AP
Oh, why can’t politicians just stay true to their wives?
Courtesy of Joseph E. Persico’s new book, “Franklin and Lucy” (out today), we find additional extramarital details from the life of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The book sheds light on letters written between FDR and Lucy Mercer Rutherford, with whom our 32nd president was romantically linked during World War I. Rutherford was hired by Eleanor Roosevelt as a social secretary in 1914.
Although FDR’s involvement with Mercer during World War I, and again toward the end of his life (she was at his death bed in Georgia), is well-known, Persico unearths new evidence suggesting the romance never took a breather. “Letters and documents recently discovered by the heirs of Lucy Rutherford, never before published, and made available to me make the significance of that relationship unmistakable,” Persico writes. “Clearly, Lucy was the love of his life.”
The book’s flap says that Lucy, along with the other women in FDR’s life (including the non-romantic relationships), “fulfilled deep seated needs within Roosevelt for adulation, approval, unconditional love and diversion from his crushing burdens that his wife Eleanor alone could not provide.”
Poor Eleanor. But don’t feel totally bad for her: Persico also suggests that FDR’s infidelity helped inspire Eleanor to become one of the 20th century’s greatest women, by turning a normal marriage into a successful working partnership.
