Friday 7 November 2014

The Georgetown Set



James and Cicely Angleton associated with a group of people who lived in Georgetown. They were mainly journalists, CIA officers and government officials. This included Mary Pinchot Meyer, Cord Meyer, Anne Truitt, James Truitt, Frank Wisner, Thomas Braden, Richard Bissell, Desmond FitzGerald, Wistar Janney, Joseph Alsop, Tracy Barnes, Philip Graham, Katharine Graham, David Bruce, Ben Bradlee, Antoinette Pinchot Bradlee, Clark Clifford, Walt Rostow, Eugene Rostow, Chip Bohlen and Paul Nitze.

Nina Burleigh, the author of A Very Private Woman (1998) has pointed out: "The younger families - the Meyers, Janneys, Truitts, Pittmans, Lanahans, and Angletons - spent a great deal of leisure time together. There were evening get-togethers, and sometimes the families took weekend camping trips to nearby beaches or mountains when husbands could get away... On Saturday mornings in the fall, the adults got together and played touch football in a park north of Georgetown while their children biked around the sidelines, then all retired to someone's house for lunch and drinks... The Janneys had a pool, and on hot summer nights the parties were aloud, drunken affairs, filled with laughter, dancing, and the sound of breaking glass and people being pushed into the pool." 

Ben Bradlee recalls in his autobiography, The Good Life (1995) that he was also part of the same group. "Socially our crowd consisted of young couples, around thirty years old, with young kids, being raised without help by their mothers, and without many financial resources." 

No comments:

Post a Comment