Johnny's Day

Last week, while the 75th Congress hustled through the last busy hours of a four-and-a-half-month session (see p. 10), Franklin Roosevelt suffered from traveler's itch. Finally came the hour when he could send a message to Congress saying he had "no further business" for it. By the time Congress had chosen a committee to notify the President that it was ready to adjourn, Franklin Roosevelt's special train with him aboard was highballing out of Washington's Union Station. Once more Father Roosevelt was off to one of those family ceremonies which Roosevelts love. This time the event was Johnny's Day, the wedding--perhaps the last among Franklin Roosevelt's lively brood-- of his youngest, John Aspinwall Roosevelt, 22, to Anne Lindsay Clark, 21, at Nahant, Mass.

Johnny Roosevelt is the gayest, vaguest, gentlest, most winning of the Presidential sons. Anne is no great beauty but full of spirit, a good sailor, swimmer and dancer. When Johnny first presented her to his father, he said: "This is Miss Schmaltz." "Oh!" exclaimed the President, "I thought it was Zilch." The late F. Haven Clark, Anne's father, was a Boston banker. He had a place on Campobello Island, N. B. straight across the road from the Roosevelts'. But Anne became engaged to another boy, John interested in another girl. Not till last year did they take to one another.

Last week, when the President got off his train at Salem, he went down to a scrubbed-up coal wharf at which his yacht Potomac had tied up. There, Anne and her pretty 18-year-old sister Sally went aboard with John to pose for more photographs. Father Roosevelt had the ship anchor for the day off the Nahant peninsula. That evening the wedding party dined aboard, later went ashore for more gaiety than the Presidential yacht could offer.

The wedding day was the biggest that sleepy Nahant has known since Roosevelt I paused there in 1902 to visit Senator Henry Cabot Lodge's grandfather. Anne's Boston background is thoroughly Republican (though not so dramatically Tory as Ethel du Font's) but many a Bostonian declined an invitation to the wedding reception. Startled Mother Clark, after planning for 400 guests, received White House requests for 550 invitations, most of which were accepted. The Secret Service cautiously wired off the narrow causeway leading out to the village from the mainland, made guests walk to the church. Cars there were for the bride & groom's families, including the entire clan Roosevelt, even Sistie and Buzzie Dall (now 11 and 7, called Eleanor and Curtis), with their mother, Mrs. John Boettiger, all the way from Seattle.

To the relief of the groom, who had spent a hot & bothered week answering questions about his bride's and mother's clothes, reporters were finally able to see for themselves Mrs. Roosevelt in voluminous Navy-and-Eleanor blue, the bridesmaids in hyacinth blue net, the maid-of-honor (Sally Clark) in peach net, the bride's mother in dove gray crepe. Soon after high noon, Episcopal Bishop Henry Knox Sherrill of Massachusetts and old Dr. Endicott Peabody, headmaster of Groton School, who married Johnny's parents 33 years ago, joined in performing the ceremony. Leaving the altar, Anne caught Brother James Roosevelt's eye, winked. At the church door Groom Johnny hailed his car like an old-timer (see cut). The guests trooped after, to the Nahant Tennis Club. They consumed 500 bottles of imported champagne, and food which Secret Service in the kitchen had made sure was not poisoned. A popular morsel of their gossip was about Mrs. Franklin Jr. (Ethel du Pont) who is expecting a baby.

Presently Father Roosevelt, accompanied by his sons and other members of Harvard's Fly Club, disappeared in a private room to administer to Johnny the secret rites for newlywed brethren. When the time came, Johnny & Anne, their getaway covered by a bulky Secret Service car, set out to the summer home of Brother James's father-in-law, Dr. Harvey Gushing, at Rye Beach, N. H., thence to Campobello Island.

Expanding on the lawn in white flannels and a dark blue coat, Franklin Roosevelt declared: "A lovely day. ... A lovely occasion. ... I am very happy!"

"Beautiful!" beamed his wife.

P: Steaming for Hyde Park on the Potomac, the President was delayed for 14 hours by fog in the Cape Cod Canal, gave his staff ashore quite a turn.

P: The President, often disturbed by low-flying airplanes--even in his dreams (TIME, June 13)--signed an executive order roping off a wide section of Washington over which civilian pilots may not fly without special permission from the Secretary of Commerce. The area: a quarter-mile outside of the rectangle at whose corners stand the Union Station, the Capitol, the Naval Hospital, the White House.

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