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Blauvelt's daughter, Mrs. William Smith, insists that her father "wasn't sloppy in his work. He worked very hard and conscientiously on this genealogy. He cross-referenced, and was very thorough." But, she says, "I have no idea where the item about a Durie-Kennedy marriage came from. My father must have made a mistake." He was indeed slipshod in the paragraph in question. He spelled Durie's maiden name Malcom instead of Malcolm, reversed her first two marriages., and neglected to mention that for a decade before the publication of his genealogy she had been Mrs. Thomas Shevlin.
Bouquets & Corsages. Durie was born on Dec. 30, 1916 to Mr. and Mrs. Fred Kerr. By the time she was four, her mother had been divorced and was married to George H. Malcolm, a wealthy Otis Elevator Co. executive. Durie grew up in Chicago's suburban Lake Forest, attended Virginia's Chatham Hall, was a member of the Chicago Junior League. Slim and attractive, she was popular at parties in the early '30s at the Racquet Club, the Service Club-and as a charity-fashion-show model.
Durie's debut in 1934 occurred at an outdoor dance on the family estate, where, society columns recorded, there was "half a ton of gorgeous bouquets and corsages," and "Dede" was "radiant, with golden-brown hair, blue-green eyes and a sunny smile." At the age of 20, on April 3, 1937, in a Presbyterian ceremony, she married John Bersbach, grandson of Judge Theodore Brentano, onetime Minister to Hungary. They honeymooned in a yacht off Florida, tried to settle down in Lake Forest.
The marriage lasted only 14 months. Recalls Bersbach, now a Chicago printing executive: "You know how these divorces are. Somebody testified that they saw me slap her twice. Actually, I've never slapped a woman in my life. She was a darn attractive girl, very vivacious, but she liked to bounce around.'' The divorce was granted on June 11, 1938.
Just four months later, Durie became engaged to Firmin Desloge IV, scion of an old, wealthy Roman Catholic family in St. Louis. They were married on Jan. 2, 1939, at the winter home of her parents in Palm Beach. After a Nassau honeymoon, they lived in St. Louis for eight years, had one child, also named Durie.
Routine Charges. This marriage ended in divorce on Jan. 24, 1047, based on charges of "general indignities" that are routine in Missouri. Durie claimed that Desloge was "cold and indifferent," refused to take her "to places of amusement," told her that "he did not love her, that he did not want to live with her, and that he wished she would leave him."
Not quite six months later, Durie married Thomas H. Shevlin, son of a famed Yale football end (1902-05) and wealthy Minneapolis lumberman, Thomas Leonard Shevlin. The marriage, at Fort Lee, N.J., on July n, 1947, was Shevlin's second. His first wife, Lorraine, was the daughter of Pasadena Socialite Princess Laura Orsini; she had first been married to Robert McAdoo, son of President Wilson's Treasury Secretary. She is now married to Kentucky's Republican Senator John Sherman Cooper, and is a good friend of President and Mrs. Kennedy's. In divorcing Shevlin, Lorraine was ultimately granted a lump settlement of $525,000.