Kathleen Harriman Mortimer | |
|---|---|
 Harriman wearing a uniform when she was a war correspondent | |
| Born | December 7, 1917 New York City, U.S. |
| Died | February 17, 2011 (aged 93)[1] New York City, U.S. |
| Occupation | Journalist |
| Spouse | Stanley 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]
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
Kathleen_Mortimer_death_summarywas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ a b Cite error: The named reference
nytimes2011-02-19was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ a b Cite error: The named reference
nytimes2020-09-29was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ a b Cite error: The named reference
VanityFair2011-11was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Cite error: The named reference
HarrimanMag2015was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Cite error: The named reference
wapo1994-10-11was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
© MMXXIII Rich X Search. We shall prevail. All rights reserved. Rich X Search