Mary Pinchot Meyer
Mary Eno Pinchot Meyer (October 14, 1920 – October 12, 1964) was an American socialite, painter, former wife of Central Intelligence Agency official Cord Meyer and mistress of United States president John F. Kennedy. Meyer's murder, two days before her 44th birthday, in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C., during the fall of 1964 would later stir speculation relating to Kennedy's presidency and assassination. In her 1998 biography, Nina Burleigh wrote, "Mary Meyer was an enigmatic woman in life, and in death her real personality lurks just out of view."
Early life
Pinchot was the elder of two daughters born to Amos and Ruth (née Pickerling) Pinchot. Amos Pinchot was a wealthy lawyer and a key figure in the Progressive Party who had helped fund the socialist magazine The Masses. Her mother Ruth was Pinchot's second wife who was a journalist that wrote for magazines such as The Nation and The New Republic. She was also the niece of Gifford Pinchot, a noted conservationist and two-time Governor of Pennsylvania. Pinchot and her younger sister Antoinette (nicknamed "Tony") were raised at the family's Grey Towers home in Milford, Pennsylvania. As a child, Pinchot met left-wing intellectuals such as Mabel Dodge, Louis Brandeis, Robert M. La Follette, Sr., and Harold L. Ickes. She attended Brearley School and Vassar College, where she became interested in communism. She dated William Attwood in 1938 and while with him at a dance held at Choate Rosemary Hall she first met John F. Kennedy.
