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2 From Courts to Conservation Early in 1952, awash in a sea of congressional politics and taxes, Russell Train received an invitation from a friend he had made at Columbia, Joseph Spaulding . Spaulding had just married Helen Bowdoin, whose sister needed a date to a local party. Would Train accompany Aileen Bowdoin Travers, recently divorced and new to Washington? Yes, Train agreed, ignorant that his life would never be the same. It was Aileen’s first night in Washington and the date included dinner with her mother and stepfather, Edward Foley. Foley and Train hit it o≠ immediately. Foley had served as Under Secretary of the Treasury during the Truman administration and, while a Democrat, shared both Train’s a≠ability and love of politics. Their conversation interested Train but hardly captured his full attention. It was the twenty-seven-year-old Aileen, with her brown hair, bright smile, and outgoing personality that caught Train’s eye, an “absolute knockout.”1 At the party the two quickly escaped the crowd, retiring to the garden, where they talked until the early morning hours. Two years later, on May 27, 1954, they married, appropriately enough at St. John’s Church. The ceremony was small with only immediate family present, but the Foleys hosted a large reception afterwards at their house on Wyoming Avenue, a brick mansion formerly the home of Supreme Court Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone. Many of the connections Train had made attended, including his influential boss Congressman Daniel Reed. Aileen proved a strong ally in the environmental struggles that followed. She encouraged Train’s activism and, in fact, became a noted environmental advocate in her own right. According to the Washington Evening Star, Aileen was the type of woman easy to characterize , “chic, neatly coi≠ed, carrying a name that is listed in all the right places.” Nevertheless, to describe her as such was to tell only part of the story. She was a determined environmentalist, “a woman with an abiding interest in the world’s 29 CONSERVATIVE CONSERVATIONIST 30 health.”2 Aileen remained Train’s most important confidant at each turn, an uncommon relationship in an age when a majority of spouses were content in what Meg Greenfield termed Washington’s “wife culture.” Most acted as “attractive but prim adornment-adjuncts to their husband’s careers.” They were “meant to be seen and not heard at certain o∞ce and social functions and to grace the platform at the departmental swearing-in or late-night campaign rally.”3 Aileen attended her share of ceremonies and social functions but hardly remained quiet. In some instances Train’s inclination toward bipartisanship left him open to those less scrupulous. Aileen brought a level of cynicism and a degree of caution , pointing out those not to trust.4 She appreciated her influence. “How lucky we are,” Anne Richardson, wife of Train’s colleague Elliot Richardson, once said to her. “Our husbands care about what we think.”5 Aileen brought something else to the table—her own prominence, connections , and wealth. While many men in Washington might o≠er the obligatory chuckle about how they had married “above” themselves, in Train’s case it was arguably true. Her family also had American roots back to the seventeenth century , her ancestors prospering in shipping and land speculation and emerging as one of the richest in the colony of Massachusetts, one serving as head of the legislature and another later serving as governor. Their wealth spawned Bowdoin College in Maine, which today remains a prestigious private institution. While some of her wealthy ancestors held loyalist sympathies, Aileen was a direct descendant of Alexander Hamilton. Later generations augmented the family wealth and frequently engaged in philanthropy. They became major financiers on Wall Street, close friends of the family of J. Pierpont Morgan, perhaps the nation’s most famous and prosperous banker. They were true American blue bloods, the “natural aristocracy” to which Je≠erson referred.6 Growing up, Aileen called three houses home. Her primary residence in Manhattan, located between Park and Madison avenues, was an impressive stone mansion. In summers and on weekends the family ventured to Oyster Bay, Long Island, the former home of Theodore Roosevelt and others of influence. There their home, situated on the water, had tennis courts and a boathouse. In the winters the family often visited the home of Aileen’s grandmother in Montgomery, Alabama, a beautiful southern home now serving as the governor’s...

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