Dear Mr. President

       More Letters From Paradise
          Dear Mr. President
The President of the United States receives a ton of letters each day. It all began when Washington received just five letters a day, and he answered them all. And as time went on, later Presidents began to receive more and more letters. When McKinley became President he was being sent one hundred letters a day. It was just too much. And so the mailroom was born.

Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke to Americans on his radio "Fireside Chats" during the Great Depression. He urged people to write to him with their troubles. A half-million letters arrived the first week after his talk. The White House mail room became a fire hazard.

The Office of Presidential Correspondence called "O.P.C." by those who work there.
It consists of 50 staff members,36 interns and a rotating roster of 300 volunteers to keep up with about 10,000 letters and messages every day.

In the White House mailroom 10 young well-dressed young men and women interns would reach into the pile of letters and begin to read. Choosing which letters made it to President Obama. When President Obama came into office he wanted to read his mail. He said he would like to read 10 letters a day. These final 10 letters were put in a purple folder and added to the back of the briefing book he took with him to the residence on the second floor of the White House each night. He liked to read them after dinner. "Back from the OVAL" was what the stamp said on the letters Obama had read. They were returned in batches to O.P.C., and most had some kind of notation in the margins. Some letters he stewed over. Some letters he answered with his own hand.

Nixon refused to read anything bad said about him. Reagan answered dozens of letters on weekends. He enjoyed reading letters from kids. Clinton wanted to see a representative stack every few weeks. George W. Bush liked to get a pile of 10 already-answered letters on occasion.The question now is, what will President Trump do about the White House mail?
I am deeply in debt to Jeanne Marie Laskas  for her wonderful article "The Mailroom," in the New York times Magazine, January 22,2017

      Aloha
      Grant