FDR and Sara Delano Roosevelt

Sara Delano Roosevelt:  Mother-in-Law from Hell

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, an only child, was the center of his mother’s universe.  She lavished him with attention and criticism.  The Roosevelts and Delanos were part of the Hudson Valley, New York aristocracy.  Her father was an early drug dealer ~ he exported opium from Hong Kong for wounded Civil War soldiers.  His father James’ first wife was Helen Astor, whose mother as queen of New York society created the 400 list.

First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt infamously opined, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”  Yet, she never enforced boundaries with her mother-in-law who treated her like Cinderella, criticized and belittled her, and engaged in financial abuse to dominate and control FDR’s life and marriage.  FDR was “insensitive, even spineless” in supporting his wife:

. . .governor of New York. . .the man who would stare down labor leaders and big business, control Congress, and take on Hitler.  But he was unable to say “No!” to his mother. . .

Sara would. . .use her grandchildren as a weapon against Mother. . .she held the purse strings. . .FDR’s lifelong subservience to his mother ~ purse strings entwined with apron strings. . .

FDR and his mother

Sara had doors cut leading from her large bedroom through Eleanor’s very small one, to give her direct access to Franklin’s room, an unthinkable invasion of privacy.  The mama’s boy willingly made his wife second fiddle to his mother.

The elder Mrs. Roosevelt was the first mother able to vote for her son for president.

Martha Young and Harry Truman

Martha Young Truman:  Renaissance Woman

Martha Young Truman was 92 years old when she flew for the first time aboard her son’s presidential plane ~ “The Sacred Cow.”  She was 29 years old when she married John Truman.  Harry was her first surviving son.  The Trumans moved to Grandview, Missouri to help run her father’s large farm.

Young Harry was “blind as a bat” without his glasses.  His mother taught him to read before he was five years old.  He read every book in the Independence (MO) public library.  She also taught him to play the piano.  She was born into a wealthy family before the Civil War, was college-educated, and celebrated the end of World War II with her son ~ the president.  Mother and son were devoted to each other:

His success. . .stems from the wise parenting of a stalwart and uncommon woman, one who had the good sense not to seek perfection in her son. . .She knew that perfect is all too often the enemy of the good.

His father had a volatile temper which was fueled by financial failure.

Harry met Bess Wallace at Sunday school when they were six.  They courted for 29 years.  Bess, like his mother, was from a wealthy milling family.  Her mother Madge lived with the couple for thirty-three cold and critical years:

Throughout her long and crotchety life, Madge Wallace was treated with utmost consideration by the world figure to whom she never showed respect. . .condescension to her son-in-law. . .The president treated her with royal respect at all times. . .Madge’s fine house is now a favorite tourist attraction ~ because Harry Truman lived there. . .at her death Madge’s gentlemanly son-in-law had only kind words for her. 

As a young man, Harry lived and worked with Arthur Eisenhower, who had a brother called Ike.

Eisenhower Family

Ida Stover Eisenhower:  Pacifist Mother of Allied Commander 

Dwight David Eisenhower ~ Ike ~ likely learned how to be a commanding general from his mother Ida Stover Eisenhower, who ably marshaled her sons to complete “unremitting” farm chores in Abilene, Kansas.  She deplored violence and taught Ike how to cook, sew, and clean.  Although she was a poor orphan, she went to Lane University (where she met her husband) and made a joyful noise with her cherished ebony piano.

Ike’s mechanic father David was somber, withdrawn, morose, austere, brusque, explosive,and antisocial ~ the exact opposite of his wife’s lively, joy-filled personality.  Yet, they were devoted to each other and committed to educating their six sons:

Boys are the best investment in the world. . .They pay the biggest dividends. . .our bank.  We invested in them every spare penny. . .the investment paid rich returns.  All six did well. . .all self-made men. . .prima donnas. . .tyrannical with their own kids.

David, “the czar” of the household. . .focused on obedience and discipline. . .believed in beating his kids. . .Twelve-year-old Dwight, witnessing the merciless beating. . .clutched at his father’s arms. . .”I don’t think anyone ought to be whipped. . .not even a dog!”

. . .Ida was the balance wheel between severe father and resentful sons. . .it was Ida’s values that guided her boys. . .put on a pedestal by her sons. . .Ida knew how to let go.

She became a pacifist in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley during the Civil War:

When Ida was three years old Confederate soldiers stormed into the Stover home, searching for her fighting-age brothers. . .The harrowing experience. . .took its toll when, two years later, her young mother died; Ida always felt that her mother was a casualty of the war.

Although the Eisenhower family was wealthy, Ike’s father went bankrupt.  Since Ike couldn’t afford to pay tuition, he went to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.  Ida hoped Ike would become “an instrument in bringing peace.”  He became the military leader who hated war.  At Ft. Sam Houston in Texas, Ike met Mamie Doud, the coddled daughter of a wealthy Denver family.  Ike had his father’s explosive, high-voltage temper:

Poor Mamie lived in constant fear that Ike would burst out at the wrong time.

. . .Ida’s approach to dealing with [Ike’s] outbursts was the opposite of his father’s method.  Where David would wield a hickory switch and gruffly order the boy to bed, Ida would wait out the worst of the tantrum, then reason with him quietly.

Mrs. Eisenhower didn’t live to see her son Ike become president.

I tried to tend the roots as well as the stems.

– Rose Kennedy

Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy:  Competitive Matriarch

Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy did everything possible to assure her children’s success:

The drive to win was instilled in each of them by example and expectation.  Not only was their father a winner in the cutthroat competition of Wall Street, Hollywood, and Washington, but Rose. . .had been a formidable contender.

Rose managed the tribe like a business; she was a human computer. . .she was teacher, nurse, social adviser, lay preacher, drill sergeant, camp counselor, and. . .campaign worker. . .John Kennedy [told Time], “They talk a lot about Dad.  Mother deserves more credit.  She is the one who was there. . .She gave me my interest in history.”

. . .[President Kennedy’s] father “was not around all that much.”  The dynamic Joe was consumed with building his fortune on Wall Street and in Hollywood’s nascent film industry, amassing the wealth and power to support his dynastic plans. . .time for extramarital relationships that would set a powerful and destructive example for two generations of Kennedy males. . .

LBJ

 Let’s hear what Mama thinks.

– Lyndon Baines Johnson 

Rebekah Baines Johnson:  Master Manipulator

Dorothy Gardner King Ford

Ford Wedding, 1948

Jimmy and Lillian Carter

 Sometimes when I look at my children, I say to myself,

“Lillian, you should have stayed a virgin.”

– Lillian Carter

Lillian Gordy Carter:  Champion for the Under-dog

 

James Earl Carter, Jr. was the first American president born in a hospital.  His mother Miz Lillian was one-of-a-kind:

 

Full of sass and vinegar, insouciant and irascible, compassionate toward the downtrodden and impatient with the high-and-mighty, Lillian Carter was sui generis. . .she relished being different. . .Lillian Gordy was a girl of the new century. . .a trailblazer, defiant of old shibboleths, ready to accept new thinking. . .the first presidential mother to have a career outside the home. . .nursing was a calling. . .

 

Lillian and Earl [Jimmy’s father] were a fun-loving couple.   They went to dances at the Elks Club, drank a little, and played a little poker, even though Earl was a deacon of Plains Baptist Church. . .they liked to put records on the Victrola and dance. . .

 

Jimmy quickly learned that if he was engrossed in a book, his mother let him skip chores. . .Lillian taught her son to read little books when he was four, and he never slowed down.  Books opened the world to him. . .teachers. . .companions, exciting escapes.

 

Miz Lillian didn’t cotton to the local church ladies:

 

They were enthusiastic about sending missionaries to Africa, but they weren’t interested in helping black people right there at home. . .Miss Lillian, wife of one of the biggest farmers in the county, who came into [her Black neighbors’] homes and treated them with dignity. . .Lillian did private duty nursing. . .an innate sense of the injustice, the poverty, and the inequities that gnawed at the human beings consigned to the bottom of the heap.

 

 

Reagan Family (Ronald next to his mother)

 

Nelle Wilson Reagan:  Director, Producer, and Head of Casting

 

Ronald “Dutch” Reagan’s mother Nelle Wilson Reagan was an Illinois farm girl with a thirst for the theater.  His father John Edward Reagan loved rum, and his failures caused the family to become transients.  Like his mother, Dutch craved the spotlight:

 

She had showed him the magic of pretending, she had sent him on his way. . .her son’s accomplishments had given her a status that her husband could never provide. . .Jack’s alcoholic binges made life uncertain.

 

. . .the Reagans. . .were most often holding on by the finger-nails to a cracked rung of the middle-class ladder; while Jack was always a white-collar worker, the collar was frayed. . .intrepid Nelle kept up a good front.

 

Dutch bought his parents a home in California and gave his father a job answering his fan mail.  His career, however, wasn’t as successful as his wife’s ~ Jane Wyman.  She was granted an uncontested divorce on the grounds of mental cruelty:

 

Jane charged that her husband was more interested in politics than he was in her.  And her movie career was going much better than his.

 

Dorothy (L), George H.W. (R), and George W. Bush (center)

Bill Clinton and Virginia Clinton Kelley

Virginia Cassidy Blythe Clinton Dwire Kelley:  An American Original

Bill Clinton began life as William Jefferson Blythe III.  His father had been tragically killed in a car accident before he was born.  His mother Virginia Cassidy Blythe was a registered nurse., but to guarantee her son’s future, she became a nurse anesthetist.

Bill Clinton was reading by the time he was three.

After four years of being a widow, his mother married Roger Clinton over strenuous objections from her family:

“You’re fixin’ to marry a bunch of Buick cars ~ and you’ll have hell from then on.”

. . .ignoring. . .high stakes craps games in his apartment, his first wife’s divorce on grounds of physical abuse, the garnisheeing of his salary to pay court-ordered child support, his vicious attack on a young Puerto Rican in a gambling dispute. . .little Billy was excited to have a father.  . . 

Bill was the center of Virginia’s universe.  He was a golden boy ~ a leader ~ more mature than his classmates.  He played tenor saxophone, and Virginia conducted kitchen table conversations with his friends:

Bill got his sense of justice from his mother.  She was early in understanding that people without a voice must have someone to speak up for them.  She would talk about people who were denied access to the best medical treatment because they didn’t have money. . .a champion for those who have not. . .Virginia treated Bill as an adult, and equal.  She respected him. . .Bill was a uniquely gifted young man and wanted to help him have the fullest range of opportunities possible in life.

Roger Clinton was a mean drunk, and Bill became his mother’s protector:

“Hear me.  Never. . .ever. . .touch my mother again!”

Richard and Virginia Kelley and Bill Clinton

After the couple divorced, Bill legally changed his name to Clinton.  The family dysfunction left its mark:

I had to learn to live with the darker side of life at a fairly early period. . .

I grew up as a peacemaker, always trying to minimize the disruption.  People underestimate your resolve because you go out of your way to accommodate them before you drop the hammer.

. . .He would do anything to avoid punishment.  It offended his dignity. . .

Virginia Clinton Kelley was blessed to pledge Arkansas’ delegates to her son thereby giving him enough votes to become the Democratic nominee in 1992.  Her optimism fueled his reputation as the “comeback kid” during the campaign.