Viewing page 221 of 266

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

251
   
The true story of [[underline]] Betty McGeehan [[/underline]] has now come out and is in the New York and Washington papers. She spent a weekend in New York several months ago with a soldier whom she had known for seven years but who is a Jew so her Irish Catholic family would not let her marry him. As a result of the weekend, she became pregnant. The boy urged an abortion and put up $600 to have it done in New York. They went there together and a Dr. Nisinoff, who specializes in that work, performed the operation. However, through some neglect of some kind, she developed peritonitis and died. I still don't know if she died in New York or Washington and whether we saw her before or after the operation - I think it was just before it and that she died in New York. Now Nisinoff is being held for manslaughter and it has come out in the papers. If the race angle is true, what a horrible tragedy resulted in her family's attitude. At any rate it is a tragic story and one with a moral- many morals. How much better it would have been for her to have had her baby, married or unmarried than to have this terrible thing happen.
         
Washington.D.C.
Thursday, Dec.3. 1942

[[underline]] Sylvia blew up again today [[/underline]] when two letters of mine were returned by Mrs. Cook to be retyped because in the opening paragraph I had failed to refer to the subject of the letter being answered; I had put that in the subject of the letter. It was no reflection on Sylvia but she felt sure Mrs. Cook was merely doing it to make her do the letters over again. I nearly blew up myself over this affair but calmed down, and we did them over