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Betsey Cushing Whitney
Betsey Maria Whitney (née Cushing, formerly Roosevelt; May 18, 1908 – March 25, 1998) was an American philanthropist, a former daughter-in-law of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and later wife of U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St James's, John Hay Whitney.
She was the middle daughter of prominent neurosurgeon Harvey Williams Cushing and his wife, Katharine Stone Crowell, who hailed from a socially prominent Cleveland family. Dr. Cushing, who was descended from Matthew Cushing, an early settler of Hingham, Massachusetts, served as professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins, Harvard and Yale universities, and established the family in Boston.
Though she had two brothers, she and her two sisters became known in the social world as the "Cushing Sisters", heralded for their charm and beauty and schooled by their social-climbing mother to pursue husbands of wealth and prominence. All three Cushing sisters married into wealth and prominence: Her older sister, Mary "Minnie", married Vincent Astor, the heir of a $200 million fortune, in 1940, and her younger sister Barbara "Babe" was married to Standard Oil heir Stanley Mortimer Jr., and later to CBS founder William S. Paley. Both of her sisters died of cancer within months of each other in 1978.
She established the Greentree Foundation in 1983 to assist local community groups. She was a benefactor of North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, built in the early 1950s on 15 acres (61,000 m2) donated by Whitney. She was also involved with the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), Yale University and New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center. Among her many public activities over the years were memberships on the boards of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the John Hay Whitney Foundation and the Association for Homemakers Service.
After her husband's death in 1982, she donated $8 million to the Yale Medical School, then the largest gift in the school's history. The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. acquired nine important American and French paintings, as well as $2 million for future acquisitions. She left $15 million to New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center in her own will.
She also made art auction history in 1990 by putting up for sale, by Sotheby's, one of Renoir's most famous paintings, the sun-dappled cafe scene Bal au moulin de la Galette, Montmartre. It brought $78.1 million, then a record auction price for Impressionist art and the second-highest price for any artwork sold at auction. After her death, her art collection was sold at Sotheby's in 1999 for a then-record $128.3 million, "the second-highest single-owner auction in history."
In June 1930, she married James Roosevelt II (1907–1991), the eldest son of then Governor of New York, and eventual President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Anna Eleanor Roosevelt. After her father-in-law became president, her husband served his father as an aide at the White House, and she often stood-in as hostess at the White House when Eleanor was absent. When FDR entertained King George VI and Queen Elizabeth at a picnic at the Roosevelt estate in Hyde Park, New York in 1939, she was present and accompanied FDR as he drove the King and Queen along the Hudson River.
She and James had two daughters:
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Betsey Cushing Whitney
Betsey Maria Whitney (née Cushing, formerly Roosevelt; May 18, 1908 – March 25, 1998) was an American philanthropist, a former daughter-in-law of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and later wife of U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St James's, John Hay Whitney.
She was the middle daughter of prominent neurosurgeon Harvey Williams Cushing and his wife, Katharine Stone Crowell, who hailed from a socially prominent Cleveland family. Dr. Cushing, who was descended from Matthew Cushing, an early settler of Hingham, Massachusetts, served as professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins, Harvard and Yale universities, and established the family in Boston.
Though she had two brothers, she and her two sisters became known in the social world as the "Cushing Sisters", heralded for their charm and beauty and schooled by their social-climbing mother to pursue husbands of wealth and prominence. All three Cushing sisters married into wealth and prominence: Her older sister, Mary "Minnie", married Vincent Astor, the heir of a $200 million fortune, in 1940, and her younger sister Barbara "Babe" was married to Standard Oil heir Stanley Mortimer Jr., and later to CBS founder William S. Paley. Both of her sisters died of cancer within months of each other in 1978.
She established the Greentree Foundation in 1983 to assist local community groups. She was a benefactor of North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, built in the early 1950s on 15 acres (61,000 m2) donated by Whitney. She was also involved with the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), Yale University and New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center. Among her many public activities over the years were memberships on the boards of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the John Hay Whitney Foundation and the Association for Homemakers Service.
After her husband's death in 1982, she donated $8 million to the Yale Medical School, then the largest gift in the school's history. The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. acquired nine important American and French paintings, as well as $2 million for future acquisitions. She left $15 million to New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center in her own will.
She also made art auction history in 1990 by putting up for sale, by Sotheby's, one of Renoir's most famous paintings, the sun-dappled cafe scene Bal au moulin de la Galette, Montmartre. It brought $78.1 million, then a record auction price for Impressionist art and the second-highest price for any artwork sold at auction. After her death, her art collection was sold at Sotheby's in 1999 for a then-record $128.3 million, "the second-highest single-owner auction in history."
In June 1930, she married James Roosevelt II (1907–1991), the eldest son of then Governor of New York, and eventual President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Anna Eleanor Roosevelt. After her father-in-law became president, her husband served his father as an aide at the White House, and she often stood-in as hostess at the White House when Eleanor was absent. When FDR entertained King George VI and Queen Elizabeth at a picnic at the Roosevelt estate in Hyde Park, New York in 1939, she was present and accompanied FDR as he drove the King and Queen along the Hudson River.
She and James had two daughters: