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:
“I only desire sincere relations with the worthiest of my acquaintance, that they may give me an opportunity once in a year to speak the truth.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“What a man sows, that shall he and his relations reap.”
—Clarissa Graves (1892–1985?)
“Subject the material world to the higher ends by understanding it in all its relations to daily life and action.”
—Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards (1842–1911)