Eleanor and Hick

Eleanor and Hick: the love affair that shaped a First Lady by Susan Quinn

Lorena Hickok was an Associated Press reporter when she met and interviewed First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. They became professional advisors to each other, caring friends, confidantes, and lovers. Eleanor, who was privately educated, a debutante, married her sixth cousin Franklin. It was a disappointing marriage, to a man who was dominated by his mother, and had relationships with other woman. They had six children, who disappointed her in various ways. She was close to her brother Hall, an alcoholic.

Hick grew up poor in rural South Dakota in an abusive home. Worked as a servant, and eventually became a reporter. She reported on the Depression for the WPA, and encourage Eleanor to write her long running column “My Day.”

Hick had saved both sides of their decades long correspondence, and donated the letters to the Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park to be opened ten years after Hick’s death. In 1978, young adult biographer Doris Faber, was one of the first to read the letters, and was dismayed by the content, which revealed the emotional and physical affair between the two women. In 1999 Blanch Weisen Cook wrote a biography of Eleanor, in which she treated the relationship more sympathetically.