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109 pages

English

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Fake Smiles is a graceful, moving and reflective memoir of a contentious fatherson relationship set against the backdrop of the Eisenhower and Nixon eras. The father–William P. Rogers–was attorney general in the Eisenhower administration and secretary of state in the Nixon administration, a period of dramatic change from post-war stability to the turmoil of the sixties. The author–Tony Rogers–the shy, introspective oldest son of the Rogers family marched against the Vietnam War while his dad was heading the State Department, played guitar in rock and jazz bands, built ham radios, spent two summers working on farms and had no appetite to "get ahead" which was his hard-driving and competitive father's constant mantra. Gradually and with great difficulty, father and son learned to accept each other. Always candid, never sparing himself, Tony Rogers–an award winning novelist and short story writer–recounts what the difficult time and that difficult relationship were like.

The famous and infamous were frequent visitors to the Rogers household. Richard Nixon often stopped for drinks after playing golf at Burning Tree, Robert Frost came to thank Bill Rogers for his help in getting Ezra Pound out of St. Elizabeths mental hospital, and the Red-baiting senator Joseph McCarthy tried to teach Tony how to box in the family living room.

The record of an unorthodox life and a hard-won father-son relationship, Fake Smiles is an uncommonly literate, personal history that reveals fresh insights into a pivotal and still influential era of contemporary American history.

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Biography

Autobiography

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Publié par	eBookIt.com
Date de parution	10 février 2017
Nombre de lectures	1
EAN13	9780991452347
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

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Fake Smiles
Tony Rogers

T IDE P OOL P RESS
Cambridge, Massachusetts

Copyright © 2017 by Tony Rogers
Published in eBook format in 2017 by TidePool Press
Converted by http://www.eBookIt.com
ISBN 978-0-9914-5234-7
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission.
TidePool Press
6 Maple Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139
www.tidepoolpress.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rogers, Tony 1940-
Fake Smiles
p.cm.
ISBN 978-0-9914523-2-3
1. Rogers, Tony, Cambridge, Massachusetts—United States—Biography 2. Memoir 3. Politics—Washington, D.C. 4. Writing
I. Title.
2016954985

William P. Rogers with Tony, 1944

To my parents
ADELE LANGSTON ROGERS
August 15, 1911-May 27, 2001
WILLIAM P. ROGERS
June 23, 1913-January 2, 2001

AUTHOR’S NOTE
Because of the passage of time, I have recreated some dialogue and altered some chronology.
CONTENTS
eBook Cover
Title Page
PROLOGUE: 1968
CHAPTER ONE: Competition
CHAPTER TWO: Girls
CHAPTER THREE: Ham Radio
CHAPTER FOUR: Ping-Pong
CHAPTER FIVE: Dale
CHAPTER SIX: The Rhythm Rockers Go To Europe
CHAPTER SEVEN: I Meet John Coltrane
CHAPTER EIGHT: Sometimes You Have To Yell
CHAPTER NINE: Plato
CHAPTER TEN: Mowing
CHAPTER ELEVEN: Heartland
CHAPTER TWELVE: Plowing
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Europe
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: The Law
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Paris
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Paris II
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Assassinations
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: Odd Jobs
CHAPTER NINETEEN: Jeff Joins The Navy
CHAPTER TWENTY: Secretary Of State
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: Violence
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: Exit State
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: Fake Smiles
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: Strong Women
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: Essences
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: The William P. Rogers Building
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: The Norfolk Historical Society Museum
AUTHOR’S POSTSCRIPT
PROLOGUE
1968
AT THE DINNER TABLE. A few weeks after Nixon won the presidency.
“How could voters be so stupid?” I demanded. I was twenty-eight and passionately anti-Nixon, even though he and Dad were friends.
“Calm down,” Dad said. “He’s going to be president. There is nothing you can do about it.”
“God help us.”
“Wait and see. Dick may surprise you. He’s worked his whole life for this and knows what’s at stake.”
“Will he offer you a position in his administration?” Richard Nixon was Dad’s longtime political ally. Dad had been attorney general when Nixon was vice president. He and Nixon golfed together on weekends and often came to our house for a drink afterward.
“I doubt it.”
“Why not? You work well together.”
“He knows I’m happy practicing law.”
“What if he does offer you a position?”
“I’ll thank him very much and tell him I’m not interested.”
Mother spoke from her end of the table, her voice a symphony of support. “You’d do such a good job for him, Bill.”
“Adele, you know I don’t want to be in government again.”
“But you’d be great.” Great was one of Mother’s favorite words. She said it like Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes Tony the Tiger, a cartoon character who split the word into two syllables and growled the first— Grrrr-rate!
Me and my big mouth. “Will Dean Rusk stay on as secretary of state? He’s been terrible on the war. Does he honestly believe if we don’t defeat the communists in Vietnam they’ll land in San Diego?”
“I’m sure Dick will want someone new in that position.”
I was a Harvard Law School graduate. I had practiced law on Wall Street for a year before moving to Paris, where I worked at a boys school and wrote bad fiction. I had just returned to the States married to a Spanish Basque woman I barely knew and was driving a cab to support my writing habit. I was writing in our Arlington, Virginia, apartment on Saturday morning when Dad called. His voice lacked the combative edge it often had with me. He skipped the preliminaries. “Tony, it’s Dad.”
“Hi, Dad.”
“I hope you’ll be gentler on me than you were on Dean Rusk, because I’m going to be the next secretary of state.”
I was too stunned to think, then more thoughts ran through my mind than my brain could process. Dad will be working for a president I despise. Dad will be one of the people running a war I hate. What would this do to my relationship with him, which was already rocky?
“I don’t know what to say. I’m in shock.”
“Me too,” he said.
“Did you know this was coming?”
“No. Dick’s offer came out of the blue.”
“Wow.”
“Wish me luck.”
“Of course. You’ll be great.”
“Thanks. I have to call your siblings now.”
“Okay. Congratulations, Dad.”
I hung up and stood by the window looking out at busy Lee Highway. Cars streamed by as if nothing had changed. I had trouble breathing.
I decided, then and there, that I would stay out of the Washington fishbowl as much as possible while still being supportive of Dad. When he was attorney general in the Eisenhower administration, I had gone through the usual teenage struggles of establishing an independent identity, which had been made harder by his position. Every time I argued with him—which I did frequently about almost everything—he held the trump card of not only being my father, but also being attorney general. Who was I to argue with the attorney general of the United States? Now he’d hold an even higher position, upping the ante. To Dad’s credit, he never played the trump card. He didn’t have to.
His appointment was announced on Wednesday. Headlines in the papers, leading story on the nightly news. My name and the names of my three siblings at the tail end of the print stories. “Sons and daughter of … .”
On the lighter side, I could safely bet I’d be the only cab driver whose father was secretary of state.
Nixon assumed office on January 20, 1969, and to my surprise the Republic did not fall, nor did I revert to the days I felt totally eclipsed by Dad. What did change was my access to the secretary of state. I could harangue him in his house, by his pool, in his limo.
CHAPTER ONE
Competition
WHEN I WAS NINE, our family moved to Bethesda, Maryland, so that Dad could become counsel to a Senate Investigating Committee, which is when he got to know a new member of the House of Representatives, Richard Nixon. Washington then was a sleepy Southern town with one industry, the federal government. The Washington Post covered government gossip the way Variety and Billboard covered entertainment gossip, the ins and outs of Washington insiders apparently being of utmost importance to the survival of the Republic. We moved into a three-story, four-bedroom house on three-quarters acre of land. The large front yard sloped down to winding Glenbrook Road. In the summer, when the heat and humidity rose and the trees were in full bloom, there was a languorous feeling on the street, an atmosphere of delicious asphyxiation, as if one couldn’t get enough oxygen by breathing but would be perfectly fine as long as one didn’t move.
Family roles were beginning to be set among us four children. The oldest, my sister Dale, was the doer and joiner of the family. I, the second child and oldest son, had been shy all my life and was showing signs of becoming a loner. Jeff, the second son, quiet and amiable, was unmolded clay. Doug, the youngest, was just plain nice. There was a nine-year age gap between Dale and Doug.

The Rogers children from a 1951 Christmas card (left to right) Doug, Jeff, Tony and Dale
Dale and I lived across a hall from each other on the third floor. Jeff and Doug lived on the second floor, as did our parents. The family ate dinners together. Mother did the cooking, we kids the cleanup.
Three years after the family moved into the house, newly-elected President Dwight Eisenhower appointed my father deputy attorney general. It was business as usual that evening for the Rogers household. “Do we still have to do the clean up?” I mock groaned, drying a plate after dinner.
“Yes, dear,” Mother said. A regal, black-haired woman with a high forehead, she never raised her voice, never swore. Her harshest words, reserved for those rare occasions when she was beside herself with rage, were “hell’s bells.”
“A maid doesn’t come with the job?” I wasn’t serious for a minute.
“Dummy,” Jeff said. “Everyone knows that.”
“He wasn’t serious,” Dale said.
“What’s the use of being deputy attorney general if you don’t get a maid?” I insisted.

William P. Rogers served as deputy attorney general from 1953-1957. In this photo Rogers is sworn in as attorney general on November 11, 1957 as the family looks on. (Left to right) William P. Rogers, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Chief Justice Earl Warren
“Stop it,” Dale said. “I know you’re not serious.”
I quit, but not without grumbling, “I hate drying dishes.”
“We are very fortunate,” Mother said to us. “We have a lovely house and Dad has a wonderful new job. We are much more fortunate than many. Be grateful.”
“Can we at least get a dishwasher?”
“When it’s not an extravagance. Now finish up and go do your homework.”
We dried the last of the dishes, put them away and were about to disperse when Mother reminded us, “The photographer from Parade will be here tomorrow. Dress appropriately.”
Our picture appeared a few weeks later on the cover of Parade magazine, the Sunday supplement which reached millions of newspaper readers in those days. Dad was a photogenic example of the young men Eisenhower was choosing for his administration. We stood in the front yard for the picture. The family hadn’t yet perfected its posed smiles, but my father looked movie-star handsome, my mother tall and serene with a genuinely warm smile. Later, after the mailing list for the family Christmas card grew to number in the thousands and after we had been photographed for numerous magazines and newspapers, our posed smiles became perfected, and you couldn’t tell the real from the fake. But at the time of the Parade cover, we were novices.
I received fan mail after the picture appeared. Ei