Paulina Longworth
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Paulina Longworth Sturm (February 14, 1925 - January 27, 1957) was the only child of Ohio Congressman Nicholas Longworth and his wife Alice Roosevelt, and the granddaughter of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt. She was born in Washington, D.C. when her mother was 41 years old and her parents had been married for almost 20 years. Her father died when Paulina was six, and she had a distant, strained relationship with her mother. True to her political pedigree, Paulina grew up amid wealth and high society, and made her social debut in Cincinnati, her father’s hometown. She briefly attended Vassar College.
Carol Felsenthal's biography of Alice Roosevelt Longworth painted a cruel and inaccurate portrait of Paulina, describing her as an awkward, unattractive child who grew into an "immensely shy woman with a severe stutter." Historians agree that Paulina was ignored, stifled, and belittled by her overbearing mother, who desired for Paulina to become an extroverted society woman like herself. Instead, in her adult years, Paulina suffered from depression and alcoholism, and endured institutionalizations and shock therapy treatments following several suicide attempts.
In 1944, while helping her mother campaign against their distant cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Paulina met Alexander McCormick Sturm, known as "Sandy," an artist and recent Yale graduate from a prominent family. They married on August 26, 1944, when Paulina was nineteen. Felsenthal's biography claims that on the eve of their wedding, Alice informed Paulina that Nicholas Longworth was not her father. According to historian Stacy Cordery her real father was Senator William Borah. [1]
Paulina and Sandy Sturm had a daughter, Joanna Mercedes Alessandra Sturm, (born July, 1946).. Sturm died of hepatitis in 1951. Young widowhood plunged Paulina deeper into depression and drug dependency, and she sought spiritual guidance. In 1952, she joined Dorothy Day's Chrystie Street hospitality house on New York's Lower East Side. She also volunteered at several Washington, D.C. hospitals.
In early 1957, Paulina succumbed to an overdose of sleeping pills. Though the autopsy noted her death as accidental, the Washington Post reported that Paulina committed suicide (at Alice's request they later printed a retraction). Nevertheless, while she had attempted suicide before, her mother, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, did not agree the suicide view, citing Paulinas' subsequent conversion to Catholicism, which forbids suicide and her Catholic burial, indicating that the Church did not consider her death a suicide. Vice President Richard Nixon was a pallbearer at her funeral.
Following Paulina’s death, her mother Alice Roosevelt Longworth won custody of Jonanna, whom she raised. Unlike her relationship with her daughter, Mrs. Longworth doted on her granddaughter and the two were very close. Upon Paulina's death, her mother’s cousin Eleanor Roosevelt sent condolences and the two women mended their broken relationship.
Paulina Longworth Sturm is buried with her mother in Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington.
[edit] See also
- Alice Roosevelt Longworth Mother
- Nicholas Longworth Father
- Alexander McCormick Sturm Husband
- Joanna Sturm Daughter
