Never before had a departing member of a President's cabinet been ushered out with such fanfare. In the White House Conference Room, President Eisenhower and Mrs. Oveta Gulp Hobby, 50, the first U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, sat before the television cameras. Mrs. Hobby, dressed in a brown and white silk redingote, blinked back tears as the President recalled their first meeting in London in 1942, when Oveta was commander of the WAAC (later the WAC). Said the President: "Well, Oveta, this is a sad day for the Administration ... I assure you none of us will forget . . . the warm heart you brought to your job as well as your talents. We are just distressed to lose you." He reddened as Mrs. Hobby, her voice breaking, replied: "I truly feel that God has had His hand on the United States in the kind of leadership you have given us."
Second to Go. The only woman in the Eisenhower Cabinet and the second woman Cabinet member in U.S. history* had stepped down. She was only the second Cabinet member to quit since Eisenhower took office 30 months ago. The first was the only other Democrat in the Cabinet, Secretary of Labor Martin Durkin, who resigned in September 1953.
Prim, trim Oveta Hobby had done a good job of gathering a straggle of federal agencies interested in health, education and welfare into one new Cabinet department. Just a few days before she resigned, Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey called her "the best man in the Cabinet." But Oveta Hobby will probably be best remembered for her mistakes. Her department showed a lack of foresight in the Salk polio vaccine program, and even after the furor erupted, Mrs. Hobby insisted that "no one could have foreseen the great acclaim" for the vaccine.
Two to Texas. But Oveta Hobby did not quit under fire. Last winter she decided to leave Washington to be with her ailing, 77-year-old husband, William Pettus Hobby, onetime (1917-21) Governor of Texas, and to take executive control of their Houston Post from his hands. She delayed resigning until the clamor over the Salk vaccine had diminished.
As Mrs. Hobby's successor, President Eisenhower appointed Under Secretary of the Treasury Marion B. Folsom, a businessman and a Republican, who designed and implemented a private-industry social-security program before Franklin
Roosevelt's New Deal, has been an expert on social-security policy and law for nearly 30 years, and who seems ideally fitted for his new job (see box). Promoted to Folsom's post at the Treasury was Horace Chapman Rose, 48, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury and former Cleveland corporation lawyer. An old Ohio neighbor and business associate of George Humphrey, "Chappie" Rose will continue to work closely with his boss in the taciturn, no-nonsense manner that has brought him recognition since he was secretary to Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in 1931-32.