"Mr. President," said the tall, stooped man who had just been designated Secretary of State of the U.S., "I am deeply grateful to you. I shall do the very best I can."
The President and his new ranking Cabinet officer turned away from the microphones at Augusta National Golf Course. With a wave, sport-jacketed Dwight Eisenhower strolled off, leaving Christian Archibald Herter, 64, to answer newsmen's questions. The "same team will carry on" at the State Department, he told them, and John Foster Dulles "will be available for consultation with the President, or myself, whenever he feels up to it."
White Knuckles. A reporter asked Herter whether his arthritis would keep him from being as "active" as Dulles was. "I don't think necessarily," said Herter softly. "I can get around perfectly well. The only trouble that I have at all is standing for a long time or walking considerable distances. But with these sticks that I use"—he glanced at his aluminum arm crutches—"I can move along very comfortably." Reporters recalled how, as Under Secretary of State, Herter often had unflinchingly stood at attention at lengthy airport ceremonies for foreign dignitaries while the knuckles of his hands turned white from the strain of gripping his crutches.
Asked how tall he was, Herter said 6 ft. 4½ in. "But I think I'm shrinking all the time," he added, in a smiling reference to his arthritic stoop. Affectionate laughter rippled around the room, and a reporter, catching the mood, called out: "Not today, you're not."
Improbable Week. The press conference over, Chris Herter boarded the Army helicopter that had brought him to Augusta, and flew back to the sprawling South Carolina cattle ranch where he had gone with Mrs. Herter to catch a few days' secluded rest before taking over as Secretary of State. In bygone days at the 12,000-acre retreat (owned by Mrs. Herter's family, and called Cheeha-Combahee after two nearby rivers), Herter used to hunt duck, quail, deer, fox or raccoon from early to late. But years ago, osteoarthritis of the hip joints forced him to give up strenuous sports for such sedentary recreations as playing bridge (he once bid and made a grand slam with President-elect Dwight Eisenhower) and reading whodunits, a passion he shares with John Foster Dulles.
If it seemed improbably strange that a man should be plucked from an out-of-the-way Carolina ranch by helicopter to be designated Secretary of State by a tee-bound President at a Georgia golf course, that strangeness was only characteristic of Christian Herter's improbable week and curious career. It seemed improbable that Christian Herter should come to be Secretary of State at all: he arrived at that lofty crag of responsibility by a meandering path, full of detours, unlikely twists and obstacles that he sometimes barely managed to clear.
Artistic Bent. Herter was born in Paris, of expatriate artist parents, and the first language he learned was his governess' native German. He was trained not in the law—the staple of U.S. Secretaries of State—but in fine arts, and he originally set out to become an architect and interior decorator.