In the bleak early hours after his heart attack, President Eisenhower instructed Dr. Howard Snyder: "You tell Jim for me to take over." White House Press Secretary James C. (for Campbell) Hagerty. who had been vacationing at home in Washington, landed at Lowry Air Force Base that evening and took over. For the next seven days, until Presidential Assistant Sherman Adams arrived in Denver, Jim Hagerty was the only official link between the stricken President and the worried world.
Faced with a pack of more than 100 newsmen, Jim Hagerty, 46, reversed the Administration's longtime policy of reticence about the President's personal life. To give reporters every last intimate detail of Ike's waking and sleeping hours, Hagerty in the past month has had to get by with three hours' sleep many nights, even missed his son's wedding two weeks ago. To report accurately and authoritatively on Ike's condition, Jim Hagerty briefed himself on heart disease. He collaborated with the doctors on four-a-day bulletins that were models of clarity and a major factor in dispelling the shock to the world of Ike's illness.
Mechanic at Work. When the Presi dent was told about the flood of information that was pouring out of the hospital, he told Hagerty approvingly: "I understand you're giving them everything. That's fine with me." Last week the press added its own vote of confidence. Said United Press's Merriman (Thank You, Mr. President) Smith, tough-talking dean of White House correspondents: "Hagerty has done a truly phenomenal job in Denver." Said veteran Eddie Folliard, Washington Post and Times Herald reporter who has been covering the capital since Calvin Coolidge was President: "Hagerty is the best press officer in the world, the best I've ever worked with."
Jim Hagerty, whose bespectacled Irish face and stocky (5 ft. 9 in., 174 Ibs.) build make him look like a good mechanic, is, in fact, one of the ablest technicians at getting out the news that the White House has ever had. Like his father, James A. Hagerty, he was drilled as a political reporter on the New York Times (whose editors gratuitously added a "Jr." to Jim's byline to distinguish the generations). Jim Jr. quit after eight years in the city room and Albany Bureau to become press secretary to New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey in 1943. Nine years and three presidential campaigns later, Jim Hagerty joined Ike after Eisenhower received the G.O.P. nomination.
"Come In Any Time." As the President's press secretary, Jim Hagerty, unlike some of his predecessors, e.g., F.D.R.'s Steve Early, Harry Truman's Joe Short, is always available to the press. He is a man of huge energy, is happiest when the work load is heaviest. He is respected by reporters as an expert craftsman who knows precisely what newsmen need and will do everything in his power to deliver the goods, e.g., he 'was out of bed by 6 a.m. each day for the first two weeks in Denver to see the President and issue a bulletin in time for the first editions of afternoon papers.