Recollections of Full Years

As ambitious as her husband, William Howard Taft, Helen Herron may be the most underrated of all our First Ladies. She encouraged Taft in all his political accomplishments and he may not have become president without her. He preferred the judiciary and eventually became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

Helen (Nellie) Taft was the first wife of a president to ride down Pennsylvania Avenue with her husband on inauguration day and the only woman who was wife of both a president and a chief justice. She is best known for working with the wife of the Japanese Ambassador to import and plant more than 3,000 cherry trees around the Washington Tidal Basin.

Witty, intelligent, open-minded, and curious about the world, she is even today beloved in the Philippines, where her husband served as head of the civil government in 1900. She and her husband courted criticism for including Filipinos in social affairs.

In this volume, available for the first time for e-readers, she recounts her full life as partner to U.S. President William Howard Taft.