By Ralph “Deak” Morse (New Hampshire Profiles, with Shoreliner Magazine, January 1953)

One of Webster’s definitions for the word “pebble” is, “a gem occurring in the form of pebbles.” When it is used as a nickname or alias for Rachel Adams, wife of the chief assistant to the next President of the United States, it is THE definition as far as her friends and acquaintances are concerned.

The Great Definer has nothing whatsoever derogatory to say about the word pebble. If he had, the friends and even chance acquaintances of “The Pebble” Adams would probably get his big book banned and there would be mass burnings of the same.

The woman whom Sherman Adams married not quite thirty years ago acquired her new nickname this past fall when she and her husband were riding the “whistle stopper” that took candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower on his stumping tour of the country. Newsmen, seeing in Adams some of the traits they attributed to Franconia Notch’s famed Old Man of the Mountains, began calling him “The Rock.” In a matter of minutes, Rachel had been christened “The Pebble.”

Governor Adams plummeted into the national spotlight about the time the New Hampshire primary of last March was getting hot and he has stayed pretty much in it ever since. It took the campaign trail to make Rachel Adams the subject of copy for national magazines and the great metropolitan dailies. Having now “discovered” a truly fine woman, the national press may possibly devote to her more printed footage than they will give the Lincoln Lumberjack.

We don’t know of anybody who would claim the Adams’ to be spotlight seekers. The reverse is the Gospel truth. In fact, there is a story making the rounds that on election night, a pretty important one in his career, Sherman Adams had gone to bed at midnight, confident that his man was “in.” He very well and very properly could have stuck around with other Eisenhower lieutenants and got onto TV screens and into the newspapers and magazines.

To quote a Biblical passage, “Thou hast eyes to see with but thou dost not see,” if you haven’t already read some pretty favorable press on “The Pebble.”

This story, like the traditional bride, will have about it “something old, something new, something borrowed” but most assuredly nothing blue. Blue, or anything smacking of the blues, would be entirely out of character for Rachel Adams, who a few years back, was given the honor of being named New Hampshire’s Mother of the Year.

“Adamsdotes” Widely Publicized

Some of the stories that have been published for the country-wide consumption have been lavishly decorated with Adams anecdotes, or Adamsdotes, as some of the newsmen term them. We know a few others, but it is not our intention to go hauling these “skeletons” out of the family closet. Most of them were come by in confidence. These Adamsdotes have painted the retiring Governor as a man who inhales live fire and exhales brimstone. In that respect, Adams is supposed to be something like his new chief, who can explode violently for a moment and be entirely over it in the next. “The Rock” has boundless energy, and whatever he tackles, he goes into all over. Like trying to get into the 80’s the first year he played golf. This energy keeps him constantly busy. He can’t abide incompetence in people that are supposed to be competent; no less than 100 percent effort, since he, himself, puts in not one iota less.

The best Rachel-Sherm stories are those dealing with little family incidents. A national weekly tells the one about Mrs. Adams using as filling for his sandwiches one day quantities of laundry soap to cure him of complaining about the contents. We have never heard this story confirmed nor denied in official circles. It has been going around for some time. But it may have been built up in the telling. For instance, Concord Monitor columnist Leon Anderson solemnly swears the story is in error. Then he adds, it wasn’t laundry soap at all. It was cotton batting! Usually, reliable sources say that even Andy was incorrect. It was string!

Sense of Humor

Whether the stories are true or not they are given credence by those who know Rachel Adams because you need to know her less than five minutes to be convinced she is a “pebble” with a lot of character. And a wonderful sense of humor. Mrs. Adams’ Christmas card creation one year was a fine little parody on the fight the legislature was about to undertake on whether the official state bird should be the Chickadee or the New Hampshire breed of hen. It sparkled with humor, was well drawn, and was highly complimented.

Some months later, when Candidate Eisenhower had become President-Elect Eisenhower, the news magazines were speculating on the role Mr. Adams would have in the new administration. One of them peered into its crystal ball and came up with the Postmaster Generalship.

A wag called Mrs. Adams, told her about the prediction, and quipped: “How about it? Do I get my stamps wholesale now?”

“I can’t make any promises along those lines,” came the response. “But how about a nice Postmastership? It probably could be fixed up,” she continued quickly, “so you could get the one at Success.”

Success, your last census report will show you, is a New Hampshire township with a population of a neat, round zero!

They say it takes a woman to judge a woman. Granted that is so, Mrs. Adams does very well by the stiff standards set by her own sex. As reference to that fact, a female writer for the North American Newspaper Alliance turned out a column a few weeks ago which was a patent “rave notice” for Mrs. Adams. The writer, it almost seemed, was a little startled that the claws of her sisters were in a completely relaxed position when another woman, in this case Mrs. Adams, was the subject of conversation.

The fashion editors will perhaps be a little bit disappointed in Rachel Adams. She is no clothes horse. She does not spend endless hours planning her wardrobe. She dresses modestly and smartly—and sometimes, when she has her mind on some chore, indifferently. And she still looks wonderful.

Proper Washingtonians would be shocked had they been in Concord on a few rare occasions when “The Pebble” decided in some haste she had to leave the lakeside place at Webster, where the Adams’ have resided since he became Governor, and roll into Concord. She wore a checkered shirt and trousers. Trousers, not slacks. If trousers bore such words, they’d have said “His” and not “Hers,” if you must have it spelled out. If nothing else, it goes to prove he doesn’t wear the pants in the Adams family all the time.

It is no secret that Washington holds no great attraction for the Adams’. They quit it once when they could have stayed. They prefer the smell of New Hampshire apple blossoms in the spring, of freshly cut hay in the summer, the sight of the Granite State’s gaudy fall foliage, and of the snow kicking up back of their skis in the winter, to anything that any city has to offer. That goes for entree into the highest diplomatic circles, too.

You know how well the athletic Adams’ feel about New Hampshire by what their son, Sam, youngest of four children, said when his father first became Governor. Sam was asked whether he would prefer to follow his parents to Concord or finish his school year in their old home town of Lincoln.

“I’ll stay here,” said Sam, now a St. Paul’s student, as he looked up to the mountains with their rich mantle of snow. “After all, the ground down that way is so flat it does not lend itself to winter sports.”

Voluntary Interference

There’s an old proverb that goes: “A rolling stone gathers no moss.”

Take just a little bit of poetic license, to suit this story, and you could make it read “The rolling rock has gathered no moss.”

“The Rock” Adams has by no stretch of the imagination gathered much moss. He would be the first, we’re sure, to attribute a large measure of his success to the fact that for three decades a bouncy “Pebble” has always at least followed closely in his wake; more often than not she has figuratively and literally maintained his pace, and on occasions has, in football terminology, run a little voluntary interference for him.

Busy as Rachel Adams has been during most of her life, she probably kept “on the go” at a longer and faster pace than ever before during the recent presidential campaign. In a letter to friends back in New Hampshire she said, “…to be perfectly frank, I am somewhat in the same fix as Harry Truman—I seldom know where I’m going next, I sometimes don’t know where I am when I get there, and I find it hard to remember where I’ve been. We have been in so many lovely cities, but we are on a strict time schedule and really have seen very little of the passing countryside.”

She also wrote glowingly concerning the spontaneous reception which Mrs. Eisenhower was receiving wherever they went. The Adams’ sense of humor especially appreciated a remark made by an obviously refined onlooker on a crowded sidewalk which the Eisenhower’s were to pass. In describing the incident Rachel wrote, “One thing that I did hear that was straight from a lady’s mouth, a very nice looking lady, looking very concerned as the first of the motorcade passed. She said very audibly, ‘Hell’s bells! I missed Mamie.'”

IN SPITE OF THE FACT that Rachel and “Sherm” Adams are now a part of the Washington whirl, their thoughts often turn to New Hampshire and its rural solitude and beauty.

Politics being what they are, Sherman Adams isn’t the “cherce” of all the people when it comes to a popularity contest. But we have yet to find a single individual who isn’t a red-hot member of the Rachel Adams booster club. It just seems she’s universally popular and respected.

If Diogenes ever blows out his lantern, finding that honest man he’s been seeking down through the ages, somebody ought to rekindle it and try to find an individual who is less than 100 per cent enthusiastic of “The Pebble.”

That would assure the lantern becoming an eternal flame, matching in effervescence, the personality of “The Pebble” or, to use a definition of the Great Definer, “A gem occurring in the form of a pebble.”

NOTES

1. Morse, Ralph (“Deak”). “Profile of Rachel Adams.” New Hampshire Profiles (with Shoreliner Magazine), January 1953.