Originally posted on Scandalous Women
One day in early 1918, a change took place in the marriage of FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt. Roosevelt, who was Assistant Secretary of the Navy under President Woodrow Wilson, had just returned from a tour of Europe, inspecting the navy overseas during the Great War. Exhausted and suffering from pneumonia, it was left to Eleanor as the dutiful wife to unpack his belongings. What she found set her into shock. Love letters between her husband and Lucy Mercer, a young woman that she had hired to be her social secretary. Eleanor had long suspected that something was going on between her handsome, vibrant husband, and her vivacious secretary, in fact she had fired Lucy, ostensibly because she no longer needed Lucy’s services during wartime. But now to see the evidence in black and white cut Eleanor to the quick.
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) had long worried that she would never be able to hold onto her husband. As a child, her mother Anna Hall Roosevelt had constantly pointed out her lack of good looks, calling her ‘Granny’ to her face, telling her that she needed to develop exquisite manners since she would never be a beauty. Even her maternal aunt, the unfortunately nicknamed Pussie couldn’t help pointing out her lack of chin, and her protruding teeth. As she got older she grew to the ungainly height of five foot ten. The only person to show her unconditional love was her…
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If you were to think politics has evolved a long way from the rough and tumble time of Sophocles, consider the Greek tragedy that unfolded when a former marine, Oliver Sipple, saved the life of American President Gerald Ford on a fall San Francisco day in 1975. By complete coincidence, this man happened to notice an assassin leveling a gun at Ford and he lunged at the assailant, resulting in the bullet just missing its target, but striking someone else. Sipple, suddenly a hero to a hero-hungry nation, got a letter from the President acknowledging this unique act of courage and personally thanking him. But as unwanted media attention continued to grow, Sipple…
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