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Mary LaskerMary Lasker
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Lasker:

She wasn't there. Rita Van Doren was there. As you know, Mrs. Willkie often was not with him and his adviser and friend was Rita Van Doren.

Q:

Mrs. Willkie was quite different in personality.

Lasker:

Yes, she was not interested in politics at all.

A few days later I left for Chicago and went to visit Janet Fairbank, my school friend from Radcliffe, and Janet and I went to look at houses and gardens in Lake Forrest which we enjoyed doing. We on one day went to eight houses. We went to Albert Lasker's for lunch. He had a provincial French farmhouse on a large scale called Mill Road Farm, with gardens and a golf course, and the best designed and kept place I'd ever seen.

Q:

This was in Lake Forrest?

Lasker:

Outside of Lake Forrest. He had about 350 acres, and it was incomparably the best place in the Middlewest and probably the best-run and best all over country house in the United States, because it was air-conditioned, it was in very beautiful taste, it had marvelous gardens, wonderful swimming pools, superb golf course, and all quite unpretentious-looking at the same time, not at all grand-looking. It was grand because it was large, but it was not pretentious-looking, as for example the Rockefeller place at Pocantico Hills, which is a horror. It has a lot of facilities





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