ABSTRACT
The New England, Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier wrote Maud Muller in 1867. It contains lines that tug at the heart of any human being with any regrets, “For of all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these: ‘It might have been.’” FDR and Lucy must have had similar sentiments when they met for the first time in over twenty years on June 5, 1941. At their respective ages of fifty-nine and fifty, their world was a very different place than when they had parted in 1918. When Roosevelt was last with Lucy, he had been a vigorous man on the verge of a career in public service. Lucy had been a beautiful young woman who had not yet discovered her life’s purpose. Now Roosevelt was at the pinnacle of American political life, and Lucy had found love and fulfillment in a large family. They had said good-bye at the end of the “war to end all wars,” and now the United States seemed destined to enter World War II.
