Eleanor Roosevelt: The Definitive Biography of America's Most Important First Lady (1999)

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In the 1930s, Eleanor had a very close relationship with legendary pilot Amelia Earhart. One time, the two sneaked out from the White House and went to a party dressed up for the occasion. After flying with Earhart, Roosevelt obtained a student permit but did not further pursue her plans to learn to fly. Franklin was not in favor of his wife becoming a pilot. However, the two friends communicated frequently throughout their lives.[45] Roosevelt also had a close relationship with Associated Press (AP) reporter Lorena Hickok, who covered her during the last months of the presidential campaign and "fell madly in love with her".[46] During this period, Roosevelt wrote daily 10- to 15-page letters to "Hick", who was planning to write a biography of the First Lady.[47] The letters included such endearments as, "I want to put my arms around you & kiss you at the corner of your mouth,"[48] and, "I can't kiss you, so I kiss your 'picture' good night and good morning!"[49] At Franklin's 1933 inauguration, Eleanor wore a sapphire ring Hickok had given her.[50] FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover despised Roosevelt's liberalism, her stance regarding civil rights, and her and her husband FDR's criticisms of Hoover's surveillance tactics, and so Hoover maintained a large file on Roosevelt,[51] which the filmmakers of the biopic J. Edgar (2011) indicate included compromising evidence of this relationship, which Hoover intended to blackmail Roosevelt with. Compromised as a reporter, Hickok soon resigned her position with the AP to be closer to Eleanor, who secured her a job as an investigator for a New Deal program.[52] There is considerable debate about whether or not Roosevelt's relationship with Hickok was sexual. It was known in the White House press corps at the time that Lorena Hickok was a lesbian.[53] Scholars, including Lillian Faderman[50] and Hazel Rowley,[54] have asserted that there was a physical component to the relationship, while Hickok biographer Doris Faber has argued that the insinuative phrases have misled historians. Doris Kearns Goodwin stated in her 1994 Pulitzer Prize–winning account of the Roosevelts that "whether Hick and Eleanor went beyond kisses and hugs" could not be determined with certainty.[55] Roosevelt was close friends with several lesbian couples, such as Nancy Cook and Marion Dickerman, and Esther Lape and Elizabeth Read, suggesting that she understood lesbianism; Marie Souvestre, Roosevelt's childhood teacher and a great influence on her later thinking, was also a lesbian. Faber published some of Roosevelt and Hickok's correspondence in 1980, but concluded that the lovestruck phrasing was simply an "unusually belated schoolgirl crush" and warned historians not to be misled. Researcher Leila J. Rupp criticized Faber's argument, calling her book "a case study in homophobia" and arguing that Faber unwittingly presented "page after page of evidence that delineates the growth and development of a love affair between the two women". In 1992, Roosevelt biographer Blanche Wiesen Cook argued that the relationship was in fact romantic, generating national attention. A 2011 essay by Russell Baker reviewing two new Roosevelt biographies in the New York Times Review of Books (Franklin and Eleanor: An Extraordinary Marriage, by Hazel Rowley, and Eleanor Roosevelt: Transformative First Lady, by Maurine H. Beasley) stated, "That the Hickok relationship was indeed erotic now seems beyond dispute considering what is known about the letters they exchanged." In the same years, Washington gossip linked Eleanor romantically with New Deal administrator Harry Hopkins, with whom she worked closely.[60] Roosevelt also had a close relationship with a New York State Police sergeant, Earl Miller, whom her husband had assigned as her bodyguard. Roosevelt was 44 years old when she met Miller, 32, in 1929. He became her friend as well as official escort, taught her different sports, such as diving and riding, and coached her in tennis. Biographer Blanche Wiesen Cook writes that Miller was Eleanor's "first romantic involvement" in her middle years. Hazel Rowley concludes, "There is no doubt that Eleanor was in love with Earl for a time ... But they are most unlikely to have had an 'affair'." Eleanor's friendship with Miller happened at the same time as her husband's rumored relationship with his secretary, Marguerite "Missy" LeHand. Smith writes, "remarkably, both ER and Franklin recognized, accepted, and encouraged the arrangement....Eleanor and Franklin were strong-willed people who cared greatly for each other's happiness but realized their own inability to provide for it." Eleanor and Miller's relationship is said to have continued until her death in 1962. They are thought to have corresponded daily, but all letters have been lost. According to rumor, the letters were anonymously purchased and destroyed, or locked away when she died. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_Roosevelt