25 Facts About Millicent Fenwick

Millicent Vernon Fenwick was an American fashion editor, politician, and diplomat.

Millicent Fenwick was regarded as a moderate and progressive within her party and was outspoken in favor of civil rights and the women's movement.

Millicent Fenwick had a sister, Mary Stevens Hammond, and a brother, Ogden H Hammond, Jr.

Millicent Fenwick was cousins with John Hammond, a well-known record producer.

In 1915, when Millicent Fenwick was five years old, her mother perished in the sinking of the British ocean liner RMS Lusitania, which her father survived.

Millicent Fenwick remarried two years later, to Marguerite McClure "Daisy" Howland, and by that marriage Fenwick had a stepbrother, McClure Howland.

Millicent Fenwick attended Barnard College and then the New School for Social Research, both in Manhattan.

In 1931, she met Hugh McLeod Millicent Fenwick, who was married to Dorothy Ledyard, the daughter of New York attorney Lewis Cass Ledyard.

Daisy, "a devout Catholic," was so disenchanted with Millicent Fenwick's marrying a divorced man that she prohibited her from returning to the house.

When Hugh and Millicent welcomed their second child, Hugo Hammond Fenwick, their marriage started to go downhill.

Hugh remarried to Barbara West and had a daughter, Maureen, while Millicent Fenwick did not remarry and instead focused on working and caring for her children.

Millicent Fenwick stayed with Vogue for a little over a decade and held several job titles during her employment with the magazine.

Millicent Fenwick compiled Vogue's Book of Etiquette, which sold a million copies and eventually went on tour around the country.

Millicent Fenwick received an inheritance from her mother, which along with interest from her family's real estate, was substantial enough to support her retirement.

Millicent Fenwick was elected to the Bernardsville Borough Council in 1957, serving until 1964, and around the same time was appointed to the New Jersey Committee of the United States Commission on Civil Rights, on which she served from 1958 to 1974.

Millicent Fenwick was elected to the New Jersey General Assembly in 1969, serving from 1970 to December 1972, when she left the Legislature to become director of the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs under Governor William T Cahill.

Millicent Fenwick was one of the most liberal Republicans in the House.

One week after the signing of the treaty, Millicent Fenwick went to Moscow as a junior member of a congressional delegation.

Millicent Fenwick met refuseniks who wanted to contact American congressmen and held an unofficial meeting with dissident Yuri Orlov.

Millicent Fenwick was thus convinced that political action in America based on the Helsinki Accords would improve human rights in the Soviet Union.

Millicent Fenwick held this position from June 1983 to March 1987, when she retired from public life at the age of 77.

Millicent Fenwick died of heart failure in her home town of Bernardsville on September 16,1992.

Millicent Fenwick is considered by some to be the model for the character of Lacey Davenport in Garry Trudeau's comic strip Doonesbury, although Trudeau insisted the character was modeled on no one in particular.

Lacey Davenport first appeared several months before Millicent Fenwick first gained prominence after her election to Congress.

Millicent Fenwick is the grandmother of CEO Jonathan Reckford and great-grandmother of US Olympic rower Molly Reckford.