Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Wendell Willkie

see: Wikipedia (photo also from Wikipedia)

full name: Lewis Wendell Willkie

born: Elwood, Indiana, 18 February 1892
son of: Herman Willkie, an immigrant from Aschersleben, Germany, and Henrietta Trisch

married in 1919; wife: Edith Wilk,a librarian from Rushville, Indiana
son: Philip

died: New York, New York, 8 October 1944

defeated in 1940 presidential race by Franklin Delano Roosevelt

reportedly had an affair with Madame Chiang Kai-shek:
"According to Gardner Cowles, publisher of the Des Moines Register, Willkie's visit to the Republic of China led to a bizarre consequence: Soong May-ling, wife of Chiang Kai-shek, the hugely ambitious co-ruler and First Lady of China, developed the idea that she could seduce and marry Willkie, use China's wealth to help him become president in 1944, and thus become the most powerful woman in the world. Cowles claimed that the affair was consummated in China, and that on a visit to the U.S. a few months later, she told him "If Wendell could be elected, then he and I would rule the world. I would rule the Orient and Wendell would rule the western world." He pointedly did not dismiss the possibility that Willkie, had he been nominated, might have accepted her highly improbable offer on some level."[http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/11-4-2003-47260.asp]

Madame Chiang Kai-shek

maiden name: Soong May-ling

born: 1898 in Shanghai, China
died: 2003 (at the age of 106)

Wife of leader of Nationalist Chinese Government

Reputed mistress of Wendell Willkie, the Indiana native who was defeated in the 1940 presidential race by Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

see: The Last Empress by Hannah Pakula (Simon & Schuster, 2009).