Biography

Lillian Rogers Parks was born on February 1, 1897. She was a writer, known for Backstairs at the White House (1979) and Inside the White House (1996). She was married to Wheatley Parks. She died on November 6, 1997 in Washington, District of Columbia, USA.

Her mother was Staff member (chief maid) Margaret 'Maggie' Rogers who served for 30 years (1909-1939), during the administrations of Taft, Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, and part of Franklin D. Roosevelt's. Lillian Rogers Parks worked as a seamstress from 1931-1961, during the administrations of Coolidge, Hoover, Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower. She was married briefly to Wheatley Parks. She had polio as a child and walked with crutches into adulthood which perhaps gave her and Franklin D. Roosevelt a special bond. She collaborated on the book 'My Thirty Years Backstairs at the White House' with Frances Spatz Leighton, chronicling her years working at the White House and going back to childhood recollections of being in the White House when her mother started working there.

Younger brother Emmett served in and was gassed during World War I, thereafter living in Arizona for his health.

Biography in: "American National Biography". Supplement 1, pp. 471-472. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.