Donovan and Roosevelt, two men who were to work together so closely in World War II, contrasted sharply in other respects at Columbia. In the autumn of 1904, Franklin Roosevelt walked into Tiffany’s on Fifth Avenue and selected a diamond ring for his fiancée, Eleanor. Bill Donovan danced with a few girls at law school dances but had no time for romance. Both Donovan and Roosevelt voted the Republican ticket for Theodore Roosevelt over Judge Alton B. Parker in the elections of 1904, but the following March 4, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt rode to Washington in the private railroad car of their cousin George Emlen Roosevelt. They stayed with the President’s sister, Mrs. W. Sheffield Cowles, and during the inauguration they sat on the steps of the U.S. Capitol immediately behind Theodore Roosevelt. They lunched at the White House, and running America seemed to be something of a cozy family affair. Bill Donovan, meanwhile, read about the inauguration in the newspapers. His hero, Teddy Roosevelt, an aristocrat who had the good instincts of the common man, was in the White House, and Donovan was filled with hope for his country.
In the spring of 1907, Franklin Roosevelt took New York’s bar examination, but when he passed, decided not to bother with his law degree. Once Bill Donovan received his law degree, in the same year, he took the train back to Buffalo.
Just as Professor Harlan Stone never raised his voice when he argued a legal point, so Bill Donovan, now 24 years old and a lawyer with the small Buffalo firm of Love and Keating, never raised his voice in the courtroom. Just as Professor Stone carefully considered each statement he made and each position he took, so Donovan exerted himself to be judicious and deliberate both in word and action. In the courtroom he was friendly and unassuming. His blue eyes beamed good will, and he was unperturbable and courteous despite the most frantic ravings of opposing counsel. Harlan Stone would have been proud of him.
The young lawyer had learned at Columbia to prepare each case with great care. Even in his early 20s he had developed the ability to read at a rapid rate, a trait that was later to amaze his OSS aides, and he was able to discern quickly the essential features of a case. His legal briefs were both short and complete, which is not usually the case with a young lawyer just entering the profession. In two years, Donovan was made a junior partner of the firm. He resigned in 1911 to form a partnership with Bradley Goodyear, a scion of one of Buffalo’s leading families. That same year Donovan and Goodyear merged with the city’s leading law firm, headed by the redoubtable John Lord O’Brian and Chauncey Hamlin. Donovan’s name went up on the glass doors of suite 604 of the Iroquois Building. The firm was then known as O’Brian, Hamlin, Donovan, and Goodyear.
Most of Bill Donovan’s clients were drawn from the Buffalo business community, but he also found time to take care of the legal interests of individuals who came to him. One such case was a woman who desperately needed his legal advice. On the morning they were scheduled to meet, Donovan was stricken by a terrible pain in his abdomen. A doctor called to the scene prodded his stomach. Donovan winced. “You must have bed rest,” said the doctor.
No sooner had the physician left than Donovan got out of bed, dressed, and hurried to his office. Smiling despite the pain, he counseled the woman and set her fears at rest. When she left, Donovan collapsed in agony. An ambulance rushed him to the hospital, where a surgeon removed his gangrenous appendix. As Donovan came out of the anesthetic, he discovered a bunch of flowers in his hand and thought he had died. Then he heard a muffled sobbing and, turning his head, saw his client sitting by his bed. She was weeping for the handsome young lawyer who had endangered his life to keep an appointment with her because he knew how confused and afraid she had been.
Within a week Donovan was back at his office. As the story went around Buffalo, people agreed that young Bill Donovan was not only a brilliant attorney but also a man with compassion and heart, who cared as much for a lonely woman with a legal problem as he did for the most important client. All his life Donovan was to find time for a woman and her problems, particularly if the woman was attractive.
During the years that Bill Donovan was becoming established as a Buffalo lawyer, his brother Tim completed his medical studies and began a medical career that in time was to make him one of Erie County’s leading endocrinologists. Vincent completed his studies at St. Joseph’s Collegiate Institute and was studying to be a priest. He had his father’s introspective turn of mind.
The Buffalo in which Bill Donovan was making his way as a lawyer was at its zenith. In the heart of the city was Niagara Square, where the traffic circled the McKinley Monument. The mansions of the well-to-do and privileged lined Delaware Avenue, and Donovan made every effort to win friends among them and gain access to their drawing rooms. Donovan, a strong oarsman, rowed for the Celtic Rowing Club, pride of the First Ward Irish, for which his father had once rowed, and on occasion he stroked the team to victory over a Canadian club in a 15-man war canoe event. Then Donovan changed his allegiance and became captain of a war canoe crew at the Buffalo Canoe Club at Crystal Beach, Ontario, some 25 miles away from Buffalo by road but in plain sight of Buffalo’s downtown towers across Lake Erie. The Buffalo Canoe Club, then and now a haunt of Buffalo’s blue bloods, still keeps one of the old war canoes in its boathouse, although the club no longer enters a team in water events.
Theodore Roosevelt had ridden to fame as a Rough Rider, and Bill Donovan was delighted to hear early in 1912 that the State of New York had decided to increase the cavalry units of the National Guard. When Col. Oliver B. Bridgeman of the First Cavalry of the New York National Guard and Capt. Lincoln G. Andrews of the Second Cavalry, U.S. Army, called a meeting of interested young men from the Buffalo area at the University Club on Delaware Avenue, Donovan was among them. So were many other members of the Buffalo Canoe Club who, listening to Donovan’s enthusiastic talk about military service, had decided to come along.
On May 7, 1912, the first 42 men of Troop I, Donovan included, were mustered into service at the 74th Regimental Armory. Captain Sherman S. Jewitt of Company C, 74th Infantry, New York National Guard, was put in temporary command, and the new troop was designated Troop I, First Cavalry. From the start Troop I, whose membership had grown within a month to 60 men, was in the main made up of socially prominent young Buffalonians with a zest for adventure.
At that time it was up to the volunteer members of a cavalry troop in the New York National Guard to equip themselves, which included buying their own horses. Each citizen trooper in Troop I subscribed a sum of money to the fund, and the unit bought its first six mounts so that the men could begin their riding practice on Humboldt Parkway. The horses were kept in the old livery stable on the parkway, which was rented for them by Erie County. For the first month after the horses were purchased, Bill Donovan, who until then had never been on a horse in his life, got out of bed at five o’clock every morning and hurried to the stables to saddle up and ride out on the parkway. With his usual determination, he cantered through rain or shine, ignoring his sore buttocks, every day becoming more sure of himself on horseback until he was as fine a rider as any of the young socialites who had been riding horses when he was riding the streetcar to his classes at St. Joseph’s.
Dismounted drills were held regularly, first at the 74th Regiment Armory and then at the 65th Regiment Armory, where the men were given locker space and the use of the drill hall one night a week. Headquarters were also at the 65th Regiment Armory, and Donovan rarely failed to be there on drill night. Within a month he was made a corporal. Evenings at home, Donovan studied cavalry tactics and strategy. He was delighted when in July the troop was ordered to its first encampment on a farm owned by Troop D, First Cavalry, at Manlius, a small town southeast of Syracuse. Captain Andrews was in charge of the week of field instruction.
Donovan returned to Buffalo with Troop I more enthusiastic than ever about military life. In October, when orders came for the troop to choose its first officers, he was elected captain. Davis T. Dunbar became first lieutenant, and George B. Walbridge was made
second lieutenant. The men had elected a stern taskmaster as their captain, but Donovan also demonstrated a thorough willingness to surpass each man in his command when it came to work. In the following months Troop I’s weekly meetings were devoted to dismounted drill and elementary horsemanship. Discipline was firm, and when Captain Andrews returned to inspect the troop in the spring, he congratulated Captain Donovan and his men on their excellence.
Donovan’s law practice continued to grow, but he still found time for Troop I. In June 1913, the troop’s officers and sergeants entrained for Long Island, where at Montauk Point they underwent a course of instruction run by the New York National Guard. Since the enlisted men of the troop had not made the trip and no training was scheduled for them by the National Guard during the summer of 1913, Donovan organized a week’s march. In July the entire troop, taking time from civilian pursuits, set off on horseback for a ride that took them from Buffalo to Orchard Park, Springville, Plato, Lake View, and then back to Buffalo. All week Donovan and the other officers put into action what they had learned at Montauk Point. Camping at night, living in the open, developing a close bond with their mounts, the men began to feel more and more like real cavalrymen.
In the spring of 1914, a strike at the Gould Coupler Works in industrial Depew, on the southeastern outskirts of Buffalo, turned violent, and the governor ordered the 74th Infantry of the National Guard to patrol the town and maintain law and order. In April Donovan received orders to relieve the 74th in Depew and to serve “in aid of Civil Authorities.” When Donovan and the 60 men of his command reached Depew, they paraded up the main street in a show of strength. Wearing their dress uniforms and holding drawn sabers at the ready, the men cantered past hostile crowds of strikers. Donovan, at the head of the column, swung past a saloon that was the strikers’ command post, and his horse stumbled. While he fought to stay in the saddle, he dropped his saber with a ringing clatter on the cobblestone pavement. A strike ringleader dashed from the curb, seized the saber, and raced into the saloon.
“Take command,” ordered Donovan, and Lieutenant Dunbar spurred into place before the troop.
Donovan wheeled his horse back to the saloon, tied it to a post, and shouldered his way through the swinging door into the dingy interior. The man with his saber froze as the angry captain strode up to where he was standing at the bar. He seized the man’s arm, wrenched the saber from him, and grabbing him by the neck, marched him to the entrance, where he booted him into the street. Troop I cheered, and so did citizens who had been watching from the sidewalks. Even strikers applauded the young officer’s courage.
Donovan mounted his horse in silence and resumed his place at the head of the column, leading the troop down the street. Over the next few days, strikers and strikebreakers alike and the citizens of Depew learned that Captain Donovan was strictly impartial but would not permit violence and lawlessness of any kind. Captain Andrews inspected the troop while it was on duty in Depew. Once again he complimented Captain Donovan and his men on their high degree of efficiency and morale. Troop I plainly benefited from the experience of patrolling a town in which law and order had broken down.
Bill Donovan might be the captain of Troop I, which was beginning to be recognized as one of the top cavalry units of the New York National Guard, and a busy young attorney, but he also found time to make speeches on behalf of the Republican Party. He displayed the same ready grasp of the political essentials that had distinguished the saloon orators of his First Ward boyhood. At the same time the flair for the theater that he had shown as a boy brought him into the Studio Club, where well-to-do Buffalonians put on amateur theatricals for charity. There he met Ruth Rumsey, a tall girl with blue eyes who was counted among the most beautiful of Delaware Avenue’s young women. The daughter of the city’s first citizen, the late Dexter Rumsey, she had an air of assurance that might have been a trifle overpowering, except that it was lightened by a certain genial charm and wit. Being fond of riding and fox hunting, she had an outdoorswoman’s complexion. Bill Donovan was drawn to this girl, who was not only beautiful but had both intellect and his zest for the active life.
In 1914, the celebrated English-born actress Eleanor Robson, who in 1910 had become Mrs. August Belmont, came to Buffalo to attend a Studio Club production of Robert Browning’s In a Balcony. A few years before, the actress had played Constance in the New York production of the same drama. Immediately taken with Bill Donovan, who was the Studio Club’s male lead, she went backstage and invited him to come to New York City where, she promised, she would coach him in dramatics. Eleanor Robson Belmont was a woman of both theatrical talent and great spirit. She may have had only a professional interest in the handsome and gifted young Donovan, but hardly any of Donovan’s friends in Buffalo believed that. He took a weekly train to New York City.
At the same time he made frequent visits to the Rumsey house at 742 Delaware Avenue. From his law office downtown or the University Club on Delaware, Donovan would walk down the street to the yellow brick mansion. He would arrive at the door, his fresh face beaming Irish good cheer, be admitted by the butler, and stride into the large Gothic drawing room to the right of the central hall. When the other guests had gathered and conversation was at its best, dinner would be announced, and everybody would enter the dining room with the formality that might be expected of Buffalo’s first family.
Important visitors to Buffalo from all over the world often stayed with the Rumseys, or at least came to dinner. Then there might be a party with the furniture pushed back and an orchestra engaged to play in the conservatory adjoining the dining room so that guests could dance from one room to another, making a circuit of the mansion’s interior. Donovan made a point of impressing each important guest in one way or another, and he jotted down their names and addresses for future attention. The pick of Buffalo’s eligible bachelors were guests at the Rumsey house, but Mrs. Rumsey soon realized that her daughter seemed to notice only Bill Donovan.
Sometimes on a quiet Sunday afternoon, Donovan played billiards with Ruth’s brother Dexter, or the two young men sat in the library and talked enthusiastically. Here Donovan was at his best, because this was the world of books and ideas.
There was also a music room, and at Rumsey “at homes” Donovan sang the popular ballads of the day while Ruth accompanied him on the piano. It was all very romantic, and Mrs. Rumsey found herself drawn to the young Irishman. At the same time there were obstacles to the romance. The Rumseys were staunch Presbyterians who attended regular services in the Westminster Presbyterian Church next to their home, and Bill Donovan was Catholic. When Donovan proposed marriage and Ruth readily accepted, the young couple kept their engagement secret at Ruth’s wish. First she wanted Mrs. Rumsey and the Rumsey relatives and friends to realize that Bill Donovan was not a social climber but a young man of such great talent and promise that he would be a welcome addition to any family, no matter how distinguished.
From the start there were wealthy Protestant Buffalonians who disapproved of Bill Donovan. He was a Catholic, and he came from the waterfront First Ward, a neighborhood at the very bottom of the social ladder. Most people could forgive him being a Catholic. Confronted by his charm and his intellectual and professional attainments, people in time also forgave him the misfortune of his social background. But to this day in Buffalo, and at Nonquitt on the Massachusetts South Shore, where the Rumseys and other prominent Buffalo families had summer homes, it is said that Bill Donovan began to philander even before his wedding. His presumed affair with Eleanor Robson Belmont was widely talked about, and when people heard about Ruth Rumsey’s engagement, they felt she had made a dubious choice.
Bill Donovan’s heart might be in the Rumsey mansion, but he often found time to go to dinner at his parents’ house on Prospect Avenue. One day after dinner, Bill’s brother Tim took him aside and explained that their mother’s heart had been gravely weakened by a continuing attack of rheumatic fever and that she could be expected to die at any time
. But Anna Donovan went about her busy life as if there were nothing the matter with her, and she was full of joy when, in the spring of 1914, Mrs. Rumsey announced that her daughter Ruth was to be married in July to Bill.
Only a short time later Anna Donovan died. On her deathbed she insisted that Vincent, then a seminarian at the Dominican Novitiate in Somerset, Ohio, not come home. She feared that, in those days of slow travel, the trip might set him back in his studies. It was a great satisfaction to the dying woman that at least one of her beloved sons had chosen to go into the priesthood. She also requested that Bill and Ruth go ahead with their wedding on the date set for it.
In that early summer of 1914, when death darkened his romance, only Ruth could make him happy. Then, only ten days before the wedding was to take place, Ruth was rushed to the hospital for an emergency appendectomy. Bill was distraught. He stayed at the hospital, grieving for what he feared would be his second terrible loss, until at last it was apparent that his fiancée was going to be all right.
The wedding, held on July 15, was small. Fifty relatives and close friends of both families came to the Rumsey mansion. Monsignor John Biden, the Donovan family pastor from St. Bridget’s, performed the ceremony. Bill Donovan, now 31, was married. He gave up his drama lessons in New York City. The young couple went off on a honeymoon to the Lake Erie shore.
While Bill Donovan’s life was undergoing so many changes, Europe was moving toward war. Preoccupied as he was with his personal problems, Donovan still regularly drilled Troop I at the armory, and realizing that conditions in Europe were becoming increasingly grave, he sought out visitors to Buffalo from across the Atlantic to learn what he could about the likelihood of war. The events that had begun in Sarajevo in Bosnia on June 28 with Gavrilo Princip’s assassination of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife led inexorably from one fatal development after another to the British declaration of war on Germany on August 4.
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