Hers was the ONLY office with such a door. WebThe Role: Missy LeHand served as private secretary to President Roosevelt, and according to biographer Kathryn Smith, eventually served as Chief of Staff in all ways but in name. [4] In 1914, Mercer was hired by Eleanor Roosevelt to become her social secretary. She was an exquisitely sensitive and engaging companion and later a constant and competent nurse to a husband who doted on her. [12] Eleanor Roosevelt biographer Blanche Wiesen Cook expressed skepticism that this had been a serious obstacle, noting the depth of Mercer's feelings. Marguerite LeHand Her office also had a door leading to the garden, allowing unannounced visitors direct access to FDR when he didnt want their names showing up on the official White House registry. The affair lasted 20 years, according to some, and it was cataloged in a book written by FDR's son Elliott, who said the relationship was common knowledge. Eleanor did not enjoy or entirely approve of the bohemian lifestyle FDR was engaging in, fishing and drinking and frivolous pastimes, and so she spent little time onboard. [37][38] Finding Shoumatoff's unfinished preliminary watercolor among Franklin's possessions some time later however, she mailed it to Rutherfurd, to which Rutherfurd responded with a warm letter of thanks and condolences. Missy LeHand, Roosevelts longtime aide. He replied that no one did, but that ER, who was breathtakingly generous to those in need, often turned away from those who no longer needed her. FDR and ER, in contrast, battled endlessly to make America a more inclusive society at home and a force for democracy abroad. And what was the future First Lady who would champion female equality doing opposing woman suffrage? Her relationship with her mother-in-law was not one of constant hostility, but her patience with Sara was often tried. During the four years I spent with Franklin D. and Eleanor Roosevelt, I never stopped wondering at the imaginations of those two children of privilege who came to intuit hardship they had never endured. But many women worshiped FDRthe spunky Missy LeHand, the willfully spinsterish Daisy Suckley, the flirtatious Princess Martha of Norway, whose sexy high heels and stillunrationed black silk stockings the press gleefully reported. I discovered secrets I wanted to sweep under the rug. [2] Though they were both from wealthy, well-connected families, Mercer's parents lost their fortune through the Financial Panic of 1893 and subsequent great recession/depression which curtailed their lavish spending. WebThe Missy LeHand Archive, comprising some 1,400 pieces, is the most important grouping of original documents still in private hands from such a central figure in FDRs political and personal life. Another woman close to FDR was Princess Martha of Sweden, a royal who was forced to flee Scandinavia in 1941 after the Nazi invasion. Now closed to the public as part of the enlarged White House security zone, the Square has witnessed many historic moments over the last two centuries. FDR and Eleanor Roosevelts Children: Who Were They? Lucy Mercer could not have destroyed words written to her by one of the greatest men that ever livedto methe greatest, as she wrote his daughter after his death. His wife turned the White House over to a kitchen moralist who believed in plain food plainly prepared. Admirers sent the President wild game, of which he was particularly fond. That is undoubtedly true. At the time of their marriage, Eleanor's uncle Theodore Roosevelt joked that "there's nothing like keeping the name in the family." Though Ragni stgaard mentions summer visits from the President in her letters to Nikolai, FDR was at Hyde Park when the U-boat surfaced, says Kalllestein. Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd (ne Lucy Page Mercer; April 26, 1891 July 31, 1948) was an American woman who was best known for her affair with US president Franklin D. Roosevelt. "The Gatekeeper," Marguerite Missy LeHand and FDR at the White House, 1940. Although her official title as personal secretary was relatively humble, her power and influence were unparalleled. She was dubbed FDRs Right Hand Woman and when Eleanor traveled Missy would act as the hostess for dinners and other social events. 17:41 25 Nov 2012, updated 13:35 18 Sep 2014. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelts evolving relationship with African Americans challenged her beliefs about herselfand the world she had been raised in. [29] At his first memorable presidential inauguration on March 4, 1933, Roosevelt made arrangements for Rutherfurd to attend and witness his swearing-in. Rutherfurd and Shoumatoff, along with two female cousins, were sitting there as the artist worked on her painting of Roosevelt as he sat at a card table by the living room stone fireplace, fine-tuning a future speech and reading over some other papers on the early afternoon of April 12, 1945. At nearly the same hour, forty-three-year-old Marguerite A. Language links are at the top of the page across from the title. Yet after more than 10 years of marriage to a wife whom he would always respect and revere, he broke the rules of God and man and fell in love with another woman. Free subscription>>, Please consider a donation to help us keep this American treasure alive. Rutherfurd is portrayed by Maria Dizzia. }). During World War II, this couple of 40 years sometimes couldn't manage a conversation except through secretaries. and how much more must still be given this greedy world . It takes place during the June 1939 weekend that the British king and queen visited Roosevelt at his upstate New York cottage in Hyde Park, where FDR was said to take a number of mistresses. . Aware of Rutherfurd's role in her parents' early marriage, Anna was at first angry that her father had put her in such a difficult position. On June 4th, at a party in the White House, Missy collapsed, probably from a combination of a stroke and a heart attack. One Roosevelt son called her a lady to her fingertips. FDRs mother wrote to her daughter-in-law, Miss Mercer is here, she is so sweet and attractive and adores you, Eleanor. I could not believe FDR had sacrificed the complicated, redoubtable, and, in her youth, lovely ER for this saccharine Victorian clich. When I looked at their early prejudices, I saw signposts indicating how far they had traveled. When he returned in September, sick with pneumonia in both lungs, Eleanor discovered a packet of love letters from Mercer in his suitcase. Despite all of her work in helping bring FDRs dream of a presidential library to fruition, on June 30th, 1941, when it was dedicated, Missy was not there. Missy LeHand Schiff's biographer, Jeffrey Potter, claimed in his 1976 book, 'Men, Money and Magic: The Story of Dorothy Schiff,' that she admitted to having an affair with FDR between 1936 and 1943. The princess called Roosevelt by the nickname 'Dear Godfather,' and friends said they were very flirtatious towards one another. STill, if FDR could not save his wife, he did not have to betray her. If Lucy Mercer had been a weaker, less generous-spirited woman, FDR might not have become one of Americas greatest Presidents.) I wrote all this in the newspaper. She speaks of how much you have given . Readmore about the magazine >>, The magazine was forced to suspend print publication in 2013, but a group of volunteers saved the archives and relaunched it in digital form in 2017. Trusted Writing on History, Travel, and American Culture Since 1949. Their daughter Anna tells of one evening in the White House when her mother so infuriated her father with her insistence that he address a sheaf of papers this high during the 20 minutes permitted for two very small cocktails that he flung the entire stack across the room. She made other people happy. Her collapse actually occurred on June 4, 1941not on Christmas Eve and not with Martha present. One afternoon while I was touring Val-Kill, the cottage in Hyde Park that ER set up for herself after she had given up the house shed originally built with her friends Nancy Cook and Marion Dickerman, I asked a noted Roosevelt scholar if he knew the reason for the rupture. [34] When Eleanor discovered, shortly after Roosevelt's death, from some female cousins, of Anna's role in arranging these meetings, the relationship between Eleanor and Anna became strained and cool for some time. Her stress was a trigger for heart problems, say the series co-writers, adding that the medication LeHand took gave her mood swings, depression and anxiety. It was then that their relationship became more unconventional. [20] Winthrop Rutherfurd had proposed to socialite Consuelo Vanderbilt (18771964) in 1896, only to see her social-climbing mother instead force her into marriage with Charles Spencer-Churchill, 9th Duke of Marlborough (18711934) (cousin to later British prime minister Winston Churchill). At a time when interest in their war just keeps on rising, why arent Americas World War II poets better remembered? Could any husband, or any other human being, have healed ERs wounds? Franklin Delano Roosevelt [39], In 1947, Rutherfurd's sister Violetta committed suicide after her husband requested a divorce, and only a month later, on Christmas Day 1947, her mother Minnie died at age 84. Later, his two doctors - called in soon after the event - said he had suffered a fatal cerebral hemorrhage. He always enjoyed other peoples discomfort, Averell Harriman WebMissy LeHand was FDRs longtime personal secretary and confidante. WebThe Roosevelts were the ultimate power couple during the first half of the 20th century. She jogged into a car where the President was waiting behind the wheel. Mercer's friendship with Franklin Roosevelt was portrayed in the well-regarded TV mini-series Eleanor and Franklin, with Mercer portrayed by actress Linda Kelsey in the 1976 telecast, based on the best-selling biography of the same name by Eleanor's personal friend Joseph P. Lash, published in 1971. She remained in the White House, and it was there she received the sad word of her husband's passing. This eventually became the March of Dimes Foundation which funded the research that led to a polio vaccine in 1954. Franklin Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945, not long after his election to an unprecedented fourth term as president. Presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin links some of Missys increased stress to Marthas entry into Roosevelts life. Roosevelt faced the challenges of a widened war at the moment when he lost a key member of his circle. Warnings around that unlucky number proved apt on this occasion; this was the year, according to Biography, that Eleanor first discovered her husband's infidelity. The difference of several weeks would not seem important but for who else was in the White House at the time. Please, I begged, when she spent a night on the doorstep because she didnt want to disturb the servants or, she told her young husband when he returned at dawn from the dance shed left him to enjoy, to ruin his glorious time by going back to ask him for the key. WebBeing obsessed with all things Roosevelt, I was thrilled to see a biography about Marguerite Missy LeHand, President Franklin D. Roosevelts personal secretary. FDR confidant and Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter regarded her as the "fifth most powerful person in the country" at the time. He was married to Eleanor. In March 1942 Missy returned to the White House, a shadow of her former self, and moved back into her apartment on the third floor. He bought an old boat with his friend John Lawrence and christened it the Larooco (Lawrence, Roosevelt Co.) and in the winter of 1924, FDR, Missy, and Leroy set sail for the warm Caribbean waters near Florida. Her presence and control were so all-encompassing that Eleanor later recalled weeping before Franklin, telling him through her tears that "I did not like to live in a house which was not in any way mine, one that I had done nothing about and which did not represent the way I wanted to live" (via Rowley's book). The Quaker was Malcolm R. Lovell, a double agent who worked closely with German diplomat Hans Thomsen. Three days a week he also came home to her social secretary, who laughed at his jokes and responded to his teasing and saw no reason to question his version of the way things had happened. It was during their years in Albany that Missy first came to the attention of the roving pack of reporters who covered FDR. Olav confronts his wife about rumors of an affair. Together they saw the White House through the Great Depression and World War II, and their separate and joint efforts to combat both issues reshaped the office of the presidency and the role of the first lady. Moreover, while I do not believe that parents are responsible for the acts of adult offspring, and the nature-nurture debate is far from settled, the five surviving Roosevelt children married a total of 19 times. Funding for MASTERPIECE is provided by Viking and Raymond James, with additional support from public television viewers and contributors to The Masterpiece Trust, created to help ensure the series' future. But when FDR returned to New York after several months at sea he displayed marked improvements both physically and mentally. The blog of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum. He always enjoyed other peoples discomfort, Averell Harriman observed. The young FDR did not take socially unsanctioned sex lightly. I am not talking about giving up a career to stay home and raise children, or nursing an aging parent, or other instances of worthy self-sacrifice. Web[Marguerite Alice LeHand, nicknamed "Missy" by the Roosevelt children, was the confidential private secretary of Franklin D. Roosevelt from 1920, when FDR campaigned for vice Missy came into the Roosevelt world in August 1920 when she was offered a job as a secretary to support Franklin Roosevelts Vice Presidential campaign. After resigning his job FDR left for an extended cruise on a houseboat in Florida with Missy, his personal valet LeRoy Jones and a rotating cast of old friends. (If FDR had not fallen in love with Lucy Mercer, ER might never have become a force for peace and social justice. Sign up to get the latest news on your favorite dramas and mysteries, as well as exclusive content, video, sweepstakes and more. She would be the first woman to hold the position of the secretary to the president. WebWidely considered the first female presidential chief of staff, Marguerite "Missy" LeHand was the right-hand woman to Franklin Delano Roosevelt - both personally and professionally - It begins, ER: her garlic pills (Sis could smell them on her breath).. It won't rain on our parade! For example, FDR's principal strategist and trusted adviser, Louis Howe, lived in the White House from 1933 until his death in 1936 as did FDR's secretary Missy LeHand who stayed until she suffered a stroke in 1941. Mercer stayed in FDR's life until his death in 1945, and she was with him when he took his last breaths, even though she eventually married another man. Many cabinet secretaries, congressmen, senators and ambassadors courted favor with Missy in an attempt to gain access to the president. FDR Eleanor Roosevelt might have been a saint, but she was a saint with a faddish bent and a powerful peasant breath. [12], Franklin's mother, Sara Delano Roosevelt, was adamantly against the idea of divorce, however, as it would mark the end of Franklin's political career; she stated that she would cut him off from the family fortune if he chose separation. Missy arrived in Washington to much fanfare and excitement. The next four years in Albany provided FDR with a powerful platform to re-establish his national profile. The Episode 6 scene of Roosevelt and Martha in a basement lockdown is fiction. Dasch and his partner Ernst Burger (lower right) received prison sentences; the others were sentenced to death. Grace Tully described Missy as the Queen of the White House staff, and her authority was rarely challenged. For comparison, Franklin's secretary, Missy LeHand, was with him for 110 weeks. Marguerite Alice "Missy" LeHand (September 13, 1896 July 31, 1944) was a private secretary to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) for 21 years. According to LeHand's biographer Kathryn Smith in The Gatekeeper, she eventually functioned as White House Chief of Staff, the only woman in American history to do so. [1] In their united efforts against Sara Roosevelt's resistance to her son's marriage, they demonstrated early on their skill as a goal-oriented partnership. Franklin and Eleanor: An Extraordinary Marriage. Most historians ascribe FDRs metamorphosis from callow politician to visionary statesman to his contracting polio in the summer of 1921, but some contemporaries, such as Joseph Alsop and his mother, Corinne, who was ERs first cousin, thought that loving, and losing, Lucy Mercer was the fire that began to forge his strength and patience even before his illness. "[17] The incident marked a turning point in her life; disillusioned with her marriage, she became active in public life, and focused increasingly on her social work rather than her role as a wife.[18][19]. Rumors of their affair spread like wildfire, as she always conveniently visited the White House and Hyde Park when Eleanor was out of town. Missy LeHand She made a point to be photographed with Japanese-Americans when she traveled to California after the attack. Eleanor discovered the affair in in 1918 when she found love letters in her husband's suitcase. FACT: The American press wrote openly about the amount of time FDR spent with Martha, says series creator, director, co-writer and executive producer, Alexander Eik. They speak of her need to make surroundings beautiful, and days bright, and loved ones glad to be alive. In A First Class Temperament, Geoffrey C. Ward recounts a telling conversation between the young FDR and his wife. The least disputed of Roosevelt's supposed affairs, however, was with Lucy Mercer, his wife's social secretary when he was assistant secretary of the Navy in 1916. Few political or personal marriages have been as significant to the history of America as that between Eleanor and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. [1] Lucy had one sister, Violetta Carroll Mercer (18891947). She had a long face and a prominent jaw and nose, but a sweetness of expression that spoke of her good nature. Harvey Shapiro, himself one of our most distinguished poets, examines a powerful and undervalued legacy. Admirers compared her voice to velvet and swore her smile was radiant. And everyone from John D. Rockefeller to W. E. B. 'The bottom dropped out of my world,' she later said. In addition, the relationship was covered in an episode of The President's documentaries for the PBS American Experience series on American history, as well as in the 2014 PBS miniseries The Roosevelts, directed by noted documentary film-maker Ken Burns, with an accompanying companion pictorial book by Geoffrey Perrett. Unlike a formerly unpublished letter from which I finally got permission to quote, it wasnt even classified. He made no attempt to conceal his feelings about Missy.'. Over the years FDR would invest a good portion of his fortune into Warm Springs, and created the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation which raised millions of dollars for polio research. Kathryn Smith, author of The Gatekeeper: Missy LeHand, FDR, and the Untold Story of the Partnership That Defined a Presidency the first full biography of Missy LeHand, describes her as tall and slim, with wavy dark brown hair and large blue eyes under dark arched brows the classic black Irish coloring. Their daughter Anna wrote in an unpublished article, It has always seemed to me that the greatest contradiction in my parents was, on the one handy their supreme ability to relate to either groups of people or individuals who had problems, and on the other hand, their apparent lack of ability to relate with the same consistent warmth and interest to an individual who was their child. Three of the children testified to their fathers charisma and elusiveness and their mothers coolness and confusing inconsistency. Franklin's response was to tell his wife gently, she would say that she was upset now but would feel differently later and so excused himself from the conversation. Eleanor Roosevelt was the greatest obstacle I faced when I started the research for Lucy, a novel about the love affair that altered and almost derailed twentieth-century history. In 1940 he wrote his former headmaster, Endicott Peabody, More than forty years ago you said, in a sermon in the Old Chapel, something about not losing boyhood ideals in later life. Dont, I murmured when on FDRs first presidential visit to Campobello a dozen years after hed been stricken with polio and carried off the island on a stretcher, she scolded him publicly for bringing the assembled guests to the dinner table late. She functioned as FranklinRoosvelt's de facto chief-of-staff, yet Missy LeHand's role has beenmisrepresented and overlooked by historians. The loneliness of leadership is a truism. [27] Historian/author Persico speculates that these letters may have been the cause of the 1927 nervous breakdown of Roosevelt's long-time unmarried first secretary Marguerite "Missy" LeHand (18981944), as LeHand was also reputedly in love with Roosevelt and no medical cause for her breakdown was found. Franklin allowed Eleanor to build a personal cottage, Val-Kill, on the family's Hyde Park estate, where she could host whomever she liked or be left alone. After all the experts and advisers have rung in, one man must make the decision to cut the meager pensions of World War I veterans, to give Americans numbers to ensure their social security, to send abroad precious ships and arms that may soon be needed at home. He hated to be alone. (Mostly) FICTION: A similar telegram existed, but American intelligence never caught it nor implemented security measures based on it, say Atlantic Crossing co-writers; their research revealed the telegram became known only after the war. FDR relished rich foods and fine wines. Missys very capable protg Grace Tully took over the administrative responsibilities, but her personal relationship with FDR was not the same as Missys. [42] Roosevelt's second private secretary Grace Tully (19001984), who had also been at Warm Springs at the time of his death, did briefly mention Rutherfurd's presence in F.D.R., My Boss, her 1949 memoir, but gave no further hint of the relationship. A sexual dalliance would have risked a pregnancy that could derail Franklin's family and career and Mercer's reputation. Marguerite LeHand (U.S. National Park Service) Eleanor nonetheless soon later learned the truth from the cousins and felt doubly betrayed to learn of her daughter's role in the long-time deception. During the early days of their marriage, ER wrote her mother-in-law that the Jew party at Bernard Baruchs was appalling. After 65 years, the archives of FDRs personal secretary are now open to the public, The world-shaping relationship between these two giants got off to a rocky start. But the siren call of political life drew FDR back into the arena and in 1928 he ran for Governor of New York and won. But many of those papers belonged to Missy. According to the real communique, Martha had told a Quaker she trusts that she wanted to return home. Surely the monumental demands ER made on her husband were proof of her belief in his ability to rise to them. [35], In early April 1945, Anna arranged for Rutherfurd to come over from her South Carolina estate in Aiken to meet her father at his "Little White House" in Warm Springs, Georgia, the small plain rustic cottage built at the polio therapy center by the heated mineral water springs resort that Roosevelt helped develop beginning in the 1920s.

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