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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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and Ida - were elderly spinsters. They all lived together as one family - Joe, his three sisters and Emma's husband. They had a big house in Washington and had always lived together. Joe had never married. His two sisters had never married. At Pittsburgh they lived in their father's house the way they always had as children. It was a typical old fashioned close family. I discovered that Donald Smith had been very, very useful to the Guffey “girls” socially. Ida and Pauletta had nobody to take them out when they were invited, as they were entitled to be invited. Joe Guffey insisted that Ida and Pauletta and Emma, all three of them, be on the diplomatic lists, be on the lists for every official party, that all three of them were to be regarded as the Senator's hostesses, and that all three of them be asked to every party that a Senator's wife would be invited to. He would call up an embassy and protest if they weren't invited to a reception or whatever it was that was being held. I think he finally compromised so that he wouldn't take but one of them to a dinner to which he was invited. Either Pauletta or Ida went to the dinner to which he was invited. He alternated them - first one and then the other.





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