Relations
Smathers was personally acquainted with every President of the United States to serve in the office in between, and including, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Bill Clinton. He was particularly close to both of the 1960 major party presidential nominees, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. All had been young senators together in the early 1950s. Smathers was said to have been the only person present at the 1953 Newport wedding of John Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier who was a member of neither the Kennedy nor Bouvier families.
It was through Smathers that Richard Nixon met his best friend and longtime companion, "Bebe" Rebozo. Smathers arranged for Rebozo, his Key Biscayne neighbor, to take Nixon deep sea fishing. It was Smathers' former Key Biscayne home, which he eventually sold to Nixon, which became famous as the Florida White House during Nixon's presidential administration.
Smathers' connections in politics continue to the present day. The current senior U.S. Senator from Florida, Bill Nelson, was a summer intern in Smathers' office, 1961–1962.
Read more about this topic: George Smathers
Famous quotes containing the word relations:
“The interest in life does not lie in what people do, nor even in their relations to each other, but largely in the power to communicate with a third party, antagonistic, enigmatic, yet perhaps persuadable, which one may call life in general.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“Happy will that house be in which the relations are formed from character; after the highest, and not after the lowest order; the house in which character marries, and not confusion and a miscellany of unavowable motives.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I have no wealthy or popular relations to recommend me.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)