July 25, 1938

oe Shaw resigns as personal secretary to his brother, Mayor Frank Shaw, and elopes to Reno with Buelah M. Fuller of the mayor's secretarial staff. Curiously enough, Joe Shaw is identified as a lieutenant, which I haven't encountered before. Perhaps it refers to his former rank in the Navy. "I have never fully agreed with your expressed desire that I remain an attache of your office during the recent period when heaven and earth have been moved by political malcontents and enemies to find fault with you because of my presence on your staff," Joe Shaw wrote. "For me to ask to be relieved of service under these conditions has been repugnant to both of us alike, for, whatever the personal desires might be in the premises, they would be distorted and misunderstood by political critics sadly lacking in their makeups any sense of American fair play. "In spite of their slander, you have continued to repose confidence in me and I cannot adequately put in words what this loyalty has meant to me, especially because of our relationship and in the light of my unblemished record in the United States Navy for 25 years prior to becoming your secretary.... "It seems a curious commentary upon human nature that a small group of gossips would assume that they could convince any considerable proportion of the people of Los Angeles that a man trained as I had been for 25 years in the code of an officer of the United States Navy could be capable of the actions that have  been charged against me by innuendo. "I now resume my status as a private citizen. As a private citizen I shall be at liberty to answer the slander that has been directed toward me." Email me