Parents' Guide to Hick: The Trailblazing Journalist Who Captured Eleanor Roosevelt's Heart

HICK was born Lorena Hickok in 1893 and spent her childhood moving from town to town as her father's violent temper lost him job after job. At 14, she found herself on her own and working before and after school for a local family in return for meals and a place to sleep. Many such jobs followed, as Hick cleaned homes and cared for children as she struggled to support herself and finish high school. Her first job in journalism was at the Battle Creek Journal, where she covered (as was expected of women reporters in those days) weddings and tea dances. While working at the Minneapolis Tribune, she adopted the nickname "Hick," wrote "Girl Reporter" features, covered University of Minnesota football, and fell in love for the first time with a woman. In 1928, she was hired by the Associated Press in New York City, where she became the first woman that editors trusted with straight news and big stories and the only woman assigned to the press corps covering Franklin Delano Roosevelt's 1932 presidential campaign. When she was taken off that assignment to cover Eleanor Roosevelt, Hick thought it was a step backward in her career. But it was a step that led first to friendship and then to love. During FDR's first term, Hick became a regular guest at the White House, and she and Eleanor began writing often daily letters to each other when they were apart. In Eleanor's blue convertible, they went on road trips together (without the Secret Service, something unthinkable today), driving from New England to Quebec and later up the West Coast. After the AP felt she'd become too close to Eleanor to be unbiased in her reporting, Hick went to work for FERA (Federal Emergency Relief Administration), the 1939 World's Fair, and then the Democratic Party. In 1958, Hick (with Eleanor's knowledge) donated 3,500 of their letters to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library. Hick died in 1968, six years after her beloved Eleanor. The release of their letters to the public in 1978 was met with a mixture of astonishment, denial, and confusion.