Morty's Cabin - The Affairs Of The Powerful - Nothing New & Still A Source Of Shame

By Marty Murray

To look at the way it was presented in the news and by his political enemies, one might be inclined to think that former President Bill Clinton's affair with aide Monica Lewinsky was something new, an outrageous scandal the likes of which have never been seen before. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. John F. Kennedy's escapades while in the White House are the stuff of legend, and in the bedroom he made Clinton look like an amateur, yet he is still respected and regarded as one of the United States' finest presidents. (The truth be told, if Clinton could run again today I think he would stand a good chance of winning! The people seem to like a man who enjoys his sex as much as he enjoys his politics.) The affairs of presidents with their co-workers and the wives of friends are nothing new. It's been going on for hundreds of years, and probably will continue to go on for hundreds more. Back in the days when the rich and the powerful married for political and business reasons, this sort of thing was rather common, though kept very discreet. A man married his wife for her familiy and connections, and vice-versa, and sexual attraction often existed outside the home....well, often at least as far as the men were concerned, but not always. From Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Franklin to Warren Harding to Franklin Roosevelt, America's top politicians have had all sorts of affairs. Today one could argue that it is less common, but it obviously still goes on. Do you think that if George Bush was having an affair that it would not be covered up at all costs, with all the resources of the White House being put into play? And what if he fathered a child with his mistress? Would the same rules not apply? I think not. Such behavior is still a source of shame, despite the hypocrisy that is often applied to it.

So now I'm going to take you back to the 1940's, to the time of the Second World War. The Supreme Allied Commander was an American general named Dwight David Eisenhower, a man who had risen up through the service even though was the product of a fairly poor background, unlike some of his peers, like General George Patton. Eisenhower, or "Ike" as he was commonly called, had gotten married to Mamie Geneva Doud in 1916, a year after his graduation from West Point. He had met her while vacationing in Texas, and though they loved one another, he had told Mamie right from the start that his duty to his country would always come first, and she would come second. His military career would take him to many different posts throughout the world, and by the time he was elected president he had moved at least 34 times. Ike made many friends in high places during his rise to the rank of general, partly due to his skill at playing cards, but it was his recognized strengths as a diplomat, a planner and an organizer that ultimately led to his position as head of the allied forces in Europe, and he had the backing of Generals Douglas MacArthur and George Marshall behind him.

Eisenhower doesn't appear to have been a particularly sexual man, and actually gained a bit of a reputation as a woman hater in his younger years. Despite this he and Mamie had two sons. The first, David Dwight, would die young from scarlet fever, and his death was a serious blow to the Eisenhowers. The second was John Sheldon Dowd, who was born in 1923. Mamie was from a well-off family from Denver, and she often found the military housing that was provided for her as her husband moved around the world not to her satisfaction, and she refused to live in it. Her attitude, and the amount of time Eisenhower had to devote to his career, plus the loss of their first son, began to drive the two of them apart. Once the war was underway and Ike was stationed in Europe, their relationship became even more strained and downright bitter.

It was a strange quirk of fate then, that would set up an attractive aristrocratic young Irish woman named Kay Summersby as Eisenhower's staff driver. Lonely, and at a distance from his wife in more ways than one, Ike began to have an affair with Kay, who found him highly attractive and handsome, and was turned on by his hard muscular body. Their affair has been hotly denied by the Eisenhower family, but many at the time knew what was going on, even though it was covered up after the war. Summersby would write in her memoirs that Eisenhower was essentially impotent, something that happened to him after he and Mamie became estanged, and it was at first stated that their affair remained unconsummated sexually. However, she confided later to associates that he could be aroused given patience, and that she had had to teach him some things about lovemaking.

After the war was over, Ike wrote to his friend General George Marshall, asking that he be relieved of duty so that he could divorce Mamie and marry Kay. Marshall would have none of it. He told Eisenhower bluntly that if he attempted to do so he would bust him out of the army and make his life hell, and so Ike moved apparently gently into peacetime life. He entered politics, and would go on to serve two terms as President of the United States, from 1953 to 1961. He is still regarded by many as one of the country's best presidents. Things between himself and Mamie apparently settled down as well, and they lived the rest of their days in a fairly stable marriage. Though his run for the presidency could have been put into jeopardy by his affair with Kay in Europe, all his correspondence regarding it with General Marshall was destroyed by President Truman before he left office, so there is little material evidence left to confirm the details of what took place. Eisenhower would pass away from a heart attack at his farm near Gettysburg in 1969, with Mamie at his side.

Kay herself settled in Southampton, New York after the war, and gained herself a reputation as a woman who liked to have a good time and liked her drink. She remained active in social circles and was a common sight around Washington. It is rumoured that Eisenhower helped her obtain her American citizenship, though she held the rank of Captain in the Army Corps, and made sure she was looked after financially. It is also rumoured that he continued to see her, very discreetly, and that their affair continued. Kay would write two books, "Eisenhower Was My Boss," and a second, which was the tell-all, "Past Forgetting, My Love Affair With Dwight D. Eisenhower," which was published after her death. Eisenhower was obviously the love of Kay's life, and she apparently slowly drank herself to death in her later years, despondent over what had transpired. Kay died of cancer of the liver in 1975, and her body was cremated and her ashes scattered in the place where she was born and grew up, County Cork, Ireland.

That this affair even took place is hotly disputed. Some claim that Summersby only wrote her second book out of desperation, when she was diagnosed with cancer and needed money. Others will claim that there is no way that Eisenhower could have carried on such an affair without his immediate associates knowing about it during the war. You can draw your own conclusions. I have my own views on human nature, and I tend to side with those who say that this happened rather than those who say it didn't. To me this is a great love story. Love doesn't always follow the boundaries set upon it by so-called polite society. It has been my experience that love has a mind of its own, and during times of loneliness and duress, it is even more likely to make its desires known, and all of us, no matter what our station, are still nothing more than human beings and subject to all the weaknesses and needs that entails.

All of this speculation could be put to rest, once and for all, by one simple fact. What if Eisenhower had secretly fathered a child with Kay Summersby? Such a person exists - an author from Texas named Anne Morrow. Anne married into a very rich family in Dallas. After her husband's death, she attempted to set up a gift shop in a local mall. A dispute with her landlord over promised signage soon grew into a major issue, with allegations that her slovenly property owner, a supposed florist, was in reality a major drug dealer with ties to the United States government and the CIA. The subsequent legal battle, which has gone on for many years and continues to this day, is detailed in Anne's book, "A Case Of Injustice," a review of which you can find here on our site. Her ongoing battle with the powers that be, and threats made against her, have caused her to consider moving out of the country for her own personal safety.

However Anne had another major coverup going on in her life. A simple quest for a copy of her birth certificate and an application for a passport had turned up a number of anomalies. Investigations into these things have proved fruitless, stymied at every turn. Anne has now come to believe, for many reasons, that she is the illegitimate child of Dwight Eisenhower and Kay Summersby, who was put into the care of the Gabbard family in Kentucky in the 1930's. Though brought up as one of their children, she was told by some of the Gabbards through the years that there was a family secret and that she was really adopted. The Gabbard family apparently has ties to the Eisenhowers, who of course deny any knowledge of any of this. Requests for DNA testing, which recently proved, for instance, that another great American hero, Charles Lindbergh, had indeed fathered children out of wedlock in Germany, have been turned down or gone unaknowledged. Anne's second book, yet to be written, will address this great mystery of her life.

You can visit Anne's website at www.palatinepress.com.

Check out the comparison photos there, where her own portrait is combined with those of Kay Summersby and Dwight Eisenhower, and see if you don't think her claims have any merit.


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