MARY'S MOSAIC : THE BOOK by PETER JANNEY

A BIT ABOUT THE BOOK :
There are many interviews with Peter Janney, the author of Mary's Mosaic, on YouTube, and I listened to long and short ones.  Janney was good friends with one of Mary Pinchot Meyer's sons, the one who died young.  His own father, he feels, was capable of being part of the plot to assassinate her.  He uses that term assassinate. Janney thinks President John F. Kennedy was our greatest American President and says most polls agree, it's either J.F.K. or Abraham Lincoln.  His hope was that this book and the discussion of it would reopen the murder investigation, since Mary's death is an unsolved murder.

MARY PINCHOT MEYER : WAS SHE THE PRESIDENT'S TRUE SOUL MATE? WAS SHE ASSASSINATED BY THE C.I.A?

Image from Wikipedia

MARY PINCHOT MEYER

(October 14, 1920 to October 12, 1964)

Like other women in the life of promiscuous womanizer John Fitzgerald Kennedy, before and during his marriage and his Presidency of the United States in the early 1960's, Mary Pinchot - Meyer knew she was involved in an affair with a married man. The comparison of her to other known Mistresses of J.F.K. stops there.

Unlike Judith Campbell Exner or Mimi Alford, two other of his Mistresses who have been featured over the last couple months here at Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot, Mary came from J.F.K's. same set of people - preppies.  She associated with people who went to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and the best women's colleges called "The Seven Sisters." She was "age appropriate" being only about three years younger than he.  They first met at a 1936 prep school dance, when she was fifteen. Like him she had grown up in a wealthy eastern seaboard family with social clout.  She'd been a debutant and expected to marry well. She had married well, mothered three sons, and divorced within that set, to a man named Cord Meyer, a World War II veteran and hero, like J.F.K. who'd come home injured. Often the men served in World War II and joined the CIA like Cord.  She was considered to be well off, not in need of his money.

But wait.  As conservative as all these people seemed to be, there is also the possibility that they considered themselves sophisticates with a rather "European" mentality when it came to having sexual adventures. The men had World War II macho but were they really wife swappers?  It's possible that Mary and the President were kind of like secret hippies, trying marijuana and a hallucigen - some say L.S.D. other psychedelic mushrooms, together.

So much will never be known.

But hey, have you ever seen the television drama series called Mad Men?  Because that was the era, pre-hippies, when even gentleman tried L.S.D.  Some people smoked pot or cigarettes at work, especially creatives.  L.S.D. was used in psychiatric offices as a mind expander. According to author Peter Janney, whose book is the prime reference for this month's posts on Mary Pinchot Meyer, our Mistress of the Month, she knew L.S.D. guru Timothy Leary - this was before it was illegal.  He was a professor at Harvard ; J.F.K's school. She went up there to talk to him about it.  Was turning public officials on to hallucinogenic trips the latest craze among her set?

He came back into her life socially in the late 1950's. Some say a genuine friendship turned into a flirtation and then into an affair.

Maybe what was really radical, so to speak, was that Mary, with her sons off to college and living apart from her ex, was getting involved in the movement for world peace.  She may have influenced J.F.K. to get the United States out of possible war in Viet Nam,  to sign nuclear treaties, to end the Cold War with Russia. If only he had lived.

Only a handful of people knew she was the President's Mistress and many think he really was going to divorce Jackie and marry Mary, his soul mate. This included her sister Tony and her husband, Ben. Or so she thought.

As part of the Georgetown elite, many of their friends and neighbors, people who came to her funeral after she was murdered shortly before her 44th birthday, were likely spies.  Her murderer might have been there among the mourners.  Was someone just angry because she had an affair - say an ex husband or someone getting revenge for Jackie's sake?  according to one interview of author Janney that I listened to, on his death bed Cord Meyer, her ex husband said the same people who killed J.F.K. killed Mary.

Peter Janney, who wrote a book called Mary's Mosaic, calls it, assassinated, just like J.F.K. had been eleven months before! One bullet at close range to the brain, the next to the heart. A professional job, maybe even with a plan to find a dupe who could be accused of murder.

What did she know? Was she set up? Who could be so heartless? Her murder remains unsolved just like Nicole Brown Simpson's is. 

What could have caused this attractive and idealistic woman, who had become an artist, a painter whose work had been exhibited at the Washington Gallery of Modern Art, to be murdered on a walking path near a canal, a path she walked daily for exercise after a morning of painting in her garage studio over at her sister's house.

Though a love letter from the President asking her to show up where he was going was found years later, and went up for auction, during their affair Mary showed up at White House dinners with a man named William Walton, who had run J.F.K. Presidential campaign for New York, as her companion. She signed in to the log.  She wasn't brought in through a back way.

Her sister Tony was married to Ben Bradlee, an important newsman. They too had dined at the White House with Jack and Jackie Kennedy. They knew there was supposed to be a secret diary about the affair and so hours after Mary's body was identified, they went to her house and then her art studio looking for it.  Each time they encountered a man named James Jesus Angleton, who had managed to enter before them or was trying to pick the locks.  Serious business.  Mary had said that she got the feeling at times that someone had been in her house when she was gone. This man was the chief of the C.I.A. Counterintelligence from 1954-1975.  

The diary may still exist today. A small artists diary with a few notes that had been found was turned over to Egleton.  Some say, no that was not the diary full of details about the affair.  It may have been burned by Toni and Ben.

Repeatedly I've read that this particular affair was the serious one that could have lead to marriage, if and when Jack divorced Jackie.

This month we'll learn more about this interesting woman who didn't deserve the fate she got.

If interested, in November 2015 I devoted the month to Nicole Brown Simpson, the most famous unsolved murder victim, wife of O.J. Simpson and Mistress to him before their marriage.  You may also want to check other months dedicated to those surrounding the Kennedys, such as Kick Kennedy, J.F.K's sister, Little Edie Bouvier, Jackie Kennedy's cousin, or just run a search for Presidential Mistresses.

My archives are in Pages or you can use the search feature embedded in the blog.

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COMING UP : SOME THINK THIS PRESIDENTIAL MISTRESS - and MURDER VICTIM - WAS HIS "SOUL MATE"

We know he was married and a womanizer but was this particular relationship the one that could have broken his famous marriage?  And was this Mistress murdered for her involvement by government operatives?  The case remains unsolved.

STAZYSTKA MIMI ALFORD

CAMELOT'S COURT by ROBERT DALLEK OUTED MIMI ALFORD

In Interviews after this book was published, author Dalleck, a respected researcher and historian, says that J.F.K had a big sense of entitlement and was out of control in his personal life but had a great ability to compartmentalize.

A bit on the Kennedy Presidency, for those of you who were not there. Kennedy called his administration "The New Frontier" and gave people hope that the United States would make great progress as a nation. He represented the American Dream because though his family was rich and privileged, they were also Irish and Catholic and not of the White Anglo Saxon elite that pretty much ran the United States. His religion, because he was not of the White Anglo Saxon Protestant elite, was a potential obstacle to his election.

 The Kennedy family, in the opinion of Dalleck, is the real American dynasty, more so than say, the Bushes. That's because they have great privilege they have also suffered the most tragedies - deaths - and so for all the high highs of their fame and fortune they have experienced low lows. 

President Kennedy grew in his role as President. He wanted the best advice but knew in the end decisions were his. He had trusted his advisor when invading Cuba (then a feared Communist country as they all were) and newly taken over by Fidel Castro, who threw the Mafia who owned casinos and clubs out. Called "The Bay of Pigs" disaster, it was a huge mistake, which he knew then and which history tells us to be true.

It was in this book that Mimi Alford was outed, though Dallek did not name her.  Other journalists did the work to find out who she was.  Like others who have had their privacy invaded and their story told from other people's perspective or opinions, Mimi was provoked to speak her own truths.

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MIMI ALFORD EXPLAINS WHY IT WASN'T RAPE

From Mimi's Books (listened to audio)

"I always get the same reactions about President Kennedy's behavior.  At first the response comes in the form of dismay, at the President's sinister intentions. "You  must see it Mimi, they say.  You were set up.  He was a predator." Then when I don't agree, the response changes into disappointment in me. Others take the argument a step further. They are not shy about bringing up the R word - rape - to describe what happened to me.  I don't see it that way.  That night in the midst of my shock and confusion, I felt for the first time the thrill of being desired and the fact that I was being desired by the most famous and powerful man in American only amplified my feelings to the point where resistance was out of the question.  That's why I didn't say no to the President.  It's the best answer I can give.|"


A note from Missy :  Mimi also says that while it was consensual sex, it was not romantic.  She doesn't remember ever kissing. Also the President asked her to give oral sex to his right hand man while he watched, which she agreed to but when he asked a second time, this time for her to do so with his youngest brother, she got angry and refused.

MIMI ALFORD : BEFORE MONICA LEWINSKY THERE WAS J.F.K. INTERN IN THE WHITE HOUSE

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MARION FAY "MIMI" BEARDSLEY - ALFORD

(1943 - living)

Continuing on from last month's work on President John F. Kennedy's Mistress, Judith Campbell Exner, remember that a person can have more than one Mistress at a time and only the Classic Mistress expects and gets full financial support from her man.  Sometimes what a man gives his Mistress is a job - a career boost.  In the case of Mimi Beardsley, first came an opportunity as a student at Miss Porter's School, who worked on her prep school newspaper, to interview the President.  She had wanted to interview First Lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy for the paper because Jackie was the most famous alumni of Miss Porter's Finishing School, a school for the well bred elite young women who were expected to partner with powerful and important men.  A year later, a call from the White House offering Mimi an Internship to work in the White House Press office came and of course she wanted that career opportunity.  She worked there for stretches during 1962 and 1963. 

Within days of arrival to Washington D.C., Mimi lost her virginity to the President, in his wife First Lady Jackie's White House bedroom yet, while  she was out of town. The relationship between J.F.K. and Mimi Beardsley lasted eighteen months, ending approximately two weeks before the President and Mrs. Kennedy went to Dallas, Texas, and he had his meeting with fate - his assassination.  

Fifty years of keeping a secret resulted in the book, Once Upon a Secret, by Mimi Alford, Alford being her married name, which I read cover to cover and found to be of interest to myself and my readers.  One of the best things about this book was that, though as an old woman Mimi realizes the situation could be construed negatively, she honestly remembers it as she experienced it as a young woman of 19-20 years old, without guilt then or regret now. She was having an adventure and felt desired by the most powerful man in the world.

I will say this.  So many young women wonder how and when they will loose their virginity and too many loose it while drunk or high or to someone forgettable and regret it later.  At the same time there were things that happened, things that I'll get to in another post, that I personally think indicate the President was not up to something good.

According to Mimi, who did extensive interviews at the publication of her book in February 2012, including a long one with journalist Meredith Veiera,  which I watched,  J.F.K was fun, a sensualist, boyish and silly, a man who had a collection of little rubber ducks in his bath tub that they played with together. I found that interesting because through the years I've read a lot of books that include J.F.K. and other women seemed to think he was too fast and selfish sexually.

Mimi sounds like other Other Women who had affairs with J.F.K.  She had no idea that he had other women and though she was the Only Other Woman in his life.  She was too young to wonder at some of the things that might make more experienced women - at least in Western culture - question such as the fact that they never kissed each other.  Dave Powers, J.F.K.'s right hand man, had been the one assigned to call her and invite her for an afternoon swim with the President.  She got there and relaxed when she saw she was in the pool with other employees.  Later Powers called to invite her to a cocktail party where again there were other employees.  But then the President offered her a tour of the White House and before it was over they had made love.  She gathered up her underwear and dress and put them on.  He offered her something to eat there in the kitchen.  He had a car take her home.  This affair beats what happened between President William Jefferson Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.

Not only was she having sex with Kennedy in the White House, she was traveling with him.  She went on State Department trips such as to the Bahamas.  She went on personal trips with him, such as visiting Palm Springs and staying at singer Bing Crosby's estate there.  There was shopping in New York.  Perhaps the most unsettling thing is that she had planned to go to Dallas when he went, but the First Lady decided she would accompany her husband instead.

Those who think of the President as having been predatory, having selected her out and called upon her, perhaps with this ambition of a sexual relationship with a woman who at 19 years old was years younger, but still legal, perhaps as a rapist, will be disappointed because Mimi didn't think of it that way at the time, nor does she remember it that way.

She wrote that she had been swept away and could not change that fact. 
She also continued to date and soon married a man who she would stay married to for 26 years. This first husband, Tony, was with her when news of the assassination came and she cried.  Then she told him she had an affair with the President.  Apparently that did not stop him from marrying her, to his credit.

She never discussed her relationship with her parents back in the day, but why would she?  (I don't know anyone who wants to hear intimate details from their parents or to share theirs! And this was back in the early 1960's! )  And so, this month, through her book, we'll learn more than they knew!

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COMING UP : THIS WHITE HOUSE INTERN WAS MORE INVOLVED THAN MONICA LEWINSKY EVER WAS

This White House Intern was provoked to tell her story when a respected historian outed her and still waited years.

JUDITH CAMPBELL EXNER's LAST STAND

PEOPLE : DARK SIDE OF CAMELOT : JFK and THE MOB



EXCERPT:  "I lied when I said I was not a conduit between President Kennedy and the Mafia," says Judith Campbell Exner, the same woman who first shocked the nation twelve years ago with the revelation that she had an affair with President while he was in the White House.  "I lied," Exner continues,"When I said that President Kennedy was unaware of my friendship;s with mobsters.  He knew everything about my dealings with Sam Giancana and Johnny Roselli because I was seeing them for him.  I wouldn't have been seeing them otherwise.  And I would never have known mobsters if it hadn't been for Frank Sinatra."

THE LAST ACT OF JUDITH EXNER - EXCERPTS FROM ARCHIVED VANITY FAIR

VANITY FAIR - THE LAST ACT OF JUDITH EXNER

This article is about Judith finding her "lost son."

EXCERPT: Exner stared at the photo on her nightstand: a laughing infant with a birthmark on his brow.  For years she had lain down to sleep every night within reach of that picture and another keepsake - a loaded gun.  Both are legacies of her life thirty years ago - of the love affairs that made her notorious, and the son of a brief liaison with a Hollywood producer and given up for adoption.  ... Exner's relationship with Sam Giancana cost her her son.

QUESTIONS FOR READERS of MISTRESS MANIFESTO BLOGSPOT

How long have you been reading MISTRESS MANIFESTO BLOGSPOT?

Which features / months/ Mistresses of the Month have you read?

Has reading MISTRESS MANIFESTO BLOGSPOT changed the way you think about Mistresses or dating or relationships or anything else?

Missy wants to know!

Comments are reviewed before posting.  Please read my posting guidelines in PAGES!

JUDITH KATHERINE IMMOOR AKA CAMPBELL EXNER - MISTRESS OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY : COURIER BETWEEN KENNEDY AND MOBSTER SAM GIANCANA

JUDITH EILEEN KATHERINE IMMOOR - CAMPBELL - EXNER

(1934-1999)

Mistress of the Month

Back in January, I elected art historian, Anne Pingeot, the long time Mistress of French statesman and President of France, Francois Maurice Mitterand, as Mistress of the Month. I've also posted, basically, that the attitude of the French towards their elected officials and politicians about having Mistresses was/is much different the American one.  The French are concerned that the person do their job well and the person's intimate personal life isn't such an issue.

President John F. Kennedy and Judith Campbell Exner, born  Judith Katherine Immoor, were not exposed by the media during their moment of in history either. During the era of United States President John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States from January 1961 until he was assassinated in November of 1963, the press in the United States was still not reporting anything that might offend the conservative American people about a President's personal life or - I believe - hurt his wife Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy or his family.  It was many years later that Judith Campbell Exner spoke about her experience and she did so under duress.  She became more concerned about her own family than protecting the Kennedys.

From this distance in time, there have been many books exposing the fact that John F. Kennedy, before and during his one and only marriage to Jacqueline Bouvier, was a womanizer. The difficulty, for me anyway, because many others have called Judith a Mistress, and his Mistress, is that J.F.K. had so many involvements with women, I question which ones to consider as actual mistresses. I think I have to go with the reportage and consider the duration of the involvement and also, very much, what Judith's own testimonial about her life was.

A person can have many involvements at the same time, especially if they don't confuse sex with love, though I think a person can also love more than one person at a time. Judith says she was not sexually involved with both J.F.K and mobster Sam Giancana at the same time and she was never Sam's mistress - just friends.  There is also the fact that labeling Judith Campbell Exner (Campbell and Exner being the surnames of her first and second husband) may have come from those who wanted to tell a different version of the story, to white wash it, to give the impression that the President was seduced.  If she was a "party girl" or hanging out in Las Vegas, does that mean she was only in it for the sex?  Don't "party girls" also have the ability to love? (Don't some women, just like some men, sleep around until they fall in love?) I'm tired of the sexist attitude of always blaming the woman for leading a man into adultery or whatever it is he does of his own choice, of excusing him and blaming her or saying he couldn't have been serious because she was only there for sex.  As Judith has pointed out, he was married at the time, she was not.

Some of those who exposed or reported this involvement in various books, articles, and interviews, have even unfairly called Judith a prostitute, call girl, or a "Mafia Mol."  (If you want to read about a true Mafia Mol, Virginia "The Flamingo" Hill was our Mistress of the Month in March 2013.)  Once a woman has hung out with those known to be in the mob or "associated", it's easy to think she was a Mafia Mol, a woman who seems to only date mobsters. While I think Judith slept around between marriages, well, lots of people do, especially when they first marry very young and feel they have missed out on that experience. 

A question I have around this story include: "Was Jackie, having taken up the French culture, European in her attitude about her husband's fidelity? Often that her own charming and handsome father was also a womanizer is used to explain her attraction to a husband the same way. Then there is the era these events occurred in, transitioning from 1950's values to 1960's values, influenced by the recent development of the pill and the sexual revolution in which many people abandoned the idea of waiting till marriage to have sex as well as monogamy.  People experiment sexuality, sometimes to find themselves, their orientation. Some couples agree that one or both can have experiences or relationships outside of marriage

A deciding factor for me was, in determining that Judith was a Mistress, was the 2 - 2 1/2 years she was involved with John. As for the financial aspect, she might have had money as a result of her divorce from her first husband and was considered well off, though she did not have a job or career of her own.  To me the years spent also mean that the involvement was mutual. The end of the involvement seems to have been her pregnancy.  Yes, she could have had J.F.K's child. "What are you going to do?" the President first asked before remembering himself and saying "We."

Like our Mistress of the Month, January 2017,  Sheryl Weinstein, who had a sweet hot extra-marital relationship with financial whiz and ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff, a relationship that went on for years while both were married,  there is also a question of how much Judith knew, how much she understood, if and when. Generally during her lifetime she claimed innocence, no knowledge of the communications between her lover, the President and her friend, Mafioso Sam Giancana. It's just that she was the courier. 

I also have the question about Judith who had claimed that she was first unaware that Mafioso mobster Sam Giancana, who was the head of the Chicago Mafia, was who he was, saying she was introduced to him as "Sam Flood."  She says her sexual relationship with Sam was a one time experience, and after he had offered to marry her when she came to him looking for help in getting an illegal abortion - JFK the father. However, when she acted as a courier, taking messages in envelopes back and forth between John and Sam, without questioning what she was doing or peeking in the envelopes to see what was written, I personally find it difficult to believe she was as unaware of the seriousness or importance of being between these two extremely powerful men. She claimed she was disinterested.  Was she also afraid? Until Judith admitted her role between them, it was as if the till-then conspiracy theories about Kennedy (or his father, Joseph) and the Mafia were just theories.

So let's start with her innocence.  Judith was born to a wealthy architect and her family socialized with some of the Hollywood Stars, including Frank Sinatra.  (Barbara Blakeley Marx - Sinatra - twice a mistress and thrice a wife - was our Mistress of the Month in October 2018.) Her sister became an actress. Judith was a beautiful woman, with pale white skin, contrasting dark glossy hair, and unusual blue eyes, compared to Hollywood actress and star, Elizabeth Taylor. It's said she even sounded like Elizabeth - that voice.  Her teenage years were motherless as her mom died when she was 14.  She first married young at 18 to an actor William Campbell, who she says was never faithful to her.  They were married from 1952 to 1958.

But when the marriage ended in divorce she was a free agent.  Frank Sinatra was one of the people who thought of her as a family friend, a beautiful young woman who needed introductions but first they dated, briefly. In early 1960, the divorced and childless Judith, age 26 and the much younger woman, was introduced to J.F.K. in Vegas by Sinatra. This lead to Vegas, Introductions to the President,  hanging with The Rat Back, and to "Sam Flood."  Were these men passing women around?  The relationship between Judith and John lasted from their first sexual experience together at the Plaza Hotel in New York on March 7, 1960 until eleven months before the President's assassination, after a visit by Judith to the White House in December 1962.  The compliant Judith then kept her privacy. 

In 1975 Judith remarried to a pro golfer, Dan Exner. In 1977, years after J.F.K's assassination in 1963, her book was published and revealed more than the press had previously. She and her husband remained together for over ten years.   She was called reclusive. She died of breast cancer in 1999.

This month I'll post more about Judith, so keep reading!


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COMING UP - A SEASON OF PRESIDENTIAL MISTRESSES

It's going to be interesting.  Time has passed, books have been written, lecturers and interviews done, and we always wonder who else might reveal a relationship with this President, other than his one and only wife, who remains one of the most popular and respected in American history...

THIS "PRINCE OF THE REALM" COULD GET AWAY WITH EXTRAMARITAL ACTIVITIES

Reading around Mimi Alford, I learned that a writer working for the New York Daily News, an investigative journalist, had found out the name of President John F. Kennedy's young conquest. The paper ran three days of columns on the "Kennedy's Monica" then.  Author Robert Dallek called it "off the wall" and "over the top" reportage. Dallek wrote about it in his book, "An Unfinished Life."

 Mimi decided it was time to write her own book. 

MISSY AND FRANKLIN and ELEANOR and LEANORA - WERE THEY IN CAHOOTS?

Did Missy expect to go off with Franklin into private life after he finally retired the Presidency?

Page 220  EXCERPT 

"What Franklin's character needed Missy LeHand provided, which lead to occasional friction, however politely conducted, between her and Eleanor. The White House staff paid Eleanor the deference due a first lady and found her cheerful and kind. In her whirlwind crusading they also sensed a woman of budding greatness. But as Lillian Parks observed, Missy LeHand was "sunshine and laughter and all the maids loved her."

"In the beginning, she presented a mystery to the staff.  But before long they gauged Missy's significance in the President's life. As Parks put it, 'When Missy gave an order we responded as if it had come from the First lady... We really had two mistresses in the White House.' The servants concluded "that Missy was the substitute wife and we honored her for it."  

By the standard of the 1930's Missy was reasonably well rewarded for her twenty four hours a day devotion. Her salary, in the midst of the Depression, was $3,100 a year.

In actuality there was a four way domestic living arrangement in the White House as Eleanor had Lorena Hickcock, who was called 'Hicks,' there in the evenings and Missy went in and out of the Presidential suite in nightgown and robe.

***
Reference for this post book Franklin and Lucy from the book by Joseph E. Persico, also quoted from last month. 




Missy here. What's implied in reference to Hicks is that Hicks was lesbian.  Did we have a lesbian or bisexual First Lady?

MISSY LeHAND's HEALTH IS RUINED - SHE MAY HAVE TRIED SUICIDE

How serious was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt about Missy LeHand, his personal assistant who is said to have been on call 24/7 for years on end? Known to have a heart condition caused by rheumatic fever, this workaholic woman seemed to not have had a separate personal life due to her total dedication to Franklin, with the exception of Bill Bullit.

In 1941 it all caught up with her and Missy suffered a stroke. After a second serious stroke 17 days later, was no longer able to speak and was paralyzed in her right arm and leg. She had no choice but to step down from her important White House job and the travel it required. Her mental illness issues were considered secondary or caused by her physical ones. She remained in Washington a while and then was sent to Warm Springs to recover.

FDR called in the best specialists and paid all her hospital and nursing bills - eleven doctors - but he was busy with World War II as Hitler had invaded Poland. FDR kept Missy LeHand on the payroll and signed a new will that provided for her medical care, willing one half his income of his estate to his wife Eleanor and the other half to "my friend Marguerite."

He decided to give the building that he and Missy desired to be a Presidential Library at Hyde Park to hold all his papers and memorabilia someday to the National Archives. Giving up on their project together, he called Missy on her 45th birthday in September 13th, 1941. His final in person visit with Missy occurred just weeks later on October 29, 1941. 

He had been spending hours in the White House with Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd.

When Pearl Harbor occurred on December 7th, Missy, who seemed to be improving, with setbacks, called FDR. He didn't call her back.  

Missy may have become suicidal. This was a woman who was used to being in an important  and perhaps powerful position and where the action was.  She was now reduced to living incapacitated and retired. She'd lost 25 pounds, at five foot seven, down to 105, wasn't eating, was depressed and crying. She choked on a chicken bone. She started drinking heavily. She set fire to herself with a cigarette. 

It was decided it was time to send her home to her family. She was taken off the Federal government payroll. The Roosevelts continued to pay for her medical care.

She and Franklin had some brief communications; calls, letters, gifts came, but the the two never saw each other again.  Then the trickle of communications came to that she called and he didn't call back, not even at Christmas. Old beau Bill Bullitt came by to see Missy but FDR had moved on. The woman who had once had a "ringside seat to history" was no longer a player.  It took several women - all working at one time - to do the job she had done at the White House!

Are you an Office Wife?

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LUCY MERCER RUTHERFURD and FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT IN THE WHITE HOUSE

From the book Franklin and Lucy.

The question Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd, who married an older man, might have had, was if it was possible she and the President might someday go into a private life together.  Certainly after he broke with her, they kept in touch.  She moved on, but still was not completely absent from his life.

She was there for all four of his swearing in ceremonies. At the time that FDR was sworn in for the third time, and Lucy attended, her husband was now a 79 year old stroke patient who she brought along to Washington in a wheelchair.  She asked FDR to recommend a doctor for him.  She was just 50.

Lucy called the White House code name Mrs. Paul Johnson and visited the President during the time that Missy LeHand prevailed as his personal assistant - when Eleanor was away.  After Missy LeHand had her stroke and was sent away to try to recover at Warm Springs, "The Little White House,"  Lucy began to visit the White House in Washington D.C. for dinners.  Sure, she might be in town visiting her sister.

While Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and World War II brought crisis to the White House and Franklin was so busy he barely called the ailing Missy LeHand back, he still had contact with Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd.  She visited the White House on October 20, 1942.  When the President, in failing health, was sworn in for his fourth term, Lucy was there again. 

She packed up and left when FDR fell ill but she called from the road to learn he had died of a massive cerebral hemorrhage only 83 days into that fourth term as President. 

TORMENT FOR LUCY MERCER AND FRANKLIN

Page 115-116 quote from Franklin and Lucy by Joseph E. Persico

"The torment for Lucy was no less. She was flying in the face of her (Catholic) Churches' teaching, which had been her moral compass since childhood. She had sacrificed crucial years when a young woman should be seeking the security of a good marriage. Her foreboding was assuaged by the hope that someday they might marry.  But what if in the end Franklin would not leave his wife?  Their lives had become a melange of happiness and anxiety, pleasure and guilt, risk and deception.  yet the price was paid and the affair went on."

MEET YOU HALF WAY

MISTRESSES OF PRESIDENT FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT

This month - and next - here at MISTRESS MANIFESTO BLOGSPOT - we'll focus on two of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's mistresses. His marriage to Eleanor Roosevelt endured and was his only marriage - but one in which they were ill suited and very much went their separate ways, especially after she discovered he had an extramarital relationship. Eleanor was crushed and clearly went into a depression, suffering mentally, emotionally and physically, wasting away unable to keep food down when she learned about his mistress Lucy Mercer. Rumors that Eleanor was lesbian surfaced after she kept company with other women who were lesbian.

Though upper crust Americans loathed divorce and he and Eleanor were both from historical American families and very much upper crust, it's said that affairs were tolerated. One of the issues to consider is that at the time contraception was frowned upon, even banned by their Episcopal Church, and that Eleanor went into her marriage an innocent when it came to sex or family planning.  He wanted a large family. After six births and five children to raise, she and he very likely agreed enough was enough and refrained from sex. For her it was easy, for him not.  

Although sexual incompatibility or women worn out from child bearing are contemporary reasons why, it would seem that available contraceptives, legal abortion, and the accommodation of having other sexual relationships before and after marriage may help to preserve marriage today. They want soul mates.  Consider also that in the Roosevelt's day women's opportunities for income earning were limited and gender appropriate activities and roles were emphasized. FDR's mistresses in their relationships with him fulfilled traditional feminine roles of nurturing and assisting a man they admired.

One of FDR's mistresses came from the upper class, though living in "genteel poverty," while they were involved while the other came from a working class family but had acquired polish and poise. They were both employees.

Those of you who are familiar with FDR may know that he was our only four term president and he came into office at a time when the United States was in deep financial problems, after the Roaring Twenties, when poverty meant going hungry; wearing their best clothing purchased years before even middle class Americans were seen mining garbage dumps for food. It was 1933.

FDR is credited with establishing numerous projects and governmental benefits that are functioning today as a safety net, so to speak, to save Americans from ever being that desperate again, which his own class at the time considered a treason against his own. He is considered one of our greatest Presidents. FDR is also a fascinating character because, with the help of so many people in his life and a gentleman's agreement with the press as it was in his day, he hid a severe disability, the inability to walk due to surviving Polio which killed most people who acquired it.

Before we begin our adventure of getting to know these Mistresses, let's learn a bit about Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

NATIONAL PARK SERVICE : FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT MEMORIAL and PARK

HISTORY COM :THE GREAT DEPRESSION and ROOSEVELT'S NEW DEAL

Those of you who are interested in Presidential Mistresses may want to go into my archives of past posts using the Side Bar listings or the Google Search Feature on this blog.