WILSON, 28th, 1913-21

Thomas Woodrow Wilson had iron-gray hair, a determined thrust of jaw and slate-blue eyes behind glittering, rimless glasses. Physically he was thin, weak and ugly. His ugliness obsessed him. His face was out of proportion, there was too much below the eyeglasses, too little above. He had a beaked nose, protuberant ears, and a loose, meaty upper lip. When he sent a photograph to a friend he remarked, "It is an excellent likeness, not one whit uglier than I was when it was taken."

He never smoked, but decay had mottled his teeth; so that when he smiled, patches of yellow, brown and blue with glints of gold were exhibited. On his face was a habitual astringence but he could suddenly confront a person or a camera with a momentary expression of lover-like understanding and affection.

Colonel Edward M. House recorded in his diary: "I think I never knew a man whose general appearance changed so much from hour to hour. It is not the President's face alone that changes. He is one of the most difficult and complex characters I have ever known." According to Sigmund Freud, his single consistent trait was a hatred of nearly all men on earth. He did, in fact, greatly love himself always.

All his life he kept insisting on his "intensity" and his "strong passions." But at the age of twenty-eight he was almost certainly a virgin. His pleasures were all connected with the use of his mouth.

"Men of ordinary physique and discretion," wrote Wilson in 1908, "cannot be President and live, if the strain be not somehow relieved." Wilson's handshake was described as a ten-cent pickled mackerel in brown paper.

His career as a lawyer is quickly recounted: he never had a client.

He did not learn the alphabet until he was nine and could not read until he was twelve. It is likely that he had dyslexia. No President since Wilson has written his own speeches. He composed his speeches on a Multiplex typewriter.

Wilson enjoyed being President. He was driven around in his car by his secret agents to apprehend speeders. Wilson asked the Attorney General if he had the power to give speeding tickets. He was told No.

Wilson suffered a catastrophic, disabling stroke in September 1919. Wilson's condition was hidden from his Cabinet, from the Vice President and, of course, from the public. The man who lived on was a pathetic invalid, a querulous old man full of rage and tears, hatred and self-pity. He remained, in title, President of the United States until March 4, 1921; but during the last eighteen months of his administration, his wife Edith, was in large measure the chief executive of the United States. Edith Boling Galt became regent. She has been called the first Lady President.

Wilson was dependent upon women to an extraordinary degree. He established the national observance of Mother's Day and women received the right to vote with the passing of the 19th amendment in 1920.

The only President buried in Washington, DC, his last word was "Edith." He died in his sleep.

d. February 3, 1924 (Washington, DC) at 67 of paralysis and stroke.