In the first place, I didn’t know what a mistress was. I’m still none too sure.
When the news of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s death came on April 12, 1945, I was at a meeting of the Camp Fire girls. We held hands and cried for the only President of our lifetimes and the only President who would serve more than two terms.
The president was a great man. We were sure of that. There was national mourning and it wasn’t until later that the news began to trickle out that, when he died, FDR had been not with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, his wife of 40 years, but in the company of one of his longtime mistresses, Lucy Mercer.
Naturally, at 12, I had no idea what to make of it. In those days news was largely made up of innuendo and inference. I believe I may have liked that better. Anyway, the only thing I knew about mistresses was the nursery rhyme that started, “Mistress Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?” So I was left with sort of an image of a garden party that went terribly, terribly wrong.