WOMEN: Martha & Bob

In William Howard Taft’s gay, leisurelyWashington of 1910, Martha Wheaton Bowers, 19, Minnesota-born daughterof the U.S. Solicitor General, was a brown-eyed debutante whose beautydemurely covered a formidable character and a brilliant,Sorbonne-trained mind. At a White House dance she caught the eye of thePresident’s youngest son, Robert Alphonso Taft, who, though only around-eyed senior home from Yale, had the wisdom to fall totally,silently in love with her and had the mettle to persist until shemarried him two years later. For the next 39 years, the union of thesetwo, a warm, affectionate joining of man and wife, increasingly came tobe the soul and brains of Regular Republicanism, like no similar forcesince the glamorous Jessie Benton helped Husband John Fremont found theparty in 1856 and become its first presidential candidate.

At first Martha Taft’s personal talents were obscured by her disciplinedsupport of her husband’s life. Going with him back to the land of theTafts in Cincinnati, she ran the chicken and asparagus farm theyeconomically bought out in the Indian Hill section (“The only thing weever did that turned out to be fashionable”), kept his store-boughtsuits mended, bore him four sons, whom she later taught golf, andworked for the various civic enterprises (hospitals, art museum, zoo,symphony association) founded by city-serving Tafts. Only with Marthacould Bob, the diligent public figure with a secret sense of humor,talk out the decisions by which he built the city’s biggest law firmand worked as a state senator to reform the notoriously corrupt localG.O.P. He tried for the U.S. Senate in the New Deal heyday of 1938after Martha summarized the situation: “It’s now or never, Bob.”

Wife’s Mission. The Tafts became a team, she sticking to women’s groupsand sometimes delivering ten talks a day. In her old Dodge one night,she skidded to avoid hitting a dog, rolled over three times, went on tothe scheduled meeting. “Anyway, that probably got us the S.P.C.A.vote,” she quipped. Upset Democrats credited Bob’s Senate victory toMartha, who angrily retorted that they were just trying to belittle himagain. But the Cleveland Press got it about right in a 1938 headline:BOB AND MARTHA WIN.

While Bob Taft’s logical mind became the main barrier to New and FairDeal excesses, Martha’s dry wit (“To err is

Truman”) became a much-quoted weapon against Democrats and the voter’sbest invitation to understand Taft (“Most people think Bob is austere,but he’s just departmentalized”).

Spartan Devotion. One night during his tough 1950 campaign forre-election to the Senate, Bob drove’ home from a radio station to findMartha crumpled on the floor, felled by a paralytic stroke whilelistening to his speech. While he campaigned mechanically, tirelesslyto victory, he eagerly nursed Martha, forever shopping for somethingshe might enjoy and regularly reading the morning and evening papers toher. In 1952 she persuaded him to make his third try for the Republicanpresidential nomination, used her unparalyzed hand to cut out usefulclippings, followed the opposition’s radio and TV moves, dictated hercustomary dozens of vote-getting letters and painfully signed them.Supremely unaffected by doctor’s orders, she flew to the Chicagoconvention, dauntless as ever in his final defeat by Dwight Eisenhower.

Martha worried in April of 1953 when Bob, unable to prevent a limp,admitted that his hip had been hurting. Bob worried, too, but kept itto himself. Spartan as ever in their game of mutual selflessness,though doctors had decided that his cancer was incurable, Bob saidnothing and cheerfully pushed her wherever she wanted to go in herwheelchair. Only 48 hours before his painful death in July did he tellher the truth, and she met the worst unflinching. In silent grief sheburied him at the new cemetery beside Cincinnati’s Indian Hill Church,organized her life so as not to burden her children. She helped planthe Taft memorial carillon now completed near the Capitol, moved backto Washington for a while “to keep in touch.” Last week in Cincinnati,Martha Taft died and was buried beside her husband.