The Press: Annie Under the Gun

“Looks quiet,” said White House Press Secretary Jim Hagerty to his associate, Mrs. Anne Williams Wheaton, before leaving on a ten-day vacation. “Let’s keep it that way.” Hagerty had barely arrived in Puerto Rico when Sputnik 11 shattered the lull at the White House. Annie Wheaton’s first week under the gun as acting press secretary was Ike’s busiest in months.

For silver-haired Anne Wheaton (age: “past 60”), it meant a succession of grueling, twelve-hour days, with twice-daily press briefings punctuated by countless queries from individual newsmen. Since she does not have Hagerty’s firsthand knowledge of top-level decisions, the answers often involved some digging, as well as canny hedging in a time of rapidly shifting events. By week’s end a lot of paper had flowed through the mimeograph, but Annie still looked fresh, good-humored and full of bounce.

A longtime newshen and onetime legislative reporter for the Albany Knickerbocker Press, Pressagent Wheaton had been women’s publicity director for the Republican National Committee for 18 years when she became the first woman press aide in White House history (TIME, April 15). A divorcee, she is as skillful with the skillet (specialty: corn pudding and fried chicken) as the handout. In her most critical task last week, she showed cucumber-cool efficiency in getting out advance texts of Ike’s speech at precisely the promised hour (two hours before TV time), even looked serene as she distributed copies one by one to a mob of 50 milling newsmen. Says she: “I am not a panic person.”