529210
Kay Summersby
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Kay Summersby Morgan, 1908-1975. Wartime secretary and chauffer to the Allied Supreme Commander, General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Scarce Typed Letter Signed, Kay Summersby, one page, on stationery of the Headquarters, U.S. Forces, European Theater, Office of the Commanding General, July 27, 1945.
Summersby sends Eisenhower’s autographed photo to Rosemary Wright (1890-1969), who spent some 35 years working for the Army, ultimately as Chief of the Army General Staff Assignment Section, before she retired in November 1953. She writes of Eisenhower’s appreciation for Miss Wright’s support of the war effort. In full: “General Eisenhower is most appreciative of your good wishes and was happy to learn that you are buying war bonds and donating blood for the use of the Armed Forces. Because of the part you are playing in furthering the war effort the General was glad to comply with your request and I am enclosing an autographed picture.”
Click here to see that photograph, which we recently sold.
The provenance on this letter thus is impeccable. Miss Wright handled all of the administrative work relating to officers assigned to the General Staff. She knew all of them—well enough to call Eisenhower “Ike,” George S. Patton, Jr., “Georgie,” and Jonathan Wainwright “Skinny.” She wrote of her years with the Army in The Generals Call Me “Mom,” which appeared in the March 15, 1952, edition of Collier’s magazine.
Summersby, who was Irish, began her relationship with Eisenhower as his chauffeur. When Britain entered World War II in 1939, Summersby joined the British Women’s Auxiliary Corps, which later became the Women’s Army Corps. She was assigned to Eisenhower as one of many drivers who were assigned as chauffeurs to high-ranking American military officers. She was divorced from husband while she was campaigning with Eisenhower in Algiers in December 1942 and later claimed that she had been Eisenhower’s wartime mistress.
Her claim about a liaison, though, has never been substantiated. In her 1948 memoir of the war years, Ike Was My Boss, Summersby did not mention her supposed affair with Eisenhower. In her 1976 autobiography, Past Forgetting: My Love Affair with Dwight D. Eisenhower, however, she suggested that it was common knowledge in wartime London and Washington. Yet by her own account the relationship, if it existed, included no sexual act beyond kissing. Some have also questioned the authenticity of that book, which Summersby wrote with a ghost writer when she was dying of cancer and which was not published until after her death.
In Plain Speaking, an oral biography of President Harry S. Truman, author Merle Miller quotes Truman as saying that Eisenhower wrote General George C. Marshall after World War II to ask permission to return to the United States and divorce his wife, Mamie, so that he could marry Summersby. According to that account, Marshall exploded in anger, saying that if Eisenhower “ever again even mentioned a thing like that, he’d see to it that the rest of his life was a living hell.” Miller quotes Truman as saying, “I don’t like Eisenhower; you know that. I never have, but one of the last things I did as President, I got those letters from his file in the Pentagon, and I destroyed them.” Some have also questioned the accuracy of this account, which was published after Truman’s death. Even if Truman made those statements, he was an old man by the time Miller interviewed him, and his memory was sometimes faulty and sometimes selective. Truman’s statement that he never liked Eisenhower simply was not true: Truman liked and respected Eisenhower and got along very well with him, even offering to run as vice president if Eisenhower would seek the White House as a Democrat in 1948. But Truman soured on Eisenhower during the 1952 presidential campaign, when Truman, a lifelong Democrat, thought Eisenhower, a Republican, failed to stand up for Marshall against charges by Senator Joseph McCarthy that Marshall was Communist. Truman thought Marshall, who had served him as Chief of Staff, Secretary of State, and Secretary of Defense, was the greatest American of the 20th Century. Ever loyal to a fault, Truman lost respect for Eisenhower, and it took years for the two to patch up their differences. Their relationship is recounted in Steve Neal’s interesting book, Harry & Ike (2001).
In Crusade In Europe, Eisenhower noted simply—and only—that Summersby “was a corresponding secretary and doubled as a driver.”
Summersby’s letters are scarce. We have been able to find only one other one currently available in dealer inventories. This letter was written only two months after Germany surrendered and while World War II still raged in the Pacific. It has folds and wrinkles and is stained at the right margin from prior improper mounting in a photo album, but Summersby’s bold black ink signature is not affected. Overall it is in very good condition and a desirable letter.
Unframed.
Click here to see more American World War II autographs on the American History page.
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