A familiar name came up on "The Roosevelts" [View all]

[markpkessinger]

Just finished watching the final episode of "The Roosevelts" (i watched all seven parts online). My ears perked up at the mention of FDR's cousin, Laura Delano, who was with him in the last days of his life at Warm Springs, Georgia, and to whom fell the task of providing the details of his death to Mrs. Roosevelt when she arrived there (including the fact that also with him had been her long-time nemesis, Lucy Rutherford Mercer).

In the 1990s, I met, on many occasions, Laura Delano, who by then was known as Laura Delano Adams Eastman (her last marriage, prior to her coming out as a lesbian, had been to the heir of the Eastman-Kodak fortune). She was a regular in attendance, along with her partner, Ms. Bunny Diehl (whom she would introduce as, "my partner, the formerly straight Miss Bunny Diehl&quot at the Sunday services of the Episcopal Chaplaincy of Fire Island Pines, over which my friend, Fr. Craig Bustrin, presided and for which I often played piano. She was a wonderful woman, who spoke in the same patrician accent as her famous cousin and carried herself with all of the dignity and refinement as one would expect. And yet, there was not the slightest hint of snobbery about her. She was very warm, VERY funny and never took herself too seriously!