Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok

In her anonymity, Hick was cremated. Her ashes sat on a shelf of a funeral home for 20 years before being interred in an unmarked grave at a cemetery in Rhinebeck.
  ———Brooke Hauser


3,300 letters discovered in eighteen boxes—Open and read

Eleanor wrote—I ache to hold you close and describes a place of their own—perhaps a cabin in the country. She even speaks of how it would be furnished.

In time Eleanor moves on— beyond their intimacy, but continues to write.

Hick lost herself in a love that stayed fixed in time waiting for historians to decipher the relationship.

Perhaps all that can be said with assurance was that Eleanor was Hick’s great love. I think of the ashes and the unmarked grave as a tragedy— and I find myself  walking away from Eleanor.

“That might have been the end of Hickok's story if not for Patsy Costello, who worked at the Hyde Park drugstore where Hickok used to buy her newspaper. In 1998 she was inspired to find Hickok's grave after seeing a play produced by Kavars called "Lorena Hickok and Eleanor Roosevelt: A Love Story."

"I thought it was a shame that she would be buried in an unmarked grave," said Costello, who contacted Kavars.

The marker, which will be dedicated May 1, 2000 will call her an "author, AP reporter, activist, change agent and friend of Eleanor Roosevelt."

   L.A. Times