Alice Roosevelt Longworth - "The Other Washington Monument"

"The Other Washington Monument"

The widow Longworth maintained her stature in the community, socially and politically, garnering her the nickname "the other Washington Monument". Mrs. Longworth served as a delegate to the Republican National Convention on more than one occasion, declining to address the convention.

Longworth's wit was legendary in Washington, DC, and that wit could have a deadly political effect on friend and foe alike. When columnist and cousin Joseph Alsop claimed that there was grass-roots support for Republican presidential candidate Wendell Willkie, the Republican hope to defeat F.D.R. in 1940, Longworth said yes, "the grass roots of 10,000 country clubs." Longworth demolished Thomas Dewey, the 1944 opponent of her cousin Franklin, by comparing the pencil-mustached Republican to “the little man on the wedding cake.” The image stuck and helped Governor Dewey lose two consecutive presidential elections.

Paulina Longworth married Alexander McCormick Sturm, with whom she had a daughter, Joanna (b. July 1946). Sturm died in 1951. Following the death of Paulina in 1957 (by an accidental overdose of sleeping pills, for many years suspected of being a suicide, although Longworth never agreed with that assessment), Alice Longworth fought for and won the custody of her granddaughter, Joanna Sturm, whom she raised. Not very long before Paulina's death, she and Longworth had discussed the care of Joanna in case of such an event. In an article in American Heritage in 1969, Joanna was described as a "highly attractive and intellectual twenty-two-year-old" and was called "a notable contributor to Mrs. Longworth’s youthfulness.... The bonds between them are twin cables of devotion and a healthy respect for each other’s tongue. 'Mrs. L.,' says a friend, 'has been a wonderful father and mother to Joanna: mostly father.' "

In contrast to her relationship with her daughter, Mrs. Longworth doted on her granddaughter, and the two were very close. Upon Paulina's death, her cousin Eleanor Roosevelt sent condolences and the two mended their broken relationship despite their continued political differences.