Matched Pair - The Elys of Embassy Row

By Jarvis Harriman

A biography of Albert H. Ely and his wife, Constance J. Ely, that covers the 20th century and includes stories of the ancestors' part in building the USA since 1600's. In 1956, the Mayor of Sesto San... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0963432311
• ISBN13: 9780963432315
• Release Date: January 2000
• Publisher: Pooh Stix Press
• Length: 254 Pages
• Weight: 1.23 lbs.
• Dimensions: 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

The Elys of Embassy Row

There is no doubt, as the Preface of MATCHED PAIR suggests, that this well-written biography records "an amazing unfolding adventure". It is the "adventure" of two remarkable New Yorkers, Albert H. "Jack" Ely Jr. and his wife, Constance Jennings. Jack Ely's father, also Jack, a successful doctor and friend of Franklin D. Roosevelt, encouraged his oldest son to follow the law, which he did with distinction. Connie's father, Oliver Burr Jennings, joined John D. Rockefeller to become one of the founders of Standard Oil. Connie was also a Manhattan socialite, a skilled horsewoman and a generous worker for good causes such as the New York Hospital. Connie's sister, Emma, married John D. Auchincloss and their son married Mrs. Janet Bouvier. Subsequently, her daughter, Jacqueline, married John Kennedy and became First Lady. Connie herself married Jack Ely in St. John's Church, New York, on Septemeber 24, 1927. Jack and Connie might have continued their comfortable, gilt-edged life in New York had they not met an extraordinary man one day early in 1930. His name was Frank Buchman, a dynamic American, who was helping people find a spiritual dimension in their lives and was building a network of such people across the world. They moved to Washington where they eventually purchased a large house that became a meeting place for the movers and shakers in the Capitol and an energy center for Moral Re-Armament, a movement to make the world a better place that Jack and Connie joined and where over the years they made many new friends on several continents. In Washington Jack kept up his father's relationship with the Roosevelt family who had moved into the White House in 1933. And for a quarter of a century both Jack and Connie devoted themselves to one of the primary aims of MRA, the reconciliation of divergent factions in society. This work of reconciliation reached its zenith after World War Two. In those post-war years the Elys were at the heart of the reconciliation process both in Japan and in Europe, building bridges among the peoples of Germany, Italy and France. They worked with giants such as Konrad Adenauer, Chancellor of Germany, to construct a new Europe on the wreckage of the war and, in the main, they succeeded. The Elys had four children. Their eldest daughter, Day Ely Ravenscroft, thought afresh about her father's contribution to the post-war healing when she read about others who had contributed to the reconstruction process such as W. Averill Harriman, Dean Acheson, John McCloy, George Kennan, Charles Bohlen and Robert Lovett. She told Jarvis Harriman, the author of this splendid biography, that these men "are my father's peers. They shared his background, his education and his culture. He belongs among them." Indeed he does and his wife Connie with him. They were truly a matched pair.