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Title: Fdr's Quiet Confidant: The Autobiography of Frank C. Walker by Robert H. Ferrell ISBN: 0-87081-394-3 Publisher: University Press of Colorado Pub. Date: 01 May, 1997 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $27.50

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Average Customer Rating: 3 (1 review)

Rating: 3
Summary: A Kid From Butte Makes Good
Comment: This slim volume is hardly a polished effort. In fact, it is crude in many respects: poorly written, a choppy narrative that flows in fits and starts and little effort to fully identify many of the persons whose names appear in this history which focuses on the Franklin Roosevelt years in the White House.

Nevertheless, what Mr. Walker writes about is fascinating. So fascinating, in fact, that the general reader may overlook, even forgive, the crudities.

Frank Walker, of good old Irish stock, was a Butte, Montana boy who rose to prominence in national affairs. Ultimately, he become an intimate and reliable confidant of President Roosevelt, a member of FDR's team of reliables. In gratitude for his effort, the President appointed him national chairman of the Democratic Party and for a time, Postmaster General of the United States.

A devout Catholic, he spent three years with the Jesuits at Gonzaga University in Spokane but then transferred to Notre Dame to study law. After a successful career as a lawyer and businessman, he helped New York Governor Franklin Roosevelt become President and followed FDR to Washington.

There, he was, you might say, a high-principled, soft-spoken henchman -- one who often did the dirty work for a politician who had no stomach for it. So when FDR had to inform former Senator James F. Byrnes that he did not want Mr. Byrnes but instead wanted Harry Truman as his vice president in the 1944 elections, FDR sent Frank Walker to do the job. FDR relied on Mr. Walker's nice way of doing such things.

The book is edited from dictated notes kept by Mr. Walker. Much of it reads like an old fashioned business letter. "Be that as it may" or "as I've said before" -- clichés such as those are sprinkled throughout; they even add a certain charm, as though we were listening to Mr. Walker talk about his fascinating experiences in high places.

I personally was intrigued by Mr. Walker's unconventional opinion of two renowned Supreme Court Justices: the "near-sainted" Oliver Wendell Holmes and the renowned Felix Frankfurter.

What did Mr. Walker think of these two justices and their proteges, the "so-called Harvard crowd"? They "did more damages to the New Deal and to Roosevelt than any other faction that came to Washington." He does not go into detail, unfortunately.

The walk through those times with Mr. Walker as the guide was a highly satisfactory visit to an important part of America's history. And Mr. Walker's final view of Franklin D. Roosevelt records his disappointment even though he concedes that no man in American history left a greater "impress on the nation than he." But, "I can say regretfully that to me Franklin Roosevelt was not the great man he could have been. To me he failed in becoming a truly great man."

Mr. Walker died in 1959. He is buried in the family plot at St. Patrick's Cemetery in Butte.

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