Eleanor Butler "Bunny" Alexander-Roosevelt (1888-1960) only daughter of Henry Addison Alexander, a prominent New York lawyer and Grace (Green) Alexander. Eleanor Alexander was a great granddaughter of the late Theron Butler.[1] She died 29 May 1960 at Oyster Bay, Nassau Co., Long Island, NY.
She married 29 June 1910, at New York City, Presbyterian Church, 59th Street Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., son of President Theodore Roosevelt, a Brigadier General who was awarded the Medal of Honor and was the only general officer to land in the first wave on D-Day. During her husband's service as Governor of Puerto Rico and Governor-General of the Philippines, she served during three years as First Lady of Puerto Rico (1929-1932) and the Philippines (1932-1933).
Throughout her life Eleanor Alexander not only supported "Ted" Roosevelt (the only general officer to land in the first wave on D-Day) in his career, but also proved a highly organized, socially conscious person in her own right. She helped improve the conditions of Puerto Rican women while her husband was governor of the island (1929-31); she organized the first American women's committee for China Relief (1937); and she directed the American Red Cross Club in England (1942). Eleanor received citations and commendations from, among others, the French government, Gen. John J. Pershing, and the U.S. War Department. She also wrote a fascinating account of her life in her memoirs, Day Before Yesterday.[2]
Mrs. Roosevelt had four children, Grace Green Roosevelt (1911-1993), Theodore Roosevelt III (1914-2001), Cornelius V. S. Roosevelt (1915-1991) and Quentin Roosevelt II (1919-1948). She died in 1960, sixteen years after her husband, who had died of a heart attack shortly after the D-Day invasion of France.