Word: rutherfurds
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...order to weave the kind of narrative that has given him bestsellers before (The Day Lincoln Was Shot, The Day Christ Died). Bishop has produced a rare, humanizing portrait of Roosevelt, including the fullest account yet of the President's enduring and wistful love affair with Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd, who died...
Private Trial. After Yalta, Roosevelt failed rapidly. His one solace in early 1945 was the willowy and gracious Lucy Rutherfurd, then 52, whom he had loved since World War I, when she was social secretary to his wife Eleanor. In 1918, Eleanor had found a packet of scented love letters to her husband from Lucy. Screaming shrilly, according to Bishop, Eleanor confronted F.D.R. in his bedroom while their son Elliott, then seven years old, cowered near by. "Please, Babs, please," Roosevelt begged. "The dinner guests are downstairs...
Life with Eleanor became a private trial for F.D.R. Siding with Roosevelt, Bishop calls Eleanor "a harpy" and takes a sympathetic view of the fact that the President never fully broke off his relationship with Lucy, not even when, in 1920, she married a wealthy Manhattan socialite named Winthrop Rutherfurd. Hidden in a private Secret Service car, Lucy attended all four of Roosevelt's Inaugurations. He phoned her constantly, speaking in French if a member of his staff was in the room. They often met secretly in Washington's Rock Creek Park. Lucy would climb into the back...
Roosevelt worked out ingenious ways of visiting Lucy at Tranquillity, the Rutherfurd family estate in northern New Jersey, while Secret Service men kept watch and newsmen wondered where he had gone...
...Bishop describes the scene, Lucy Rutherfurd was smiling as she watched Roosevelt. Shakily, he raised his left hand to his forehead. "I have a terrific headache," he said softly. His eyes were on Lucy as he slumped forward...