Programming note: Tomorrow, Sunday, I'll be hosting another audio edition of Steyn's Song of the Week on Serenade Radio in the UK at 5.30pm British Summer Time (that's 12.30pm North American Eastern/9.30am Pacific). You can listen from anywhere on the planet by clicking the button in the top right-hand corner here.
~Welcome to our ongoing serialization of a favorite book of Steyn readers, Mark Steyn's Passing Parade. Thank you for your comments about last weekend's episode, on John F Kennedy's son and George Gershwin's girlfriend. Colin Bastable, a First Weekend Founding Member of The Mark Steyn Club, says:
Superb writing. Such a contrast in lives lived and lost.
That's very kind of you, Colin. Hope we can match that standard this week. Today's episode begins with the loyalest of secretaries:
No man is a hero to his valet. But some of us hope at least to be a hero to our secretary. And even if we're not heroic, even if we can't be Perry Mason, she'll still be Della Street—there to buck up the chief, to assure him that he's been in tight spots before and he always comes through.
Thus the White House, May 14th 1973, half an hour before midnight...
Rose Mary Woods was the only secretary ever to be given the honor of a Time magazine cover. No such accolade ever came the way of Bill Mitchell:
William A Mitchell never became a household name, but most households you can name have something of his in it—Cool Whip, quick-set Jell-O, powdered egg whites for cake mix. He gave American astronauts the first space-age beverage (Tang), and impressionable adolescents one of the great urban legends (Pop Rocks).
If you're a member of The Mark Steyn Club you can hear Part Twenty of our serialization of Mark Steyn's Passing Parade simply by clicking here and logging-in. All previous episodes can be found here.
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To become a member of The Mark Steyn Club, please click here - and don't forget our special Gift Membership.The minute you sign up you'll have access to four dozen Tales for Our Time, including my serializations of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Time Machine and The Thirty-Nine Steps. And please join me next weekend for Part Twenty-One of Mark Steyn's Passing Parade.