KEES Janszen came from Hoorn to America. There they asked him what his name was. Kees van Hoorn, he said. He had twelve children and thirty grandchildren in New York, and somewhere on that family tree Lucy appeared.
Klaas Martensen came from Oud-Vossemeer on the island of Tholen. He was a farmer’s son, on a farm named Rozenveld. What is your name, New York asked Klaas. Van Rozenveld, he said. He had eight children and 29 grandchildren. Somewhere on that family tree, Franklin appeared.
Franklin Roosevelt fell in love with Lucy Mercer, way over his head. He was married to Eleanor, Lucy was her secretary, and she was summarily fired when Eleanor found Franklin’s secret love letters. It didn’t matter. Franklin and Lucy had an affair that spanned three decades.
On April 12 in 1945, Franklin Roosevelt suffered a stroke at his vacation home in Warm Springs, Georgia. Not Eleanor but Lucy was with him. He fell unconscious in her arms. Secret Service agents hurried Lucy out the door, for the press was not to get wind of her presence. She drove home.
On the way, she stopped at a restaurant and from there called Warm Springs. A weeping operator answered, and Lucy understood that her lover had died. It destroyed her, and within another forty months she too passed away. Of grief.
Eleanor, herself also a Roosevelt and therefore of Zeeland origin, was more than a little miffed when she found out whom her husband had shared the vacation home with. But she got over it, and then toured the world for another seventeen years. As the equivalent of a rock star.
