National Affairs: The Teardrops’ Yield

When Mrs. Lillian Frances Richards arrived in Washington two years ago, she hardly knew a soul. But she put up at the fashionable Mayflower Hotel, did a lot of telephoning, a lot of letter writing and a lot of gadding about. Soon she had friends by the score. Among them were Senators, clergymen, lawyers, judges, Army & Navy officers. She called her friends “Honey” or “Dearie.” She asked them to call her “Mom.”

Mom was fiftyish, big, blonde and blowy. In California, where she came from, she told her friends she had invented a portable headrest called the “Sunap.” It came in two models—blue canvas for men, imitation white leather for women. Another of Mom’s gadgets was a “nonslip grater” which could be locked to the side of a chopping bowl. It was guaranteed not to shred fingers along with the carrots. Mom had a hard time marketing the grater. “Everyone liked it, dearie,” she explained, “but shortage of tin—you know.”

A Widow’s Devotion. Mom’s interest in the gadget business, she told people, was abated by the death of her husband, Rear Admiral Clarence Mason Richards, U.S.N. Mrs. Richards spoke of her husband as “the Skipper,” but said that “most of his Navy friends called him ‘Possum Belly.’ ” When the Skipper died in 1944, Mom decided that, out of respect for his memory, she should wear a war widow’s pin. To her surprise, she found that there were no pins for war widows.

So Mom invented one. Dime-sized, it featured a cerulean teardrop oozing from a dark blue morning-glory. Around its edges, in gold and blue, were the words: “WAR MEMORIAL AWARD.” In her hotel room, Mom wrote a poem to go with the pin:

Blue Morning-Glories and Red Poppies

Now are growing in Flanders Field

War Widows are the Morning-Glories—

Can not we stem the teardrops’ yield?

This year, although two bills previously introduced in Congress on her behalf had perished in committee, Mom readily persuaded Michigan’s Senator Homer Ferguson to introduce a new bill 1) establishing a National Committee for All War Widows—with Mrs. Richards as its honorary life chairman, 2) designating Sept. 6 of each year as War Widows Memoir Day.

A Job for Gorgeous. Once the National Committee was set up, Mom had big ideas. She wanted to build a war widows’ home for which she had had an elaborate plan made (see cut). The home, Mom figured, would cost a mere $12 million. Who would run it? Mom knew just the man—a waiter-captain she had met. Said Mom: “He’s gorgeous.”

Then the Army & Navy Bulletin burst out with the news that Mom’s husband had been no rear admiral, but a World War I buck private. Mom still insisted, a little lamely, that the Skipper was a rear admiral. But newsmen, whom she greeted in a sky-blue negligee, got several versions of his career: he had really been only a Navy captain, but she had boosted his rank to help “open Washington doors”; he had been a Rough Rider with Teddy Roosevelt and was bitten by a cobra while hunting with Roosevelt in Africa; he had been called ashore by General Pershing in France, where he joined the Rainbow Division.

Last week Senator Ferguson sheepishly rose to ask permission to have his war widows bill discharged from committee consideration. Permission was speedily granted. With that, Mom became incoherent. All she could say was: “That damned Bulletin, honey, has paralyzed the side of my throat.”