Lucy Page Mercer Rutherfurd was born April 26, 1891,
in Washington, D.C. to a prominent Maryland Catholic family.
She was educated in private schools, but because her family
had very little money she had to go to work. In 1914,
she
became social secretary to Eleanor Roosevelt. In that capacity,
she helped ER with the social obligations associated with
her position as spouse of the assistant secretary of the
navy. When necessary she also served as the extra woman
at the Roosevelts' dinner parties.
While working for ER, Lucy met Franklin
Roosevelt and fell in love with him. Eleanor learned
of the affair in 1918 when she found a package of Lucy's
letters in FDR's luggage. Despite the social stigma then
attached to divorce, the couple considered it but eventually
decided to reconcile because of family and financial considerations:
FDR's political career, which a divorce would have
ended,
and a shared sense that they both wanted and needed to
continue their marriage. Historians have speculated
about the level
of emotional and sexual intimacy the Roosevelts experienced
thereafter, but most agree that the marriage endured
as
a shared partnership on many levels. They also agree that
the affair changed both FDR and ER significantly. He
became
more serious personally and politically while she deliberately
expanded the range and scope of her already considerable
public and private activities.
Lucy married Winthrop Rutherfurd, a wealthy widower with
six children in 1920. The couple had one daughter, and
the
marriage lasted until Rutherfurd's death in 1944. Although
he had promised ER never to see Lucy again, FDR did ask
Lucy to attend his 1932 inauguration. The two began to
see
each other again after her husband died in 1944 because
FDR wanted and needed companionship. ER did not know of
these meetings, many of which her daughter, Anna,
arranged, and was angered when she learned of them. She
was also disturbed to learn that Lucy had been among those
who were with FDR when he died in Warm
Springs, Georgia, in 1945. Lucy lived in Aiken, South
Carolina, until her death in 1948.
Sources:
Burns, James MacGregor and Susan Dunn. The Three Roosevelts:
Patrician Leaders Who Transformed America. New York:
Atlantic Monthly Press, 2001, 155-156; 495.
Cook, Blanche Wiesen. Eleanor Roosevelt: Volume One,
1884-1933. New York: Viking Press, 1992, 217-235.
Graham, Otis L., and Meghan Robinson Wander. Franklin
D. Roosevelt, His Life and Times. New York: Da Capo
Press, 1985, 380-381.