Washington Post: America’s First Gay First Lady Revealed
The Washington Post has a story today about America’s first gay first lady.
She was Grover Cleveland’s sister Rose, who acted as his first lady because he was elected without a wife.
In the summer of 1910, Evangeline Simpson Whipple told the caretaker of her home not to move anything in her absence. The wealthy widow was going on a trip, but would be back soon, she said.
She never returned. When she died in 1930, she was buried at her request in Italy next to the love of her life — a woman with whom she had a relationship that spanned nearly 30 years. That woman, Rose Cleveland, had served as first lady.
The letters, preserved by the caretaker at Evangeline’s Minnesota home, are collected in a new book, “Precious and Adored: The Love Letters of Rose Cleveland and Evangeline Simpson Whipple,” and make clear that they were more than just friends, according to its editors.
When Grover Cleveland took office in 1885, he was a 50-year-old bachelor, a fact that almost derailed his campaign when rumors spread that he had fathered achild out of wedlock. (He had.) Protocol for unmarried or widowed presidents called for a female relative to fill the role of first lady. In stepped his sister Rose.
She was seen as an important counterbalance to her brother’s scandalous baggage: She was respectable, CONTINUE READING: Washington Post: America’s First Gay First Lady Revealed | Diane Ravitch's blog