Best Little Stories from the White House - Softcover

C. Brian Kelly is prize-winning journalist, is cofounder of Montpelier Publishing and a columnist and editor emeritus for "Military History" magazine. He is also a lecturer in newswriting at the University of Virginia. Kelly has published in "Reader's Digest," "Friends," "Yankee," and other magazines and is the author of several books on American history. Ingrid Smyer, Brian's wife, is a freelance writer and editor as well as a civic and political activist. They live in Virginia.

With the country in a financial panic, the stricken president's surgery should be carried out quickly and secretly, it was felt in the White House. And that is the way it was done--on a yacht cruising the East River in New York City, with the doctors on board ducking out of sight to avoid recognition by some sharp-eyed intern at Bellevue Hospital on the Manhattan side of the river.

The story begins on May 5, 1893, when President Grover Cleveland, fresh in a second White House term, first noticed an odd "rough spot" on the roof of his mouth. He didn't do anything about it at first, but by mid-June it was bothering him and he called in the White House physician, Dr. Robert M. O'Reilly.

What O'Reilly found was very serious indeed-- a cancerous growth extending from Cleveland's upper teeth on the left side to nearly the center of his mouth. A surgeon called into the case, Dr. Joseph Bryant, urged fast action. "Were it my mouth," he told the portly Cleveland, "I would have removed it at once." At the time, however, the country was gripped by economic crisis, the panic of 1893, a period of railroad failures, mortage foreclosures, collapsing stocks, and dangerously low gold reserves. And then, on June 27, the New York Stock Market crashed. Cleveland called for a special session of Congress to deal with the crisis--but he had to delay the date until August to allow time for the secret operation on his mouth.