Eleanor Roosevelt had a secret lesbian lover — but she left journalist Lorena Hickok alone and heartbroken after the two had traded thousands of passionate letters! The secret lovers would write steamy missives, and are seen above with Governor Paul Pearson during a trip to St. Thomas Virgin Island.
The pair first met in 1928, but didn’t become lovers until Franklin Roosevelt was inaugurated in 1933. Susan Quinn, author of “Eleanor and Hick: The Love Affair That Shaped a First Lady,” wrote that “Hick” traveled on the campaign trail and earned Eleanor Roosevelt’s trust.
In 1933, Hickock left her position to take a federal job investigating poverty relief programs, so the women were separated for weeks at a time. Smitten Eleanor wooed her lesbian lover — who she called “the light of my life” — and tenderly pledged her deep devotion through the mail. The sizzling letters capture the passion that the First Lady set down on paper….
March 9,1933: “My pictures are nearly all up and I have you in my sitting room where I can look at you most of my waking hours! I can’t kiss you, so I kiss your picture good night and good morning.”
Nov. 27,1933: “Hick dear, I found two letters and a road map today and did I devour them! I forgot to write you that after 10:30 a.m. on Dec. 15, I will be free to meet you and I will have nothing to do, so come as early as you can. Why don’t we, if the weather is nice, take our lunch and go off each day to neighboring places? If we think we’ll be tempted to stay the night, we could take a bag and telephone what we decided to do.”
Dec. 5, 1933: “Tonight it’s one day nearer you. Only eight more days. Twenty-four hours from now it will be just seven more.”Most clearly, I remember your eyes, with a kind of teasing smile in them and that feeling of that soft spot just northeast of the corner of your mouth against my lips. Good night, dear one. I want to put my arms around you and kiss you at the corner of your mouth. And in a week, I shall!”
Lorena also bared her passion for the First Lady, writing on Nov. 2, 1934,: “One of the newspapers described you in a blue velvet dinner gown . . . Darling, in a blue velvet dinner gown or out of it… I love you.”
And in November 1938, Lorena wrote how she was anticipating a visit from Eleanor: “Yes, dear. I’m holding the night of Dec. 20 — and it’s very sweet of you. I don’t know what is running in N.Y. now. I’ll check up. Is there anything you’d particularly like to see? Right now I think I’d prefer a quiet evening and early to bed.”
On Feb. 14, 1945, Eleanor sent Lorena a Valentine card — and Hickok replied to her that day: “Dearest, thanks so much for the sweet Valentine I found here last night. One of the sweetest things about you is the way you never forget anniversaries. I love it.”
In another letter, Lorena even confessed that she felt more deeply about Eleanor than her own daughter, Anna. “Not even Anna could be to me what you are,” she wrote to her lesbian love. “With you, there is a much deeper understanding.”
Sadly, the couple never spent any final years later. Eleanor died in 1962, when she was said to have been madly in love with Dr. David Gurewitsch. Lorena would live for five more years after the death of Eleanor — but she was in terrible health, and couldn’t even attend her lover’s funeral.
After the once-respected journalist died in 1968, Lorena was cremated. Her ashes were left on the shelf of a funeral home for 20 years.
