Marion Dickerman was born April 11, 1890, in Westfield,
New York. She studied for two years at Wellesley College
before transferring to Syracuse University, where she
was an avid supporter of woman's suffrage and campaigned
for protective labor legislation for women, the abolishment
of child labor, and world peace. A strong, committed
student,
Dickerman received her bachelor of arts in 1911 and a
graduate degree in education in 1912. After a brief
teaching
assignment in Canisteo, New York, in 1913 Dickerman moved
to Fulton, New York, where she taught American history
and became reacquainted with Syracuse classmate Nancy
Cook, who taught arts and handicrafts at Fulton
High School. The two women would become lifelong partners,
living together almost their entire adult lives, sharing
a life dedicated to politics, education, and progressive
reform.
When World War
I erupted, Dickerman's respect for Woodrow
Wilson's vision overcame her strong antiwar sentiments
and she, with Cook, threw herself into war-related activities,
especially working with the Red Cross and for the Liberty
Loan drive. As Dickerman later recalled, she "really believed
this was a war to end wars and make the world safe for
democracy." In early spring 1918, she and Cook traveled
to London to assist the women-staffed Endell Street Military
Hospital and "scrub floors or perform whatever other chores
were required." (1)
When they returned home the following August, Dickerman
was amazed to learn that the Joint Legislative Committee
and progressive Democratic leadership in Fulton had selected
her to oppose Thaddues Sweet, the anti-woman suffrage
Republican speaker of the New York State Assembly. Dickerman
had no chance of winning the election; however, with Cook
as her manager, she siphoned away enough votes to prevent
Sweet from becoming the Republican gubernatorial nominee.
In 1921, Dickerman accepted a position as dean at the
New Jersey State College in Trenton and spent the summer
teaching English at Bryn Mawr's Summer School for Women
Workers. Unhappy, she looked for a job she loved closer
to New York City, where Cook had moved to accept a position
with the State Democratic Committee. By summer 1922, Dickerman
had moved to New York City and joined the faculty of the
Todhunter
School.
Dickerman met ER in June 1922 when Dickerman accompanied
Cook, then the executive secretary of the Women's Division
of the State Democratic Committee, to Hyde Park for a
weekend visit. The three women, sharing political ideas
and tremendous energy, became fast friends, working together
for the Women's
Trade Union League, the League of Women Voters, and
the Democratic National Committee. As ER recalled in her
autobiography, "Miss Cook and Miss Dickerman and I . .
. had been from the first drawn together through the work
which we were doing together. This is, I think, one of
the most satisfactory ways of making and keeping friends."
(2) By 1927, in addition to their political
work, the three women would share the Val-Kill
property, Val-Kill Industries,
and the Todhunter
School. Their friendship would last more than fifteen
years.
Dickerman and Cook prided themselves as diplomatic workers
in the sometimes difficult relationship of ER and FDR.
Eventually Dickerman's allegiance appeared to ER to
favor
FDR. By 1932, ER had other new friends like Lorena
Hickok who actively disliked Dickerman, and Dickerman,
elated by FDR's victory, could not appreciate ER's great
anxiety over moving into the White House. By late 1933,
as ER's responsibilities introduced her to a wider world
and her interests and friendships expanded, she had less
time to spend with Dickerman and Cook. By 1936, when
Val-Kill
Industries dissolved, ER moved out of Stone
Cottage, which she shared with Dickerman and Cook,
and had the factory building remodeled for her private
space where
she could entertain without imposing on or involving
Dickerman and Cook. (3) When
Dickerman sought ER's active help in securing a loan
from Bernard
Baruch to expand Todhunter, ER, who worried about the
wisdom of expanding the school when the economy was
not
strong, refused to invest in the expansion and was relieved
when the deal fell through. The next year, when a professional
fundraiser Dickerman hired to promote the school wanted
to say that ER would return to Todhunter and make it
one
of her major interests after the White House, ER refused
to cooperate.
In the summer of 1938, FDR named Dickerman to the President's
Commission to Study Industrial Relations in Great Britain
and Sweden and while she was abroad, ER and Cook had a
serious disagreement, "a long and tragic talk" in which
the friends "said things that ought not to have been said."
(4) By October 1938, their friendship had dissolved.
ER felt that they "had no difficulties in previous years"
because she "had no objection to" Dickerman's "wishes."
Now that she did, she thought Dickerman did not respect
her opinion. (5) Furthermore,
as Blanche Cook argues, ER resented Dickerman's inference
that she and Cook had helped create ER. Although Dickerman
remained close to FDR, her future involvement with ER
involved only Christmas and birthday gifts. The legal
disentanglement of their relationship would take most
of 1939. The emotional toll was just as great. As Malvina
("Tommy") Thompson wrote ER's daughter Anna,
never before had she seen ER turn "her face to the wall."
(6)
Dickerman continued to be active in Democratic politics
and, as an alternate delegate to the 1940 Democratic convention,
helped secure a isolationist plank in the foreign policy
platform sought by FDR. After FDR's death in 1945, Dickerman
and Cook moved to New Canaan, Connecticut, where Dickerman
directed educational programing for the Marine Museum.
She died May 16, 1983 in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania.
Notes:
- Kenneth Davis, Invincible
Summer: An Intimate Portrait of the Roosevelts Based
on the Recollections of Marion Dickerman (New
York: Atheneum Press, 1974), 6.
- Eleanor Roosevelt, This
Is My Story (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1937),
346.
- Dickerman and Cook lived in
Stone Cottage until 1947 when they moved to Connecticut.
- Kenneth Davis, Invincible
Summer: An Intimate Portrait of the Roosevelts Based
on the Recollections of Marion Dickerman (New York:
Atheneum, 1974), 152.
- Eleanor Roosevelt to Marion
Dickerman and Nancy Cook, December 29, 1938, AER Papers,
Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York.
- Quoted in Blanche Wiesen Cook,
Eleanor Roosevelt: Volume Two, 1933-1938 (New
York: Viking Press, 1999), 530.
Sources:
Cook, Blanche Wiesen. Eleanor Roosevelt: Volume
One, 1884-1933. New York: Viking Press, 1993,
320-333, 397-402.
Cook, Blanche Wiesen. Eleanor Roosevelt: Volume
Two, 1933-1938. New York: Viking Press, 1999,
136-7, 360-2, 526-537.
Davis, Kenneth. Invincible Summer: An Intimate Portrait
of the Roosevelts Based on the Recollections of Marion
Dickerman.
New York: Atheneum, 1974, passim.
Lash, Joseph P. Eleanor and Franklin. New York:
Signet Press, 1971, 375-6, 623-7.
Roosevelt, Eleanor. This Is My Story. New York:
Harper & Brothers, 1937, 346 -347.