Page 270 - Leadership Lessons of the White House Fellows

FELLOWS AT WORK

meeting I was sitting behind him, and everybody was talking about
pesticides, and the next thing I know, he’s reaching behind his chair and
he’s passing me a note. It said, ‘I’m on a cholesterol diet. How about hot
dogs?’ He wanted to know if I thought it was okay for him to eat them
because he knew I was looking into the proper amount of fat in hot dogs.
So I had this little note from the president, and I thought, Jeepers, this is
a long story and I don’t have any paper with me, so afterwards I went up
to President Nixon and answered his question with some nutritional advice
on hot dogs, and I kept his note for posterity’s sake.”
Immediately after leaving her Fellowship at the Department of Agri-
culture, Luhrs was asked to serve on Pillsbury’s board of directors, which
was a major step not only for her but for women in general, because in the
1960s it was virtually unheard of for women to serve on major corporate
boards in the United States. Luhrs also served on the boards of her alma
mater, Swarthmore College, and the Uniformed Services University of the
Health Sciences. “All these opportunities naturally led to other opportu-
nities for me to contribute to society,” Luhrs said. “As I look back, I give
the White House Fellows program the credit for being the ‘grandfather’ of
it all. For me, the program worked just as it was designed to work, and I
am very grateful to have had that experience.”

DOUBLE TROUBLE
It is not unusual for Fellows to get together regularly during their Fellow-
ship year and talk about their victories large and small, commiserate about
difficult assignments, or talk about what they might do if they ran the show
in Washington. Classmates William Cotter and Harold Richman (WHF
65–66) were assigned to two different departments for their Fellowship
year—Commerce and Labor, respectively—but they still spent time
together comparing notes about their departments’ strengths and in some
cases their challenges.
After a few months, one startling thing became clear to them: If
Labor and Commerce were merged into one department, the nation
would be better served. A combined department would be more efficient
and eliminate a lot of redundant red tape. “We wrote this little paper
outlining our plan. Bill gave one to his principal, and I gave one to my
principal, Labor Secretary Willard Wirtz,” Richman said. “We timed it
so that it was close to the end of our Fellowship so our whole year wouldn’t

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