Spoil of war

Gloria Vanderbilt was 10 years old when she became a spoil of war.

At stake was not only who she would live with, but who would control her very substantial trust fund. 

In one corner:  Gloria's mother, Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt, widow of Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt.

In the opposing corner:  Gloria's aunt, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, Reginald's sister, patroness of the arts, and the wife of Harry Payne Whitney, banker and investor.

The setting:  a Manhattan courtroom in October of 1934, during the depths of the Great Depression.

Called "the trial of the century" by the press, it fascinated a nation and gave it a window into the lifestyle that most Americans could not even fathom. 

So why were two women fighting over the same child?

I'm sure there was a long list of reasons. 

Much of the situation revolved around Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt's age.  She was allegedly 19 when she married the 42-year-old Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt.  Because she was not 21 yet -- in other words, not legally of age -- she received her father's legal permission to get married. 

They were married in March of 1923.  In February of 1924, their only child, Gloria Laura, was born. 

In September, 1925, Reginald Vanderbilt died of an internal hemorrhage (probably complicated by cirrhosis of the liver), leaving his widow in charge of a trust fund totally $2.5 million dollars.  But, because Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt was believed to be 20, and still underage, she also needed a legal guardian.  The only income available for her and her young daughter was the interest from little Gloria's trust.

That income funded Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt's travels to Europe over the next several years.  She traveled in high society circles and went through a brief engagement to a German prince.  (Gloria's twin sister, Thelma, was also the mistress of Edward, Prince of Wales; later to become Edward the VIII.)  Little Gloria spent most of her time with her live-in nurse.

When little Gloria developed tonsillitis, she and her mother sailed back to New York.  Little Gloria had her tonsils out, and then, aunt Gertrude Whitney offered to let little Gloria recuperate at her house.

Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt accepted the offer, left her daughter with her aunt Gertrude, and sailed back to Europe, having very little contact with the child.  Then, in 1934, fearing that she was about to be cut completely out of her daughter's life, she went back to New York and filed a petition for guardianship. 

Gertrude Whitney's response was to declare Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt an unfit mother.

The war was on.

Back and forth, during those days of late 1934, the headlines screamed of scandal, of "unfit motherhood", told of Gloria's "neglect" of her child while partying in Europe and socializing with relatives of the royal family.  When a witness testified that she'd seen Gloria kissing another woman "like a lover", a shocked judge ordered the courtroom cleared of all press. 

Caught in the middle was a 10-year-old child whom no one seemed to consider. 

Little Gloria, on the one hand, wrote her mother letters about how much she missed her and loved her.  But during the trial, she told the judge she hated her mother and was afraid of her.  Barbara Goldsmith, the author of Little Gloria . . . Happy At Last, her account of the sensational trial, theorized that little Gloria feared being kidnapped and murdered by her mother.  Only two years before, the baby son of Charles Lindbergh had been kidnapped and murdered . . . and Gloria herself , because of her wealth and the Vanderbilt name, was also a target for a kidnapper.

But many years later, little Gloria herself said that she'd been coached by her aunt's attorney to lie about how she'd been treated. 

The judge ruled in favor of Gertrude Whitney, with Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt allowed weekend visitation.

Gloria Laura Vanderbilt died today, at age 95.  Did she live happily ever after, after that bitter, sensational custody trial? 

She married four times.  She inherited that trust fund at age 21 and immediately erupted in a mass amount of lavish spending.  One of the recipients of the Vanderbilt money was Pat DiCiccio, her first husband, from whom she got a Reno divorce.  She immediately married conductor Leopold Stokowski.  Later, she would marry Sidney Lumet and Wyatt Cooper.  Her last husband was the father of CNN correspondent Anderson Cooper.

She became an actress, and then a businesswoman.  For my generation, Gloria Vanderbilt jeans were a prized possession, and I remember having two Gloria Vanderbilt tops, one in pink, one in turquoise. 

Then she became a writer, telling her story in Once Upon a Time and other books. 

The New York Times published Barbara Harrison's review of Once Upon a Time, and in it, stated that little Gloria Vanderbilt "knew her mother just enough to worship her . . . and just enough to fear that her capricious mother would take her away from the few adults she briefly trusted."  During the weekend visitations awarded Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt, she used that time to, once again, associate with the adults in her social circle and not bond with her daughter. 

Her aunt Gertrude Whitney, who'd fought in court and won custody, told her niece she loved her . . . one time, and only one time.

Was "the trial of the century" a fight over the best interests of a 10-year-old girl, the desperate attempts of a aunt to rescue her niece from the clutches of an unfit mother?  Or the desperate attempt of a mother to rescue her beloved only daughter from the clutches of a manipulative aunt?

I fear that little Gloria lived her life believing that she was nothing more that a prize to be displayed, and nothing more than a spoil of war. 

The eighty-five years she lived after her custody trial is a long, long time to bear that burden. 

I hope now that she will find peace.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

30 years of journals

Stacked in a box and scattered among my bookshelves are various notebooks chronicling over 30 years of my life. 

I have Anne Frank to thank for that.

I've kept a diary off and on since I was 10 years old.  I no longer have the diaries I wrote in as a child and teenager.  The notebooks I have begin at the end of 1986 and continue on to the present. 

I first learned about Anne Frank in the 4th grade.  I don't remember learning about the Holocaust then, although I'm sure Adolf Hitler and the Nazis were mentioned.  What I remember is that there was a girl named Anne Frank, that she kept a diary, and she called it Kitty.  The lines I remember reading in our lesson on Anne Frank are:  "Anne had only begun to write.  If she had lived, her talent would have developed and grown."

When I started my very first diary, it was in one of those five year diaries that don't give you enough room to write in.  I called my diary Beth because Beth was my best friend in the 5th grade.  (I remember one of my entries was about how badly I'd performed in either kickball or softball and I wrote, "Dumb me, I'm bad in it.") 

I started seriously writing a diary in 8th grade and called it Carrie, after an imaginary character of mine that I developed into a book character.  That year that I was in 8th grade, I wrote a book about a girl gymnast named Carrie who went to the Olympics and won a gold medal.  This was in 1976 and Nadia Comaneci was one of my heroines.

I no longer address my diaries to an imaginary person, and I am not as consistent in writing in a journal as I probably should be.  And I don't know what's going to happen to those journals when I die.  I'm not sure if anyone would be interested in my life. 

I don't know what inspired Anne to want to keep a diary in the first place.  She says in her opening pages that she didn't have a real friend and she'd decided that her diary would be that friend. 

Today, June 12, 2019, would have been Anne's 90th birthday.  On June 12, 1929, she was born in Frankfurt, in Germany.  She was four years old, just barely starting to form memories, when her family left Germany and settled in Holland. 

June 12, 1942 was her 13th birthday.  That was the day where she "went to Mummy and Daddy and then to the sitting room to open my gifts.  The first to greet me was you, probably the nicest of all."  "You" was a red-checked notebook the size and dimensions of an autograph album.  In the front, she wrote, "I hope I shall be able to confide in you completely . . . and that you will be a great support and comfort to me." 

She didn't know at that moment what a "support and comfort" that diary would be.  Because less than a month later, she and her family, dressed in layers of clothing and walking in a pouring rain, would enter an office on the Prinsengracht in Amsterdam, climb up the back stairs to an attic, and not leave until August 4, 1944, the day they were arrested by the Nazis.

I visited Anne Frank's hiding place in 1996.  The longer I stayed there, the more claustrophobic I found the place.  That's when I decided that writing in her diary saved Anne's sanity.  What do you do when you're cooped up in an attic, you can't go out, you're bursting with energy, and the adults in your life may or may not be the greatest support to you?

You write. 

I'm not Jewish and I'm not a young girl forced into hiding by circumstances. 

But it's because of Anne that I write.

Today, she would have been 90.

Happy birthday.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

D-Day + 75 years

Their feet hit the water in the cold dawn of  June 6, 1944.  They splashed ashore underneath a hail of German bullets and between explosions of German shells.

Many of them did not make it onto the beach.

Many of them did not make it off the beach.

Those that did, they possessed territory step by step, inch by inch.

We know them as "the boys of Pointe du Hoc" (thanks to Ronald Reagan), and by other names; those that landed at Omaha, Juno, and Utah Beaches.

History calls it "D-Day", and in most newspapers of the day, the word "invasion" was a prominent part of the headline.  The St. Petersburg Times, in their headline of June 6th, just had one word, in type as big as they could get it:  "INVASION".

Today, it's 75 years since these men splashed off the boats and onto land, since men parachuted from the sky and landed on French territory, the order of the day from General Dwight D. Eisenhower perhaps ringing in their ears:

"Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Forces:

You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.

Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely.

But this is the year 1944. Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man-to-man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned. The free men of the world are marching together to victory.

I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty, and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full victory.

Good Luck! And let us all beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking."

In Amsterdam, a young girl in hiding in an attic wrote in her diary, "This is *the* day.  The invasion has begun!"

Back on the home front, Americans like my maternal grandparents, my paternal grandmother, my parents (who would have been 11 and 6 at the time) and other relatives would have woken up to bulletins such as this from NBC radio or perhaps this from CBS radio.

One day later, Orson Welles would broadcast a magnificent portrait of what an ordinary American would have experienced on that June 6th through the eyes and voice of actress Agnes Moorehead.

Today, we know more about the human cost of war.  We've known since the beginning of war about the physical cost--the deaths, the injuries, the destruction of homes and other properties.  In the last 50 or so years, we've become more acquainted with the mental and psychological costs of war--post-traumatic stress disorder, survivor's guilt, nightmares, and in the case of Vietnam vets, active contempt for their service.

I hate war.  But I also understand that sometimes, war is necessary.  I wish it were not.

Today, we honor the men who fought at Normandy, these "boys of Pointe du Hoc", these men who parachuted and waded ashore because they believed in the cause of freedom.  They probably hated war as much as I do, and probably more so since they experienced it.  I never have.

Their numbers grow fewer every year.  My own congregation lost a D-Day veteran just a year or two ago.

Even though their numbers grow fewer, their story must not be forgotten.

I close with Charles Schultz's comic from D-Day a number of years ago:

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.