(3 of 5)
Wilmington is as full of Du Ponts as New York is of Cohens. Eugene du Pont is a distant cousin of the biggest Du Ponts of all—Pierre, Irénée and Lammot. However, it has been 25 years since Eugene has actively participated in the affairs of great I. E. du Pont de Nemours & Co. Since 1912 he has spent most of his time farming, fishing, shooting and clipping the coupons from $10,000,000 worth of Du Pont stock. Nevertheless, blood is thicker than water, and while Eugene did not contribute to the $620,570 pot that other Du Ponts raised for the Republican campaign fund, he was an active member of the Liberty League which was organized to drive President Roosevelt and his ideas about industrial democracy out of the White House. There was no doubt in the autumn of 1936 that Franklin and Ethel, the young lovers, were politically star-crossed. When Alf Landon went through Wilmington. Ethel was down at the train to meet him. At Cambridge, Franklin harangued his economics class and extracurricular bull sessions on behalf of the New Deal. On Nov. 2 Romeo Roosevelt and Juliet du Pont flew from Boston to Newark, then parted—he to proceed to his very Democratic home, she to her very Republican one. She was not old enough to vote, but he was one of 27,751,612 citizens who re-elected Father Franklin. Fortnight later the story took another unexpected but happy turn when the engagement was officially announced at Greenville.
If there was ever any personal hostility to the match on the part of either family, it was decently and thoroughly submerged. But that a Roosevelt was going to marry a Du Pont was on the face of it startling news. Cartoonist Jerry Doyle of the Philadelphia Record drew his celebrated Shakespearean balcony scene. At Owls Nest newshawks questioned, cameras clicked and Franklin, who was now constrained to recognize the legitimate public interest in his romance, sighed: "This is worse than campaigning with Father.'' At this point the tale of Franklin and Ethel must surely have begun to drag had not Fate come forth with another pair of dramatic wallops to invigorate it. Franklin Jr. was smitten with a sinus infection. Rushed to Massachusetts General Hospital late in November, he developed a streptococcic throat. Ethel dashed to his bedside and a new drug, Prontosil, probably saved his life (TIME. Dec. 28). Sales of Prontosil quickly increased 50%. Sick most of the winter, Franklin went to the Du Pont winter home at Boca Grande, Fla. to recuperate in February. He and Ethel then returned to Washington— where she was suddenly stricken with acute appendicitis. It was now Franklin's turn to stand by Ethel's bedside. When she was out of danger he went back to Harvard. During the preceding four years he had never spent much more time in the Yard than his mother had at the White House, but he managed to pass the examinations which entitled him to a Bachelor of Arts degree this week.*