Frances Perkins: The Woman Behind the New Deal

Early Years & Family > Paul Wilson

Photograph of Paul Wilson

Ca. 1940

Frances Perkins Papers, Box 150A

Gift of Susanna Perkins Coggeshall, 1973

 

Frances Perkins

Thank you for the years of grace dear soul

Autograph manuscript, pen, signed, October 13, 1932

Frances Perkins Papers, Box 122

Written almost 19 years after their marriage in 1913, Perkins’s poem to Paul Wilson sums up their great love and her great sense of loss. His first breakdown had occurred in the spring of 1918. He lived mostly in institutions or boarding homes, suffering from manic depression and bipolar disorder, from early 1933 until his death in 1952.

Gift of Susanna Perkins Coggeshall, 1988

 

 

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