The Opinionator

Franklin and Lucy

Franklin and Lucy
An intimate portrait of FDR and his relationship with women

IT has kind of been a hobby with me over the past 25 years to read every Roosevelt biography I can get my hands on. It doesn't matter whether it is Theodore or Franklin; it extends to their wives as well as their children. 

Lucy Page Mercer Rutherfurd (April 26, 1891-July 31, 1948) is considered by historians to have been a mistress of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. She was with Roosevelt on the day he died in 1945.

My bookshelves are full of Roosevelt books, my favorite being Theodore, our 26^th president and the most remarkable of men about whom I have already blogged. For me, studying the Roosevelts means studying 20^th Century American history, my favorite period, and an era which encompasses a large part of my life and the lives of my parents and grandparents.

This column is a review of a book I have recently finished about the women in the life of Franklin Roosevelt.  The citation is:

 Persico, Joseph E., Franklin and Lucy President Roosevelt, Mrs. Rutherford, and the Other Remarkable Women in His Life, New York: Random House, 2008.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, our 32^nd president, had an unusual relationship with his wife Eleanor and, although they had six children, they lived basically apart for many years. Confined to a wheelchair because of polio since 1921, he had a propensity to build close, loving relationships with other women over the years although there is a huge absence of data that these relationships were physical ones.

 The beginning of the estrangement of Franklin and Eleanor began in 1918 when Eleanor discovered a cache of letters from Lucy Mercer, the social secretary to Eleanor revealing a romantic relationship between the two. At that time Eleanor extracted a promise from Franklin never again to see Lucy, something which he felt compelled to agree to because of his political career. 

The book offers an intimate portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Mrs. Rutherford.

Additionally, his mother threatened to cut him off completely if he did not end the affair. Lucy Mercer went her separate way for a few years, married a rich man named Winthrop Rutherfurd, and maintained occasional contact with Franklin, sometimes even with the helping arrangements made by his daughter Anna.

Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd was with Franklin Roosevelt when he died by cerebral hemorrhage at his Warm Springs, Ga summer White House at the age of  63 in April of 1945.

 There were other women in the president's life. Marguerite 'Missy' Lehand, from Somerville, Ma. was the president's personal secretary for 21 years until her death in 1944.  She became Roosevelt's alter ego, devoting her life to him and seldom being out of his presence, whether on his bat or in the oval office. When cosidering the women in this comlex president's life, all lists must include his dmineering mother, Sarah Delano Roosevelt.

 Several chapters in the book consider the suspected homosexuality of Mrs. Roosevelt, particularly her relationship with journalist Lorena Hickck, an avowed lesbian. Nothing conclusive about the relationship has been revealed by the dozens of biographers of the First Lady.