at Warm Springs, too, so he knew the problems of steps, etc., and he would do the running and finally he found the boarding house that he thought I would like. I went in and looked at it and then went to work the next day.20 Toi, like many of her fellow “polios,” was an active member of the Warm Springs community and hoped to make America “polio conscience;” she served on the National Patients’ Committee and donated funds to the Warm Springs Foundation out of her White House salary.21, 22 The Polio Chronicle, published by the Warm Springs Foundation and featured insightful tips on independent living, new treatments, and social events, was one of the printed materials put out by polio rehabilitation centers generally that “enabled the formation of polio-affected communities [and] even a politically motived polio nation, whose shared interests, concerns and newly formed identities were represented in these works.”23 Reinette Lovewell Donelly advocated in the Polio Chronicle for “a drive to make public buildings more accessible to handicapped people,” which was dubbed the Lovewell Plan.24 Lovewell Donelly specifically called out “Churches, libraries, colleges, postoffices, courthouses, city and state [and] federal buildings, [and] railway stations” for having “stairways which are either impossible or very difficult for people of faulty locomotion” to use. “I like to think of the equipping of stairways with railings and the provision of ramps all over the country as something supremely courteous—kindly recognition of the sportsmanship of the great number of individuals, young and older, who are struggling to get back to work in the world of action from which they have been suddenly snatched... There is not a single good reason [as I can] see why it should not be done.”25 Had the Lovewell Plan be enacted nationally, with Toombs’ work at Warm Springs as a model for independent living supported by accessible architecture, the Disability Rights Movement, ultimately culminating in the ADA and subsequently legislation, may have been pushed decades forward. Later in life, Toi served on the board of directs of the Broadmoor Apartment Cooperative on Connecticut Avenue in Washington, where she lived with her mother, for 20 years. Hilda Amyx remembered the building well, and described the accessibility challenges that Toi encountered while occupying the complex: I do recall there were several stairs, and no elevator, getting from the underground parking into the main building and sometimes she would alert the front desk and they would send a staff gentleman to help her up the steps. The building did have a restaurant, hair salon and other amenities, so she didn’t have to go out for everything. And, her mother lived with her until her death, and a couple of retired White House ladies, while she never spoke of asking for help, I’m sure they were helpful if needed. If she needed assistance, such as help maneuvering a step up, she would ask a helping hand to steady her while she swung her polio affected leg . . . she never changed her heavy medal brace to a lighter one.26 
Library of Congress Toi worked in the Roosevelt Administration as a secretary in the President’s private office on the “swing shift” evenings, weekends, and holidays to cover the work left by Missy LeHand and Grace Tully at the end of the day.27 She would often type the President’s speeches, office memos, and correspondence for Harry Hopkins, Administrator of the WPA, and Robert McIntyre, Roosevelt’s appointments secretary. Her desk was located in the “outer office” next to McIntyre’s; people waiting to meet with President Roosevelt, including her future boss Congressman Lyndon Johnson, would frequently “perch” on the corner of her desk and chat with Toi before being shown into the Oval Office. The West Wing saw major renovations shortly after Toi arrived in Washington. In 1934, the executive offices were enlarged, increasing 15,000 square feet to 40,000 square feet; FDR was heavily involved in the design and renovations, telling architect Eric Gulger that he was “handicapped and so much trouble is involved in running the government without reasonable convenience such as adequate space.”28 Accessible accommodations made at this time included relocating the Oval Office to the southeastern corner of the building, placing it closer to the Rose Garden and the White House itself; modifying the colonnade connecting the Oval Office to the mansion with a ramp so FDR could be wheeled to his office more easily; West Wings rooms used frequently by the President, specifically the Cabinet Room and the Fish Room (today the Roosevelt Room) were placed in close proximity to the Oval Office because FDR “moved about with difficulty.”29 An elevator connected the newly added second story and the enlarged basement. However, the West Wing main entrance, used by Toi and the other members of the executive office staff, did not include accessible modifications. 
National Park Service, Office of the White House Liaison. Eventually, Toi was also provided “a parking space near the entrance to the Diplomatic Room,” likely near the South Drive, reducing walking distance. Like FDR, Toi drove a specialized car which featured hand-controlled brakes and clutch on the steering wheel.30 For both Bachelder and Roosevelt, these altered cars acted as mobility aids, like larger, more versatile versions of wheelchairs. The Polio Chronicle highlighted modified cars for polio patients, stating “Various mechanical contrivances can allow you to be your own highly competent chauffer, even though you may be more or less seriously handicapped physically.”31 Toi not only drove across DC to work, but also across the country, she drove herself and her friends back to Warm Springs in the 1980s; when Raleigh DeGeer Amyx asked if he was doing the driving to Georgia, Toi replied “No, I’m driving, your job is to pump the gas.”32 
Image courtesy of Cherly and Hilda Amyx. As a member of Roosevelt’s social inner circle at the White House, Toi was often a member of the President’s party while he travelled, specifically to Warm Springs and Hyde Park. President Roosevelt typically returned to Warm Springs twice a year, in the spring and in November for Thanksgiving, and made sure that Toi accompanied him, even if her supervisor wasn’t included in the party.33 Toi was also included in the ceremonial return to Hyde Park for election day. FDR would return to New York to vote and stayed at Springwood to receive the results of the election and address his Dutchess County friends and neighbors. She also attended President Roosevelt’s State of the Union address in 1938.34 The largest event, and for Toi one of the most memorable, was the legendary June 1939 hot dog picnic held at Top Cottage for the King and Queen of the United Kingdom. Top Cottage, Roosevelt’s Hyde Park retreat built in 1939 and designed by FDR and Toombs, incorporated several accessibility features developed at Warm Springs to accommodate FDR’s wheelchairs. Toi and FDR also exchanged Christmas gifts, she dined with the President and the First Family at the White House frequently, and Roosevelt served her some of his infamous martinis.35, 36 
Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library But Toi very rarely traveled with FDR when he campaigned for re-election. FDR was apparently concerned with the absence of disability accommodations one faces during travel. According to Bachelder, Roosevelt was the only one of the five presidents she worked for to hold these concerns, which is remarkable given his own personal experience with disability—a shared experience which brought Roosevelt and Bachelder together in the first place. We cannot really know FDR’s motive. Perhaps it was a sign of his compassion and his understanding of the realities of living in a disabling world. I went on a part—one or two trips of each of President Roosevelt’s [campaigns]. Oh, one time I went with him to Cleveland in 1940, I suppose, because he was going to Cleveland and I had been born in Cleveland, and I had never been back, and I asked if I might go along. They were always looking for somebody to sit up all night and work, and so I went on that trip, and then always at election night, election eve, President Roosevelt went up to Hyde Park for election eve, and I always went along. But I didn’t make many campaign trips with him. He always thought they were too hard on me, both of us having had polio, he had a compassion for me that others haven’t. Other Presidents have forgotten, do forget, as many of my friends tell me they forget, that I’m any different from anybody else. They realize, of course, that I’m not going to run, but they have never held back, and never said, “Well, that’s too hard for you to do. You’ll wear yourself out.” They’ve never done that. President Roosevelt wasn’t hardhearted in that respect, quite the opposite, and yet he didn’t make me feel too much of an invalid. But with him any place he could go I could go too because the ramps off trains, hey always had to have a ramp up into a hotel if there were a lot of steps, and then I could follow along, they were slow in moving him, he didn’t walk very much the places that he went. I did, but they were slow with him so that I could keep up. But other Presidents go a mile a minute. And as I say they have never said, “Well, that’s too hard a trip for her,” or “We can’t ask Toi to do that because she’s not strong enough,” President Roosevelt thought the campaign trips were too strenuous for me, so I didn’t’ make very many of them. I disagreed with him, but that didn’t do any good.37 However, as Bachelder points out, she was in fact able to go wherever Roosevelt traveled because of temporary accommodations made specifically for the President’s disability. She also benefitted from those accommodations, both permanent, such as the West Wing renovations, and temporary, like the ramps and handrails installed by the Secret Service where FDR travelled. As a significant public figure, Roosevelt possibly had more accommodations made for his disability than any other figure in American history: battleships were fitted with elevators and bathtubs, customized wheelchairs were made to his specifications, ramps and a swimming pool were added to the West Wing, a special airplane was requested and modified for diplomatic missions, and ramps, handrails, and specialized podiums were installed at hundreds of events and campaign stops. Furthermore, as a privileged private citizen of considerable wealth, FDR’s experience as a disabled person was not typical. Many people with disabilities, including Toi, could not pay valets and nurses to aid them throughout the day, or afford to renovate their homes or design completely new, more accessible houses. Roosevelt himself recognized that he was uniquely advantaged and had greater access to care and treatment because of it: “I suppose that people readily will recognize that I myself furnish a perfectly good example of what can be done by the right kind of care…Seven years ago in the epidemic in New York, I came down with infantile paralysis, a perfectly normal attack, and I was completely, for the moment, put out of any useful activities,” he admitted, but “By personal good fortune I was able to get the very best kind of care, and the result of having the right kind of care is that today I am on my feet.”38 Roosevelt’s mission with the Warm Springs Foundation was to address these disparities; he personally invested the majority of his personal fortune into the Foundation, increasing access to treatment and rehabilitation.39 At the dedication of Warm Springs’ new Colonnade in November of 1933, the President clearly communicated this vision: "Ours, therefore, must ever be the greater aim - to maintain here the example of the right way of giving help so that throughout our land, other groups and other buildings may carry the torch to the handicapped and crippled wherever they may be."40 Toi was a beneficiary of this broader vision for independent living. President Roosevelt spent much of his time, both relaxing and working, in his private study, which was connected to his bedroom, upstairs in the White House.41 When Toi worked in the President’s White House apartments as a stenographer, or when she joined the First Family for dinner upstairs in the private residence, she was permitted to use the President’s elevator. Lillian Rogers Parks, a White House maid who also had had polio as a child and walked with crutches, recalled that, once America entered the war “and because of the ever-present danger of attack on the White House, it was ordered that no one was to use the elevator except for the President. We people backstairs were to stick to the stairs and leave the elevator for him.”42 Roosevelt arranged for continued use of the elevator for both Bachelder and Parks. FDR made his final trip to Warm Springs on March 29, 1945, and, as always, Toi returned to Georgia with the president’s party, which, according to Grace Tully, was a smaller group than usual.43 While, on April 12, President Roosevelt sat for his portrait by Elizabeth Shoumatoff, Toi, and other went for a swim and ran into Dr. Howard Bruenn, the President’s physician, who was also swimming.44 Around 1:00, the group went to lunch at Georgia Hall where they received news that the President was sick, Tully hastened Roosevelt’s cottage to see him. FDR passed away only a few short hours later. As William Hasset, Secretary to the President, announced Roosevelt’s death to the press, Toi and the rest of the president’s party, in shock, returned to their cottages and packed their belongings.45 Toi travelled back to Washington aboard the train carrying the President’s body to the small funeral in the East Room of the White House, and she continued on to Hyde Park for Roosevelt’s burial, where she was seated in the front row.46 Toi was able to stay on at the White House staff following FDR’s death in 1945. Under President Truman, she became the secretary for the White House Counsel, first for Judge Samuel Rosenman, who also stayed on from the Roosevelt Administration. Following Rosenman’s resignation, she worked for Richmond N. Keech, an administrative assistant, until he was elevated to the bench as a judge in Washington DC. Toi again worked for the White House Counsel’s office, this time for Clark Clifford and then Charles Murphy.47 When the Republicans took the White House with Eisenhower’s election, Toi, a Democrat, was moved to the East Wing, away from policy work. As a member of the “distaff,” working under the First Lady, Bachelder was placed in charge of Mamie Eisenhower’s official correspondence. But Toi was amazed and grateful that the Eisenhowers kept her on in the White House at all. She “needed desperately” to keep the job; she was very aware every four years that elections could bring major changes to the West Wing staff. Toi was especially concerned over the election of 1948 because she had just purchased an apartment with her mother, Mabel, they worried about their ability to afford housing and basic needs if they were both to lose their White House positions with a possible change in the administration. Mabel had joined the White House staff in the President’s Office as a correspondence secretary in 1938. Mabel, who had stayed in Chicago working as a clerk with the Stevens Hotel until she was let go due to “finical difficulties in the hotel business,” moved to live with her daughter in Washington in 1934. After speaking to Missy LeHand about a position for her mother, Toi wrote to Henry Kannee, the White House stenographer, about any openings as a “file clerk, proof-reader or supervisor of girls in any office,” and secured a much-needed position for her mother.48 But, in 1948, Truman defeated Dewey, the Bachelders stayed on at the White House, and “it turned out all right.” Mabel remained in the position until her retirement in 1951.49 Grace Tully noted in her autobiography “No one understood better than F.D.R. the difficulties which faced those who suffered the crippling blow of infantile paralysis and he carried on a campaign to see that these people were given an opportunity to use their talents and be useful citizens.”50 In numerous public speeches, specifically during his campaigns for the governorship of New York, FDR discussed the importance of rehabilitating people with disabilities in order to make them economically productive citizens and to restore them to “normal life among their families and friends.”51 Seemingly, Toi’s experience, following her rehabilitation at Warm Springs, exemplified FDR’s vision - the opportunity to support herself financially, and even support her mother during times of economic hardship, allowing her to become a “productive citizen” and an active member of her community. Yet, it appears that FDR had to be reassured of Toi’s “efficiency” before she could join the White House staff. And Roosevelt’s worry over what he considered to be strenuous tasks, which limited, despite her protests, Toi’s participation in work related travel, is starkly contrasted against subsequent presidents: Toi joined President Truman on a nation-wide whistlestop campaign in support of Adli Stevenson in 1952, she attended a session of the United Nations with President Kennedy, and went on JFK’s European tour in June of 1963, with stops in Germany, England, Ireland, and Italy.52 While FDR’s personal understanding of disability undoubtably influenced these decisions, it is possible that Truman and Kennedy’s limited experience with disability made them unaware of the disabling effects of the mid-20th century’s built environment. Toi, although disagreeing with FDR’s reasoning, respected his concern and appreciated that he didn’t make her “feel too much of an invalid.” The term “invalid,” frequently used at the time to describe people with disabilities, harmfully implied helplessness, and dependence on others for care. Between managing his own political image and his vision of care at Warm Springs, Roosevelt strove to distinguish the “handicapped” from “invalids” through rehabilitation and by invoking the principles of independent living. Toi’s tireless work in the West Wing would continue, regardless of President Roosevelt’s concerns, for 33 years; “it was Toi’s meritocracy, dedication, and hard work that enabled her to be a long-term employee at the White House, not based on pity of any kind. We often heard stories of late night work…”53 After Kennedy and the Democrats reclaimed the White House, Toi requested that she be reassigned to the president’s staff. Again reporting to the special counsel, Toi worked for Ted Sorensen in the West Wing until JFK was assassinated in November of 1963. Still, Bachelder kept her place in the White House, administration after administration. During President Johnson’s terms in office, she worked for press secretary Bill Moyers. Toi “didn’t care for press relations,” and again requested a transfer, finding her final post with Joe Califano, LBJ’s senior advisor on domestic affairs policy. Toinette Bachelder retired after a 33-year career in the White House, spanning every administration from FDR to LBJ. She first met Lyndon Johnson in 1937 while working in the Roosevelt White House; Johnson was a freshman Congressman from Texas. During her extraordinary tenure at the White House, Toi witnessed major events in American history and world affairs, but, as she reflected on her career, the things she recalled most vividly were the darker moments. Well, unfortunately, I guess, all the things that are the strongest in my mind are the tragic things – the death of President Roosevelt and the assassination of John Kennedy. I was in Warm Springs in 1945 when President Roosevelt died, and I was here in Washington when John Kennedy lost his life, but these things stand out more than anything else. Oh, when President Roosevelt invited the King and Queen of England to come to the United States, it was a great hoopla and furor over that, their stay in Washington, and I was fortunate enough to be one of the few of the staff invited up to Hyde Park to the Roosevelt home for the famous hot-dog picnic part that Mrs. Roosevelt and the President gave for the King and Queen of England. And President Roosevelt dictated to me portions of his—well, later it became called court packing, the Supreme Court packing message…The day that war was declared in 1941, December 7, I had just come back from Warm Springs. The President had gone down there for Thanksgiving, had stayed two days, and he had to come back to Washington on account of the Japs, and he told me that he wanted me to stay the rest of the week, a full week, and to come back at the end of that following week. So I did, and I arrived home on Sunday morning, December 7, and heard this horrible catastrophe over the radio…54 Bachelder never wrote a memoir about her time in Washington, other than in daily letters to her mother. She recalled that, as a member of the White House staff and being so close with President Roosevelt, she was always conscience and concerned about what she could share about her work in public, during the war especially.55 I was not a good conversationalist because I was so afraid that something that I might know that I didn’t realize I knew I might drop, might tell somebody, and I never was able to talk about my work. It wasn’t all that secret. It wasn’t like the CIA where you don’t even admit that that’s where you are employed, and I was a very, very small cog and what I had to say didn’t amount to a hill of beans. Just the same, I was very careful not to say anything that would throw a wrong light on anything that the President was trying to do. For instance, I never would have admitted on a stack of Bibles that I had anything to do with that Supreme Court packing message, At the time we weren’t at war then, but that kind of thing you just didn’t talk about it you have any integrity at all…56 
Image Description of the Oxnard Press Courier News ClippingThis is a black and white image of a news clipping. Image Title: Marks FDR's Birthday. Image Description: Toi Bachelder, President Johnson, and Grace Tully looking at a portrait of President Franklin D. Roosevelt hanging in the White House. Image Caption: President Johnson shows a portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt to two women who were on FDR's staff—Grace Tully, left, the late President's secretary, and Toi Bachelder. Johnson marked the 82nd anniversary of Roosevelt's birth yesterday by greeting 32 White House employees who were there when Roosevelt was president. UPI Telephoto. Of the five presidents she worked for during her 33 years at the White House, Toi was, admittedly, closest to Franklin Roosevelt: they had known each other the longest, were bridge partners, had a shared experience with disability brought about by polio, and bonded over their time at Warm Springs and in Washington. Upon her retirement in 1966, President Johnson, expressed his personal gratitude for Toi’s years of dedication and service in the White House. I will always be grateful to this gracious lady, as will all the Presidents who have served with her, for the work that she has done for them and for the country. I remember Toi from my boyhood days when I was just a young, green Congressman--and she was even younger…. You have been witness to what most people who live in this country can only read in the history books. You have seen this from first hand and no history book can ever capture all the truth or all the spirit of all the Presidents you have known…. The fact that you have stayed in this house as long as you have is a great tribute to you. It also is a great tribute to the man that I loved so much and that you loved so much, whose picture is on that wall there, who had the vision to bring you here originally. You and he together were an inspiration to thousands and thousands of young people who suffered from the affliction of polio. By your very life you gave hope to thousands when they were in the midst of despair. I don't think you even know it, but we have some people who have looked at you with such admiration that they have really conquered polio themselves. They work here in the White House--have even worked for me, and worked for me a long time and l didn't even know they had had polio. So I think that you should realize by your courage and your grit, your never-failing good humor and your inspiration, your devotion to duty and your ability to transact business efficiently, you have replaced many tears with smiles and with laughter.57 Toinette returned to the White House for several staff events during the remainder of the Johnson Administration.58 In her retirement, Ms. Bachelder’s “favorite pastime” was catalog shopping.59 Toi continued several of FDR’s hobbies as her own; she “was an avid bridge player,” as she had been at Warm Springs, “and played regularly after retirement” with neighbors in her apartment building and fellow retired White House friends, and “she was a stamp collector, no doubt influenced by FDR’s serious interest in stamp collecting.”60 She also connected with presidential historian and collector Raleigh DeGeer Amyx, forming a close relationship with his family. She passed away in September of 1996 at the age of 85.61 —Seth Frost, Museum Technician. Special thanks to Cherly and Hilda Amyx, who shared personal recollections and photographs of Ms. Bachelder, historian Geoffrey Ward, and Dr. Shelby Landmark. Notes 1 WJ Lauery. (1933 February 16). Letter to Missy LeHand, The President’s Personal File, Part 15: PPF 7001-7500; Box 5; Folder 1; PPF 7300, FDRL. 2 1920 U.S. census, Chicago city, IL., pop. sch., ward 6, (ED) 373, sheet 1B, dwell. 10, fam. 27. 3 “Report of Dr. Leroy W. Hubbard On Experimental Work At Warm Springs, Georgia.” Page 4. September 8, 1926. Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati Campus, Hebrew Union College, Jewish Institute of Religion. 4 “Report of Dr. Leroy W. Hubbard On Experimental Work At Warm Springs, Georgia.” Section on individual patient recoveries. Page 14. September 8, 1926. Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati Campus, Hebrew Union College, Jewish Institute of Religion. 5 RR Auctions. Historic Collection of Releigh DeGeer Amyx: Live Auction September 17 & 18. Catalog published August 18, 2014. Page 65.RR Auction: Historic Collection of Raleigh DeGeer Amyx by RR Auction - Issuu 6 “Toinette Marya Bachelder: White House Secretary,” Obituary, Washing Post, October 5, 1996. FDR Library Subject Reference Files, 1939-present; Series 1: Subject Reference Files: Bachelder, Toinette Marya, 1911-1996 7 “Roosevelt’s Friend.” Hutchinson News Herald. Hutchison, Kansas. Feb 4, 1940. Page 12. 8 Oral history transcript, Toinette Bachelder, interview 1 (I), 2/11/1969, page 7, by Dorothy Pierce (McSweeny), LBJ Library Oral Histories, LBJ Presidential Library, accessed September 13, 2024, https://www.discoverlbj.org/item/oh-bacheldert-19690211-1-74-162 9 “The Georgia Warm Springs Foundation.” 1931. Page 7. Selections from the Records of the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation, 1924-1974, Roosevelt Warm Springs Vocational Rehabilitation Campus, presented in the Digital Library of Georgia. 10 Dr. Le Roy W. Hubbard. “Report from the Surgeon In Chief and the Director of Nurses to Franklin D. Roosevelt President of the Warm Springs Foundation November 1st, 1927, 1927, Oct. 19.” Page 1-2.” Selections from the Records of the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation, 1924-1974, Roosevelt Warm Springs Vocational Rehabilitation Campus, presented in the Digital Library of Georgia. 11 Dr. Le Roy W. Hubbard. “Report from the Surgeon In Chief and the Director of Nurses to Franklin D. Roosevelt President of the Warm Springs Foundation November 1st, 1927, 1927, Oct. 19.” Page 7. Selections from the Records of the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation, 1924-1974, Roosevelt Warm Springs Vocational Rehabilitation Campus, presented in the Digital Library of Georgia. 12 “Report of Dr. Leroy W. Hubbard On Experimental Work At Warm Springs, Georgia.” Page 4. September 8, 1926. Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati Campus, Hebrew Union College, Jewish Institute of Religion. 14 Oral History, LBJ Library, page7 15 Oral History, LBJ Library, pages 7 16 “Roosevelt’s Friend.” Hutchinson News Herald. Hutchison, Kansas. Feb 4,1940. Page 12. 17 Fair Housing Act Design Manual (huduser.gov) 18 William B. Rhoads, “Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Architecture of Warm Spring,” page 82, published in The George Historical Quarterly, Spring 1983, Vol. 67, No. 1 19 Quoted in “Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Architecture of Warm Spring,” by William B. Rhoads, page 76, published in The George Historical Quarterly, Spring 1983, Vol. 67, No. 1. 20 Oral History, LBJ Library, pages 8 21 The Polio Chronicle, vol. 1, No. 2, August, 1931, page 2 22 The Polio Chronicle, vol. 3, No. 5, December, 1933, page 8 23 Jacqueline Foertsch, "Heads, You Win": Newsletters and Magazines of the Polio Nation, RELOADED Disability Studies Quarterly, Summer 2007, Volume 27, No.3, abstract 24 Watch Your Steps by Lovewell Donnelly, Reinette, The Polio Chronicle, page 3. Vol 2. No. 7, February 1933 25 Lovewell Donnelly, The Polio Chronicle, page 3. Vol 2. No. 7, February 1933 26 Email conversation with Hilda Amyx, friend of Ms. Bachelder, August 9, 2024 27 Oral History, LBJ Library, page 1 28 Quoted in The President’s House, William Seale, vol. 2, page 942 29 William Seale, The President’s House, vol. 2, page 984 30 Email conversation with Hilda Amyx, friend of Ms. Bachelder, August 9, 2024 31 Do You Drive, Polio? The Polio Chronicle, page 4. Vol 2. No. 6, January 1933 32 Email conversation with Hilda Amyx, friend of Ms. Bachelder, August 9, 2024 33 Oral History, LBJ Library, page 7 34 According to the FDR: Day by Day Project (FDR: Day by Day (marist.edu)), the FDR Library’s digital database of Roosevelt’s daily activities as President, 1933-1945, Toi attended the State of the Union on January 3, 1938 35 Franklin D. Roosevelt. (1941 January 23). Letter to Toinette Bachelder, The President’s Personal File, Part 15: PPF 7001-7500; Box 5; Folder 1; PPF 7300, FDRL. FDR thanks Toi for the gift of a “very useful ice thermos” that he intended to use at Top Cottage. 36 According to the FDR: Day by Day Project (FDR: Day by Day (marist.edu)), the FDR Library’s digital database of Roosevelt’s daily activities as President, 1933-1945, Bachelder dined with the Roosevelts at the White House 18 times. Dinner: 8/5/1937, 8/15/1937, 9/16/1937, 2/17/1938, 9/30/1938, 8/7/1939, 9/6/1939, 2/19/1940, 8/15/1940, 1/1/1943, 1/9/1943, 2/4/1943, 2/11/1943, 2/15/1943, 4/9/1943, 7/29/1943; Lunch: 8/3/1940, 1/2/1938; Tea: 3/9/1934 37 Oral History, LBJ Library, pages 25-6 38 FDR Campaign speech, October 22, 1928 Rochester, New York. Page 27. msf00281 (marist.edu) 39 In her memoir, Secretary of Labor Francis Perkins noted that “[FDR] put his own money into it, and he got some of his friends to put money into it, to build the place up and make it a practical, modern, and scientific therapeutic center. He also conceived the idea that some day there ought to be an endowment which not only would make better medical and nursing care and better appliances available to victims of the disease everywhere. He thought that, above everything else, these should be medical research into the causes of paralysis and into methods of preventing it or curing it in the early stages.” Frances Perkins, The Roosevelt I knew, Page 26 40 Franklin D. Roosevelt, Master Speech File, 1898-1945, Box 16: Warm Springs, Georgia - Response of the President at Dedication Ceremonies of the Colonnade (speech file 672), 1933, Page 5. FDRL. msf00692 (marist.edu) 41 William Seale, The President’s House, vol. 2, page 984 42 Lillian Rogers Parks, My Thirty Years Backstairs At The White House, pages 42-43 43 Tully, page 358 44 Tully, page 361 45 Tully, page 365 46 Email conversation with Hilda Amyx, friend of Ms. Bachelder, September 18, 2024 47 Oral History, LBJ Library, page 1 48 Toinette Marya Bachelder. (1934 December 19). Letter to Henry Kannee, The President’s Personal File, Part 15: PPF 7001-7500; Box 5; Folder 1; PPF 7300, FDRL. Born Mabel Linda Reed in 1888, in DeKalb, Indiana, she married Toi’s father, Frank Jerome Bachelder, in 1902; according to the Census, they divorced sometime between 1920 and 1930. 49 “We had a mother and daughter team on the staff, as well as the Tully sister team – Mable and Toi Bachelder. When Toi was a patient at Warm Springs, she and Mabel came to know Mr. Roosevelt…Toi worked with the President, Missy [LeHand] and me [Grace Tully] all through the years. Mable’s work was similar to that of Lela Stiles’” “FDR, My Boss,” Grace Tully, page 348 50 Grace Tully, FDR, My Boss, page 348 51 Franklin D. Roosevelt, Master Speech File, 1898-1945, Box FDR Campaign speech, Rochester, New York - Campaign Speech (speech file 277), October 22, 1928. Page 10. FDRL. msf00281 (marist.edu) 52 Oral History, LBJ Library, page 16 53 Email conversation with Hilda Amyx, friend of Ms. Bachelder, August 9, 2024 54 Oral History, LBJ Library, pages 12-13 55 Oral History, LBJ Library, page 23 56 Oral History, LBJ Library, pages 23-24 57 Lyndon B. Johnson, Remarks at a Retirement Ceremony for Toinette M. Bachelder of the White House Staff Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/239285 58 Oral History, LBJ Library, page 6 59 The Orange County Register, ELDERY: Some have bigger out-of-pocket medical bills, Oct. 9, 1995, page 90 60 Email conversation with Hilda Amyx, friend of Ms. Bachelder, September 18, 2024 61 Toinette Marya Bachelder Obituary, Washington Post, October 5, 1996. FDR Library Subject Reference Files, 1939-present; Series 1: Subject Reference Files. Bachelder, Toinette Marya, 1911-1996. |
Last updated: April 18, 2025