Heiress. Eleanor aspired not to attend college or to have a career but to romance and marriage, so after a year in a Paris finishing school she returned to Newport for her debut, in 1936. The teenaged Eleanor dated, but failing to find the right match in Newport, New York, or Palm Beach, she embarked on a nearly year-long world cruise. And voilà -- in the summer of 1938, Eleanor met a wealthy Englishman in France. "He has been so far a confirmed bachelor but I am hoping that he may weaken," Eleanor wrote to her parents. Less than three weeks later, the Englishman indeed weakened, and Eleanor accepted his proposal of marriage. Alas, he was insincere: Eleanor returned to America, planning her wedding, but the Englishman failed to join her. "The so and so hasn't even written me," Eleanor wrote to her mother when almost a month passed without word. But Eleanor did not lack for suitors. Twenty years old, she had become a society- page fixture regularly photographed outside Bailey's in Newport, and inside such ritzy establishments as New York's Waldorf-Astoria hotel. Friends called her Cookie, a '30s' term for a vixen. "She's a 'Glamour Girl' who is still surprised by it all, the only child of doting parents [whose] every wish is fulfilled in an Aladdin-like manner," one newspaper declared in November 1938. "Won't get her to take 'showers,' but when she bathes in the tub, Cleopatra in all her glory wasn't more luxurious . . . expects to be waited on and has a personal maid to attend to her comfort." Summering in Newport, this is when she met Robert Ogden "Bunty" Bacon who bore a passing resemblance to a later movie star, Christopher Reeve. But Bunty was more than tall, tanned, and ruggedly handsome -- he knew how to charm the ladies. Bunty was divorced from one of Eileen Slocum's friends when Cookie fell for him, shortly before Christmas of 1938. Robert and Anita Young strongly disapproved of their only child's choice: Bunty had a young child from his first wife, another child he'd fathered with her had died under mysterious circumstances, and he drank to excess. After vacationing with Bunty in Jamaica, she secretly married him, on April 5, 1939, in Warrenton, Va. Soon, she was pregnant. Eleanor & Robert Divorced on December 11, 1939. In 1941, the very married 32-year-old Nicholas Embiricos, and his guest Eleanor Young, the ex-Mrs. Robert Ogden Bacon, Jr. (and ex-Manhattan Glamour girl known as “Cookie”) left Newport R.I. bound for New York after a holiday weekend at her family summer estate. Nicholas had recently left behind his wife and young son in Palm Beach and was in full pursuit of glamour girl Eleanor. Having cancelled the trip a day due to bad weather, they were impatient to visit friends in New York and took –off in less than ideal conditions. Amateur pilot Embiricos, in a mishap eerily similar to John Kennedy Jr.’s tragic plane crash, ran into trouble when a pea-soup fog embraced the Atlantic coast. Nicholas Embiricos had logged only 136 hours in the air. The plane was equipped with only basic instrumentation. Twelve miles down the coast, at Matunuck, a disoriented Nicolas Embiricos began circling madly. Finally he caught a break. He nosed down for a landing in a clear patch but a wave slapped the wings of his Fairchild 24 Monoplane and the plane flipped and crashed in shallow water, both passengers died.
Heiress. Eleanor aspired not to attend college or to have a career but to romance and marriage, so after a year in a Paris finishing school she returned to Newport for her debut, in 1936. The teenaged Eleanor dated, but failing to find the right match in Newport, New York, or Palm Beach, she embarked on a nearly year-long world cruise. And voilà -- in the summer of 1938, Eleanor met a wealthy Englishman in France. "He has been so far a confirmed bachelor but I am hoping that he may weaken," Eleanor wrote to her parents. Less than three weeks later, the Englishman indeed weakened, and Eleanor accepted his proposal of marriage. Alas, he was insincere: Eleanor returned to America, planning her wedding, but the Englishman failed to join her. "The so and so hasn't even written me," Eleanor wrote to her mother when almost a month passed without word. But Eleanor did not lack for suitors. Twenty years old, she had become a society- page fixture regularly photographed outside Bailey's in Newport, and inside such ritzy establishments as New York's Waldorf-Astoria hotel. Friends called her Cookie, a '30s' term for a vixen. "She's a 'Glamour Girl' who is still surprised by it all, the only child of doting parents [whose] every wish is fulfilled in an Aladdin-like manner," one newspaper declared in November 1938. "Won't get her to take 'showers,' but when she bathes in the tub, Cleopatra in all her glory wasn't more luxurious . . . expects to be waited on and has a personal maid to attend to her comfort." Summering in Newport, this is when she met Robert Ogden "Bunty" Bacon who bore a passing resemblance to a later movie star, Christopher Reeve. But Bunty was more than tall, tanned, and ruggedly handsome -- he knew how to charm the ladies. Bunty was divorced from one of Eileen Slocum's friends when Cookie fell for him, shortly before Christmas of 1938. Robert and Anita Young strongly disapproved of their only child's choice: Bunty had a young child from his first wife, another child he'd fathered with her had died under mysterious circumstances, and he drank to excess. After vacationing with Bunty in Jamaica, she secretly married him, on April 5, 1939, in Warrenton, Va. Soon, she was pregnant. Eleanor & Robert Divorced on December 11, 1939. In 1941, the very married 32-year-old Nicholas Embiricos, and his guest Eleanor Young, the ex-Mrs. Robert Ogden Bacon, Jr. (and ex-Manhattan Glamour girl known as “Cookie”) left Newport R.I. bound for New York after a holiday weekend at her family summer estate. Nicholas had recently left behind his wife and young son in Palm Beach and was in full pursuit of glamour girl Eleanor. Having cancelled the trip a day due to bad weather, they were impatient to visit friends in New York and took –off in less than ideal conditions. Amateur pilot Embiricos, in a mishap eerily similar to John Kennedy Jr.’s tragic plane crash, ran into trouble when a pea-soup fog embraced the Atlantic coast. Nicholas Embiricos had logged only 136 hours in the air. The plane was equipped with only basic instrumentation. Twelve miles down the coast, at Matunuck, a disoriented Nicolas Embiricos began circling madly. Finally he caught a break. He nosed down for a landing in a clear patch but a wave slapped the wings of his Fairchild 24 Monoplane and the plane flipped and crashed in shallow water, both passengers died.
