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Kathleen Harriman Mortimer

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Kathleen Harriman Mortimer
Harriman wearing a uniform when she was a war correspondent
Born(1917-12-07)December 7, 1917
New York City, U.S.
DiedFebruary 17, 2011(2011-02-17) (aged 93)[1]
New York City, U.S.
OccupationJournalist
SpouseStanley G. Mortimer Jr.

Kathleen Harriman Mortimer (December 7, 1917 – February 17, 2011) was an American journalist and socialite who played an important role in helping her father and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt with behind-the-scenes management of the American delegation to the Yalta Conference.[2][3] Her father W. Averell Harriman was then the US Ambassador to the Soviet Union, and he played an important role in assisting Roosevelt, since the conference was held in Yalta, a Black Sea port part of the Soviet Union.

In 1941, her father was US ambassador to the United Kingdom, and he pulled strings to arrange for her a visa and a job as a reporter for Hearst's International News Service.[4] She managed to be a successful war correspondent despite a lack of experience. She would later work for Newsweek magazine.

In 1943, her father was made ambassador to the Soviet Union, and she went with him as an aide.[4] Mortimer found herself working with Roosevelt's daughter Anna, and Sarah, daughter of Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who played similar roles, serving as hostess and babysitter to their temperamental fathers.[3] In her account of the behind-the-scenes roles the three women played at the Yalta Conference, Catherine Grace Katz wrote that her father delegated to Mortimer the task of breaking off a distracting affair her father Harriman was having with Pamela Churchill, then Winston Churchill's young daughter-in-law. Mortimer learned the Russian language during the three years she lived with her father there, and her wartime correspondence contains detailed descriptions of key Soviet leaders, and their wives.[5] Historian Geoffrey Roberts wrote that, after first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, she was the second most well-known American woman in the Soviet Union.

She married Stanley G. Mortimer Jr. in 1947.[2] They had three children.[6]

Russia and after

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In January 1944, her father sent her to observe the opening of a mass-grave of 11,000 Polish soldiers.[2][7] Their deaths were seen as a war crime. Both Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland under the terms of Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, and, in 1954, Mortimer was called as a witness to try to determine which nation had performed the mass summary execution. Mortimer's conclusion was that the Germans were responsible for the killing, and that the limited evidence that Soviets had been responsible was a German ploy. That was later proven incorrect, and it has been widely established that the crime was carried out by the Soviets.[8]

Pamela Churchill married Mortimer's father in 1971.[3] In his will, her father left Pamela half his estate, left just $4,000 to each of his daughters, and put the remainder in a trust to benefit his daughters, their children and grandchildren.[4][9][6] Pamela was one of the trustees overseeing the trust. Mortimer and her sister became concerned that the trustees had been investing the funds in the trust recklessly.[10] Over just a few years bad investment choices had eroded the fund's capital from $30 million to $3 million. Mortimer and her sister went to court to have Pamela's assets frozen.

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "Kathleen Lanier Harriman Mortimer". Find A Grave. Retrieved February 28, 2021.
  2. ^ a b c Margalit Fox (February 19, 2011). "Kathleen Mortimer, Rich and Adventurous, Dies at 93". The New York Times. p. A26. Retrieved September 29, 2020. Though she was a far less visible public presence than her father a United States ambassador to Moscow and London, a governor of New York and a secretary of commerce under President Harry S. Truman Mrs. Mortimer was quietly accomplished throughout her life and, when she could be, graciously subversive.
  3. ^ a b c Jennet Conant (September 29, 2020). "THE DAUGHTERS OF YALTA: The Churchills, Roosevelts, and Harrimans: A Story of Family, Love, and War". The New York Times. Retrieved September 29, 2020. As the younger daughter of the fourth richest man in America, Kathy was accustomed to taking charge — from an early age she had helped manage her father's Sun Valley resort — but nothing could have prepared her for the task of turning the ransacked 116-room Livadia Palace, the former summer home of the dead czar, into a suitable headquarters for the handicapped president and his entourage.
  4. ^ a b c Marie Brenner (November 2011). "To war in silk stockings". Vanity Fair magazine. Retrieved September 29, 2020.
  5. ^ Geoffrey Roberts (Winter 2015). "The wartime correspondence of Kathleen Harriman" (PDF). Harriman magazine. pp. 12–23. Retrieved September 29, 2020. As her father's companion and aide, Kathy spent a lot of time with sophisticated, older people; she had little time for the frivolities of her own generation, especially if they didn't share her passion for the allied cause.
  6. ^ a b Kim Masters (October 11, 1994). "The Harriman Bunch". The Washington Post. Retrieved September 29, 2020. The Harriman offspring first confronted their stepmother quietly. Last December, 76-year-old Kathleen left her apartment in New York and flew to Paris with Charles Ames.
  7. ^ William Lawrence (January 22, 1944). "SOVIET BLAMES FOE IN KILLING OF POLES". The New York Times. Smolensk, Russia. p. 3. Retrieved September 29, 2020. An extraordinary Soviet commission investigating German atrocities reported today that its examinations had definitely established that the Germans had individually shot and killed 11,000 Polish officers and men in near-by Katyn forest during August and September, 1941.
  8. ^ George Sanford (May 7, 2007). Katyn and the Soviet Massacre of 1940: Truth, Justice and Memory. Routledge. pp. 1–. ISBN 978-1-134-30300-7.
  9. ^ Kim Masters (September 19, 1994). "Rich Diplomat's Widow In Legal Battle With Heirs -- Harriman Family At Odds Over Trust Fund Loss Of $30 Million". Seattle Times. Washington, DC. Retrieved September 29, 2020. Though Pamela and Kathleen Harriman Mortimer met and became friends when both were in their early twenties, the relationship degenerated about 30 years later after Pamela – the younger of the two – became Mortimer's stepmother in 1971. Ogden said Pamela Harriman bears most of the blame for the rift with the Harriman children.
  10. ^ Ronald Sullivan (September 20, 1994). "Harriman Heirs Ask for Assets To Be Frozen". The New York Times. p. B7. Retrieved September 29, 2020. Mr. Harriman died in 1986 at age 94 after establishing trusts for his two daughters from a previous marriage, along with their children and grandchildren. He appointed Mr. Clifford, an old friend, as a trustee. He left half of his $65 million estate to Mrs. Harriman, now 74, who married Mr. Harriman in 1971 and became a trustee at his death.
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