Page 269 - Leadership Lessons of the White House Fellows

BECOMING A WHITE HOUSE FELLOW

St. Patrick’s Day and if Pat Moynihan hadn’t been dressed like a great,
cheery leprechaun, I would not be so absolutely certain about the date.”
Luhrs recalled that as she entered the room, the president pointed out that
she was the first woman in his presidency to participate in a meeting in the
cabinet room. Throughout that discussion Luhrs was called on repeatedly
for advice, so frequently, in fact, that she kept hoping there might be some
other physician in the room with her name. She showed incredible grace
under pressure, and her responses so impressed the president that on
June 16, 1969, at an afternoon reception in the State Dining Room of the
White House, he said:

A few weeks ago we were considering, in the Cabinet Committee on Urban Affairs,
the problem of hunger in America. It was a very big meeting. All of the members
of the Committee were there and there were staff members and experts completely
surrounding the members of the Committee and filling the room to its capacity.
During the long discussion, which took about three hours, one of the major
problems which had to be considered was the problem of nutrition, the prob-
lem of proper diet, to what extent that contributed to the general problem not
only of the poor but of all Americans insofar as their health was concerned.
I noted that participating in the conversation on several occasions, not sim-
ply voluntarily but because she was often called upon by the Secretary of Agri-
culture and the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, was a woman who
was sitting immediately back of the Secretary of Agriculture, a young woman,
obviously very intelligent and obviously the one in that room who knew more
about nutrition than all the people in government and all the others in the back.
She was one of the White House Fellows, a graduate of the Harvard Medical
School.
And afterward I spoke to her and I found that in this particular area there
is a need in the medical profession for far more emphasis than we presently have.
So my perspective was broadened as a result of having her participate in that
meeting. She made a contribution that might not have been made had not she
been in Washington at that time serving in that year’s program. That is an idea
of what all of the Fellows can contribute in their various fields, not perhaps as
dramatically as she did but certainly in every way.

Luhrs was flattered by the president’s kind words. “He made a big fuss
over me, which was very nice,” she recalled. “And in a subsequent cabinet

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