Photograph inscribed to his personal secretary Grace Tully.

[Likely Hyde Park, , before 1940]. A relaxed Roosevelt, presented to his long-term secretary Inscribed to Grace Tully: "For Grace from Franklin D. Roosevelt [arrow in Roosevelt's hand to someone taking notes] not you!". Tully along with Marguerite LeHand was Roosevelt's principal secretary during his years as president. The photograph shows a relaxed and jovial FDR, taken sometime during his second term and likely at his Hyde Park residence in the Hudson Valley. The condition of his legs is clearly discernible beneath the trousers - an aspect of his condition he normally took pains to conceal. Just as visible is the mole over FDR's left eye, which he had removed in 1940, and which some biographers speculate might have been a melanoma. The use of female secretaries broke with tradition, with all prior presidential secretaries men. But LeHand's connection with FDR went back to 1920, before his polio attack, and she was a consistent and loyal companion through the gruelling early years of his recovery. Tully's tenure dated from his 1928 campaign for governor of New York. When he won the presidency in 1932, Roosevelt had no hesitation about bringing these two loyal, trusted, and discreet assistants - both Irish Catholics from humble, working-class origins - into his inner circle at the White House. Tully "occupied a front row seat at momentous events as secretary and friend to the man she called 'the Boss'. To her, he had dictated letters to kings and to generals, manuscripts for his radio fireside chats and such historical speeches as the one he delivered to Congress on Dec. 8, 1941, asking for a declaration of war against Japan" (New York Times obituary, 16 June 1984). Tully recorded in her memoir "Franklin Delano Roosevelt was my boss for nearly seventeen years. In that span of time - final years for him - I watched him emerge from the twilight zone of poliomyelitis convalescence to move from one political stage to another one, until he reached the summit of authority as President of the United States... I watched him pull the country out of our great depression and I watched him lead us to the threshold of victory in our greatest war... I long ago knew that it was my good fortune to work for a man of straightforward simplicity, courage, passion and honest - one of the great souls of history" (Tully, pp. 1-2). 249 x 202 mm, mounted, framed, and glazed. Creasing at corners, very good. Grace G. Tully, F.D.R., My Boss, 1949.