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May 2017

No matter how widely he was hailed as a hero fourteen years earlier, Christopher Columbus was all washed up by the time he died in 1506 (511 years ago this May 20).

Columbus on his deathbed
A sentimental imagining of the explorer's deathbed.

Vince Lombardi at West Point
Vince Lombardi was a junior coach at the U.S. Military Academy when he tried to recruit the author to play for West Point.

This essay is part of a series of articles written by the readers of American Heritage entitled "My Brush with History" in which they recall meeting a famous personality or playing a small part of a momentous event. We invite our readers to continue to submit ideas to editor [at] americanheritage.com.
 

Early in the second month of 1953, I was summoned from study hall at White Plains High School. A college football coach wanted to see me.

Ford Tr
Franklin D. Roosvelt caused a sensation at the Democratic Nominating Convention in 1932 by arriving on a Ford Tri-Motor plane. Missy LeHand flew with FDR to help him finish his acceptance speech on the plane.  Courtesy National Archives.

On the morning of July 2, 1932, a slender, neatly dressed young woman with dark hair already threaded in silver stepped out of a car at the grass-and-gravel airport in Albany, New York. Her name was Marguerite Alice LeHand, but everyone knew her as Missy. Air travel was a new experience for the thirty-five-year-old woman, and though she had taken many other journeys with her boss, New York governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the stakes had never been higher than for this trip. They were flying to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where Roosevelt had been nominated for president of the United States the night before.

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