Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or subscriptions. Historical content remains viewable.
Dismiss
Antoinette Bradlee, Ben's Ex-Wife and JFK's Lover, 87
3,652 views
Skip to first unread message
A Friend
Nov 15, 2011, 11:08:19 AM11/15/11
to
From washingtonpost.com:
Antoinette Pinchot Bradlee, former wife of prominent Washington Post
executive editor Benjamin C. Bradlee, dies at 87
By Adam Bernstein, Published: November 14
Antoinette Pinchot Bradlee's understated beauty, quiet charm and her
second marriage, to future Washington Post executive editor Benjamin C.
Bradlee, placed her on an elite social plateau in the nation's capital
in the late 1950s and 1960s.
She was a slender, comely blonde, and her unmistakable allure didn't go
unnoticed by first lady Jacqueline Kennedy. She once told the president
in the presence of the Bradlees, "Jack, you always say that Tony is
your ideal woman."
"Tony" Bradlee gradually withdrew from the demands of being a
Washington hostess and wife of a hard-driving editor. By all accounts,
she found journalism uninspiring. She was divorced from Ben Bradlee in
the mid-1970s and channeled a great deal of her energy to a growing
interest in the fine arts as well as the spiritual philosophy movement
started by Russian-born mystic George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff.
Mrs. Bradlee, 87, died Nov. 9 at the Ingleside at Rock Creek retirement
community in the District. She had dementia, said her daughter Rosamond
Casey.
While Mrs. Bradlee's life with her husband Ben was in many ways charmed
‹ private dinners at the White House and weekend getaways at Hyannis
Port, Mass., with the Kennedys ‹ it also had enduring sorrows. Their
circle included Mrs. Bradlee's older sister, Mary Meyer, a painter
whose murder in 1964 on the C&O Canal towpath remains unsolved.
The case took an eerie twist, Ben Bradlee later wrote in his memoir, "A
Good Life." The Bradlees saw CIA counterintelligence chief James J.
Angleton picking the padlock on Meyer's Georgetown art studio in an
attempt to retrieve her diary. (Meyer and Angleton's wife were
friends.)
Mrs. Bradlee subsequently found the diary, which appeared to disclose
her sister's affair with late President John F. Kennedy. Mrs. Bradlee
and her husband, who was serving as head of Newsweek's Washington
bureau, turned the diary over to Angleton with the promise that the CIA
would destroy it.
More than a decade later, Mrs. Bradlee was upset when she heard
Angleton had not kept his word. Through an intermediary, she got the
diary back and set it on fire.
Antoinette Eno Pinchot was born in New York on Jan. 15, 1924, to a
politically active family.
Her father, Amos, was a lawyer, founding member of the Progressive
Party and an antiwar advocate during World War I. Her mother, the
former Ruth Pickering, was a writer and critic for left-wing
publications such as the Masses, the Nation and the New Republic. Her
uncle Gifford Pinchot, a friend of president Theodore Roosevelt, was a
former Pennsylvania governor and became the first chief of the U.S.
Forest Service.
Tony Pinchot was a graduate of the Brearley School in New York and in
1945 graduated from Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. She worked on
the staff of Vogue magazine before her marriage, in 1947, to lawyer
Steuart L. Pittman, who later served as Kennedy's assistant defense
secretary.
While on a European trip with her sister in 1954, she met Bradlee, who
was then chief European correspondent for Newsweek. They divorced their
spouses, wed in 1956 and settled in Washington, where then-Sen. Kennedy
(D-Mass) was a Georgetown neighbor.
Mrs. Bradlee told Kennedy biographer Sally Bedell Smith that on a
particularly festive 46th birthday party for then-President Kennedy in
1963, he made a pass, which she rebuffed.
Ben Bradlee joined The Post in 1965 and three years later became its
executive editor, aggressively transforming the paper into one of the
country's most respected dailies. He wrote in his memoir that their
marriage began to disintegrate because of his near-total devotion to
The Post, combined with his wife's desire to seek spiritual fulfillment
through her artwork and Gurdjieff.
Survivors include four children from her first marriage, Andrew Pittman
of Washington, Nancy Pinchot of New Haven, Conn., Rosamond Casey of
Charlottesville and Tamara Pittman of Brooklyn, N.Y.; two children from
her second marriage, Dominic "Dino" Bradlee of Hydra, Greece, and
Marina Murdock of Purcellville; a stepson, Benjamin Bradlee Jr. of
Cambridge, Mass.; and 13 grandchildren.
Having studied art at Washington's Corcoran School, Mrs. Bradlee was a
ceramicist, jeweler and, in her final years, a painter. She earned a
strong review for her concrete sculptures at her first and only solo
exhibition, in 1972 at Washington's Jefferson Place Gallery.
"What makes these works remarkable is not the hardness of their shells,
but the delicacies of their interiors," wrote Post art critic Paul
Richard. "These pieces do not yell, they do not gobble space. Their
shapes are generally simple ‹ spheres, columnar pods, and discs ‹ but
each shape has an opening, a window, and there is nothing simple about
what goes on inside."
<http://goo.gl/mdd0l>
Antoinette Pinchot Bradlee, former wife of prominent Washington Post
executive editor Benjamin C. Bradlee, dies at 87
By Adam Bernstein, Published: November 14
Antoinette Pinchot Bradlee's understated beauty, quiet charm and her
second marriage, to future Washington Post executive editor Benjamin C.
Bradlee, placed her on an elite social plateau in the nation's capital
in the late 1950s and 1960s.
She was a slender, comely blonde, and her unmistakable allure didn't go
unnoticed by first lady Jacqueline Kennedy. She once told the president
in the presence of the Bradlees, "Jack, you always say that Tony is
your ideal woman."
"Tony" Bradlee gradually withdrew from the demands of being a
Washington hostess and wife of a hard-driving editor. By all accounts,
she found journalism uninspiring. She was divorced from Ben Bradlee in
the mid-1970s and channeled a great deal of her energy to a growing
interest in the fine arts as well as the spiritual philosophy movement
started by Russian-born mystic George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff.
Mrs. Bradlee, 87, died Nov. 9 at the Ingleside at Rock Creek retirement
community in the District. She had dementia, said her daughter Rosamond
Casey.
While Mrs. Bradlee's life with her husband Ben was in many ways charmed
‹ private dinners at the White House and weekend getaways at Hyannis
Port, Mass., with the Kennedys ‹ it also had enduring sorrows. Their
circle included Mrs. Bradlee's older sister, Mary Meyer, a painter
whose murder in 1964 on the C&O Canal towpath remains unsolved.
The case took an eerie twist, Ben Bradlee later wrote in his memoir, "A
Good Life." The Bradlees saw CIA counterintelligence chief James J.
Angleton picking the padlock on Meyer's Georgetown art studio in an
attempt to retrieve her diary. (Meyer and Angleton's wife were
friends.)
Mrs. Bradlee subsequently found the diary, which appeared to disclose
her sister's affair with late President John F. Kennedy. Mrs. Bradlee
and her husband, who was serving as head of Newsweek's Washington
bureau, turned the diary over to Angleton with the promise that the CIA
would destroy it.
More than a decade later, Mrs. Bradlee was upset when she heard
Angleton had not kept his word. Through an intermediary, she got the
diary back and set it on fire.
Antoinette Eno Pinchot was born in New York on Jan. 15, 1924, to a
politically active family.
Her father, Amos, was a lawyer, founding member of the Progressive
Party and an antiwar advocate during World War I. Her mother, the
former Ruth Pickering, was a writer and critic for left-wing
publications such as the Masses, the Nation and the New Republic. Her
uncle Gifford Pinchot, a friend of president Theodore Roosevelt, was a
former Pennsylvania governor and became the first chief of the U.S.
Forest Service.
Tony Pinchot was a graduate of the Brearley School in New York and in
1945 graduated from Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. She worked on
the staff of Vogue magazine before her marriage, in 1947, to lawyer
Steuart L. Pittman, who later served as Kennedy's assistant defense
secretary.
While on a European trip with her sister in 1954, she met Bradlee, who
was then chief European correspondent for Newsweek. They divorced their
spouses, wed in 1956 and settled in Washington, where then-Sen. Kennedy
(D-Mass) was a Georgetown neighbor.
Mrs. Bradlee told Kennedy biographer Sally Bedell Smith that on a
particularly festive 46th birthday party for then-President Kennedy in
1963, he made a pass, which she rebuffed.
Ben Bradlee joined The Post in 1965 and three years later became its
executive editor, aggressively transforming the paper into one of the
country's most respected dailies. He wrote in his memoir that their
marriage began to disintegrate because of his near-total devotion to
The Post, combined with his wife's desire to seek spiritual fulfillment
through her artwork and Gurdjieff.
Survivors include four children from her first marriage, Andrew Pittman
of Washington, Nancy Pinchot of New Haven, Conn., Rosamond Casey of
Charlottesville and Tamara Pittman of Brooklyn, N.Y.; two children from
her second marriage, Dominic "Dino" Bradlee of Hydra, Greece, and
Marina Murdock of Purcellville; a stepson, Benjamin Bradlee Jr. of
Cambridge, Mass.; and 13 grandchildren.
Having studied art at Washington's Corcoran School, Mrs. Bradlee was a
ceramicist, jeweler and, in her final years, a painter. She earned a
strong review for her concrete sculptures at her first and only solo
exhibition, in 1972 at Washington's Jefferson Place Gallery.
"What makes these works remarkable is not the hardness of their shells,
but the delicacies of their interiors," wrote Post art critic Paul
Richard. "These pieces do not yell, they do not gobble space. Their
shapes are generally simple ‹ spheres, columnar pods, and discs ‹ but
each shape has an opening, a window, and there is nothing simple about
what goes on inside."
<http://goo.gl/mdd0l>
Charlene
Nov 15, 2011, 11:42:14 AM11/15/11
to
On Nov 15, 10:08 am, A Friend <n...@noway.com> wrote:
> From washingtonpost.com:
>
> Antoinette Pinchot Bradlee, former wife of prominent Washington Post
> executive editor Benjamin C. Bradlee, dies at 87
>
> From washingtonpost.com:
>
> Antoinette Pinchot Bradlee, former wife of prominent Washington Post
> executive editor Benjamin C. Bradlee, dies at 87
>
> Mrs. Bradlee subsequently found the diary, which appeared to disclose
> her sister's affair with late President John F. Kennedy. Mrs. Bradlee
> and her husband, who was serving as head of Newsweek's Washington
> bureau, turned the diary over to Angleton with the promise that the CIA
> would destroy it.
Subject header seems wrong.
> her sister's affair with late President John F. Kennedy. Mrs. Bradlee
> and her husband, who was serving as head of Newsweek's Washington
> bureau, turned the diary over to Angleton with the promise that the CIA
> would destroy it.
wd47
Bermuda999
Nov 15, 2011, 11:59:49 AM11/15/11
to
0 new messages