Lorena Alice "Hick" Hickok (March 7, 1893 – May 1, 1968) was a pioneering American journalist and devoted friend and mentor to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. After an unhappy and unsettled childhood, Hickok found success as a reporter for the Minneapolis Tribune and the Associated Press (AP), becoming America's best-known female reporter by 1932. After covering Franklin D. Roosevelt's first presidential campaign, Hickok struck up a close relationship with the soon-to-be First Lady, and travelled with her extensively. The nature of their relationship has been widely debated, especially after 3000 of their mutual letters were discovered, confirming physical intimacy (Hickok was known to be a lesbian). The closeness of their relationship compromised Hickok's objectivity, leading her to resign from the AP and work as chief investigator for the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA). She later promoted the 1939 New York World's Fair, and then served as executive secretary of the Women's Division of the Democratic National Committee, living mostly at the White House, where Hickok had a conjoining room with the First Lady. Hickok was the author of several books. Early life and career Lorena Alice Hickok was born on March 7, 1893, in East Troy, Wisconsin, the daughter of Addison J. Hickok (1860–1932), a dairy farmer who specialized in making butter, and Anna Hickok (née Anna Adelia Wiate, d. 1906). She had two sisters, Ruby Adelsa (later Ruby Claff, 1896–1971) and Myrtle. Her childhood was hard; her father was an alcoholic and was not consistently employed. When Lorena was 10 years old, the family moved to Bowdle, South Dakota, where in 1906, when Lorena was 13 years old, her mother, Anna, died of a stroke. In 1908, two years after his wife's passing, Addison married Emma Flashman, a divorcee who had worked as a housekeeper for the family after Anna's passing. Lorena's relationship with Addison was not a good one, he having been abusive and neglectful towards her, and he did not come to her defense when Emma forced her out of the family home. Having lost support from her father, 14-year-old Lorena worked variously as a housekeeper for an Irish family, in a boarding house infested with mice, in a rooming house for railroad workers on the edge of town, and in a farm kitchen. During her time at the rooming house, Hickok was forced to barricade her door with a chair so that male visitors to the