Grandmère

by David B. Roosevelt

  The Colonel, regular army, Mass. Republican, and snobby was not pleased to see me. I’m sure he would sleep with a Maori woman but he told me he does not believe in mixed marriages, and he would like some Army nurses because some of his younger officers want to marry some of the native girls. He has both white and colored troops and he is much worried since he has some white Southerners and he is afraid some day a white boy will find his native girl that he went out with last night is off with a colored boy the next night and then there would be a shooting and a feud would start between white and colored troops. He thinks we should have all colored and all white on an island, but he owns that the colored have done very good work so he prays hell won’t break loose.8

  Entertaining troops on the White House grounds, Grandmère felt it her duty to become a “surrogate mother and grandmother” to the boys who were giving so much for their country.

  On one of her many inspection tours, this to visit injured soldiers on Christmas Island in the South Pacific war zone.

  Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, FDR, Churchill, and Madame Chiang at the November 25, 1943 Cairo Conference. A decline in FDR’s health was then becoming more apparent.

  Many army officers viewed Grandmère as nothing more than a meddlesome “do-gooder” and dreaded her arrival, but inevitably she won everyone over with her positive spirit, friendly almost motherly touch, and her incredible energy. Admiral William “Bull” Halsey, who became a great admirer, described her day at his base in New Zealand:

  Four days later, a tired FDR mediated a meeting of Churchill and Stalin at the Tehran Conference.

  Here is what she did in twelve hours: she inspected two Navy hospitals, took a boat to an officer’s rest home and had lunch there, returned and inspected an Army hospital, reviewed the 2ndMarine Raider Battalion (her son Jimmy had been its executive officer), made a speech at a service club, attended a reception, and was guest of honor at a dinner given by General Harmon.

  When I say she inspected those hospitals, I don’t mean that she shook hands with the chief medical officer, glanced into a sun parlor, and left. I mean she went into every ward, stopped at every bed, and spoke to every patient: What was his name? How did he feel? Was there anything he needed? Could she take a message home for him? I marveled at her hardihood, both physical and mental, she walked for miles, and she saw patients who were grievously and gruesomely wounded. But I marveled most at their expressions as she leaned over them. It was a sight I will never forget.9

  When she arrived in Australia the authorities had expected the cold and stiff state visits typical of the royal family and were astounded by Eleanor’s approachability and ease. She resented too much protocol and fuss around her, preferring instead to visit the GIs and talk to them at length about their condition. They were far more important than presidential pomp. In Guadalcanal she recounted a wonderful and funny story: a sad Marine whose unit was due to leave the South Pacific felt he couldn’t leave until he had shot a Japanese. So his officer advised him to stand up on the ridge and shout ‘To hell with Hirohito,’ and a Japanese would certainly appear and then he could bag him. Next day the officer came upon the still depressed Marine. “What happened?” asked the officer. “I did as you said, Sir, and a Japanese did climb out of his foxhole, but he yelled ‘To hell with Roosevelt’ and how could I shoot a fellow Republican?”

  In her visit to the South Pacific she toured seventeen islands, New Zealand, and Australia, and saw four hundred thousand men in camps and hospitals. She was exhausted emotionally and physically, but, as Admiral Halsey remarked, “She alone had accomplished more than any other person, or any group of civilians, who had passed through my area.” She explained in a radio broadcast the feelings her trip had elicited:

  I wonder if I can transmit to you the feeling which I have so strongly. In a nation such as ours every man who fights for us in some way, is our man. His parents may be of any race or religion, but if that man dies, he dies side by side with all of his buddies, and if your heart is with any man, in some way it must be with all.10

  Upon her return from the South Pacific, FDR announced that a conference between him, Stalin, and Chiang Kai-shek was at last to take place in Cairo. He would then go on to Tehran to help mediate talks between Churchill and Stalin, but he did not want Grandmère to go with him. As the war wore on, Franklin had become more resolutely obstinate in his views, as if he had less energy to accommodate the needs of anyone around him.

  At the conference the leaders discussed the breakup of the German Reich and plans for a postwar peacekeeping organization. When he returned the family celebrated Christmas at Hyde Park with Aunt Anna, Uncle Franklin Jr., John, and many of the grandchildren. As magical as the time in the Big House was for everyone, FDR returned to Washington ill with a strong bout of the flu and returned after only two weeks to Springwood to recover. In 1944 he would face yet another campaign, this time for his fourth term as president, and though his commitment to the position was now stronger than it had ever been, the stresses and strains were taking a toll on his body and mind. The issues of the New Deal were lying half-forgotten in the tumult and devastation of war. Eleanor remembered their promise to Americans daily and claimed that she had not laid the New Deal “away in lavender.” Keeping that promise was as important to her as winning the war, and she pressed Franklin on the concerns that still needed resolution in order to successfully conclude their pact with the people of the land.

  The “Last August President”

  In March 1944 Grandmère went on a Caribbean tour to lift the spirits of the troops; she returned to Washington to find a husband who did not seem able to recover his physical strength. She felt his illness was simply more than physical: “The nervous tension as well as the long burden of responsibility has a share in the physical condition I am sure.” The results of medical tests showed a moderate degree of arteriosclerosis, cloudiness in the sinuses, and bronchial irritation, which could be cured by less smoking. A young heart specialist, Dr. Howard G. Bruenn, diagnosed hypertension, hypersensitive heart disease, cardiac failure in the left ventricular chamber, and acute bronchitis.

  It would seem strange that neither Eleanor, Anna, nor anyone else was made aware of FDR’s condition, quite possibly at his insistence. The doctors recommended a period of rest after lunch and evenings dedicated to relaxation. Grandmère had always had a Spartan view of physical ailments, and with her high degree of energy she seemed to soldier on no matter what and recover easily from illness, even flu. Thus it was perhaps difficult for her to fully recognize the seriousness of Franklin’s rapidly waning strength. Nevertheless, knowing the restorative powers Springwood had for him, she made the Big House nice for him that June so that he could come to rest, surrounded by children, grandchildren, and the ever-flirtatious Princess Martha of Norway who had also joined the party.

  Aunt Anna, after talking the arrangements through with her mother, agreed to move into Springwood and take care of her father full-time. He loved having her around, and she was perhaps a less demanding presence than Grandmère, who was constantly pressing him with urgent affairs of state. Anna had found a new closeness with her father and so moved into the White House as well, taking over many of Grandmère’s responsibilities. In fact, Franklin used her to shield himself from those who brought too many burdens before him, and occasionally that even included his wife, and Anna became an almost constant companion and confidant.

  During this time Anna would play a somewhat equivocal role in the relationship between my grandparents: she knew that Lucy Mercer, now Rutherford, visited Franklin at the White House while her mother was away, sometimes even presiding as hostess at various functions. Never informing Grandmère of these visits, Anna would often serve as “chaperone,” most likely as the elusive chaperone, Without question, Anna was placed in an almost untenable position by her father, that of being privy to secrets that would obviously hurt her mother. No one knows for certain when the contact between FDR and Lucy resumed, or i
f it ever really ceased in the first place, or when her White House visits began. We do know, however, that there was at least one other occasion when they met socially; a time that may have rekindled the old attraction of their prior affair.

  The invasion of Europe was impending in late spring 1944 and Grandfather was busier than ever and more focused on his work, closeting himself away from everyone. His health fluctuated wildly, and he had become querulous and weary. The impending campaign didn’t help. He had chosen Senator Harry Truman as his running mate, and Eleanor, although only too aware of what the presidency was doing to him, felt that the country could not be handed over to anyone else until the war had been won. He remained aloof, indifferent, and withdrawn from the campaign. Did he care to win? Perhaps he had stepped into the shadow of the responsibilities that faced him and could not give energy to yet another race.

  He did, however, win an unprecedented fourth term. On the night of the election he was so tired he allowed himself to be wheeled out òn the lawn of Springwood to greet the well-wishers. “There was a great deal of excitement all through the evening among many people about us,”Eleanor wrote, “but I can’t say that I felt half as excited as I will feel the day the war is over.” They were both in for it for another four years, a prospect that would have been anything but appealing seeing as how the world was rocking on its foundations under the threat of the Germans using the atomic bomb to wipe out what they hadn’t yet destroyed.

  Greeting election night well wishers for the last time at Springwood, Grandmère was now very concerned about FDR’s falling health and was privately opposed to a fourth term.

  Two days after the inauguration the president left for the Yalta Conference, taking Anna with him. Grandmère was by now deeply worried about his irritability, his impatience, and his acquiescence. She prodded him constantly, unable to admit what everyone else could readily see but was unwilling to acknowledge. On February 11 Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin announced the results of the historic conference in a joint statement. When Grandfather addressed Congress on the results of the conference, he asked the indulgence of his audience as he spoke from a sitting position, explaining for the first time in his public career that he was wearing ten pounds of braces on his legs. Gore Vidal calls my grandfather the “last august president of the United States,” perhaps because of his incredible stateliness in leading the nation from the darkness of the Depression and war to the light of understanding, compassion, and a new world order. By March the president was at Warm Springs, Georgia, recuperating the strength that eluded him. He looked terribly thin, worn, and gray, and his hands shook uncontrollably. Grandmère many years later wrote in hindsight:

  I knew when he consented to “address Congress” sitting down that he had accepted a certain degree of invalidism… I was pleased when he decided to go to Warm Springs where… he always gained in health and strength. He invited his cousins, Laura Delano and Margaret Suckley, to go down with him. I knew that they would not bother him as I should have by discussing questions of state….11

  Just two days after his inauguration in 1945, FDR insisted on attending the famous Yalta Conference with Churchill and Stalin, this time taking my aunt Anna as his assistant

  In April Eleanor wrote him a chatty letter telling him about the goings on of their children and sending news from the White House—it was to be the last communication between them.

  The afternoon of April 12, Grandmère was in her sitting room in a meeting when Tommy signaled her urgently to take the phone. She learned that Franklin had fainted and had been carried to his bed. Concluding the meeting quickly but giving no clue as to her agitation, Eleanor then received another call suggesting that she fly down to Warm Springs. She knew in her heart that Franklin had died but was unable to formulate the thought into words. She was completely composed when she arrived just before midnight and went into the bedroom where her husband lay, closing the door behind her.

  Anna’s “complicity” in the ongoing friendship between FDR and Lucy made the relationship between mother and daughter difficult for a time. However, both before and eventually later, Grandmère and Anna had a very close and loving relationship.

  According to Bernard Asbell, who helped Aunt Anna collate the voluminous correspondence between her and Grandmère in a book entitled Mother & Daughter, it was then that Grandmère sat down on a sofa and asked Miss Suckley and Miss Delano, Grandfather’s cousins, to tell her exactly what had happened. According to Asbell it was Laura Delano who broke the terrible news to Grandmère:

  When the turn came to Laura Delano, an aristocratic eccentric occasionally given to dying her hair purple, Mrs. Roosevelt got more of “exactly what happened” than anyone expected. For reasons that her companions were not able to explain, expect that Miss Delano was a sayer of blunt truths, she chose to include in her detail of exactly what happened that the portrait of the President, for which he was sitting at the moment of his collapse, was being done by Elizabeth Shoumatoff, a friend of Lucy Mercer Rutherford; that, in fact, the portrait had been commissioned by Mrs. Rutherford; and that, verily, Mrs. Rutherford, at the moment of the collapse, had been sitting in that window alcove right there, and had been Franklin’s visitor, inhabiting the guest cottage, for the past three days.12

  My stunned grandmother then asked other questions of cousin Laura and received truthful answers: Yes, Franklin had seen Lucy on other occasions and, most shocking of all, Anna had served as hostess. Uncle James later wrote about Anna’s awkward position in my grandparent’s marriage:

  Mother was angry with Anna for participating in the deception of the final years. But what was Anna to do? Should she have refused Father what he wanted? She was not in a position to do so even had she wanted to. Accepting the confidence of Father, should she have betrayed him by running to report to Mother on every move he made? A child caught between two parents can only pursue as honorable a course as possible. Anna could no more serve as Mother’s spy on Father than she could as Father’s spy on Mother. Anna suffered some private anguish, but she was as true as she could be to both our parents and she was blameless in this matter.13

  The death of FDR was a source of grief felt worldwide, but Grandmère was seemingly completely removed emotionally.

  When Grandmère was sorting through Grandfather’s belongings at Hyde Park, she found the small watercolor that Lucy’s friend Madame Shoumatoff had painted of him while at Warm Springs during his last days. She instructed her secretary to send it to Lucy, who in turn wrote Grandmère the following:

  Thank you so much, you must know that it will be treasured always. I have wanted to write you for a long time to tell you that I had seen Franklin and of his great kindness about my husband when he was desperately ill in Washington, and of how helpful he was too, to his boys—and that I hoped very much that I might see you again… I think of your sorrow—you—whom I have always felt to be the most blessed and privileged of women must now feel immeasurable grief and pain and they must be almost unbearable.

  As always, affectionately,

  Lucy Rutherford14

  It was on the long train from Warm Springs back to Washington that my grandmother had to deal with her husband’s final deception and, she hoped then, her complete return to anonymity.

  In Mother & Daughter my aunt Anna remembered once when she was in the room with both Lucy and her father, and Lucy saying, “You know, your father drove me in his little Ford up to (what’s the name of that mountain where he loved to go on picnics?) Dowdell’s Knob. You know, I had the most fascinating hour I’ve ever had. He just sat there and told me some of what he regarded as the real problems facing the world now. I just couldn’t get over thinking of what I was listening to, and then he would stop and say, ‘You see that knoll over there? That’s where I did this or that,’ or ‘You see that bunch of trees?’ Or whatever it was. He would interrupt himself, you know. And we just sat there and looked.” It was then that Anna says she realized that the one thing FDR needed m
ost, someone to just listen to him talk, was the one thing Grandmère was not capable of being. Perhaps that is the main reason his relationship with Lucy endured for so many years. In June 1945, following the death of FDR, Lucy burned all letters she had received from him. Three years later she was diagnosed with leukemia, and she died in July 1948 at the age of fifty-seven. She was buried next to her husband at Tranquility Farms in Allamuchy, New Jersey.

  Grandmère, with Anna to the left and my father in uniform on the right, at FDR’s final resting in the Rose Garden at Springwood.

  Grandmère and Anna, after an initial period of coolness caused by Anna’s role in the rekindling of the affair, became closer than ever. But on the day of my grandfather’s death and for months thereafter, those feelings of betrayal must have felt as sharp as shards of glass to Grandmère. No one will ever know how intensely she suffered this disloyalty, nor for how long it lingered, as she never spoke about it to anyone. She did, however, write:

  I lay in my berth all night with the window shade up, looking out at the countryside he had loved and watching the people at stations, and even at the crossroads, who came to pay their last tribute all through the night.

  The only recollection I clearly have is thinking about The Lonesome Train, the musical poem about Lincoln’s death. I had always liked it so well—and now this was so much like it.15