Lucinda Franks Bio, Wiki
Lucinda Franks was born on July 16th, 1946. She is an American journalist. Lucinda is a former staff writer for The New York Times and has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, and The Atlantic. She is also renown for being the wife to Robert Morgenthau, an American lawyer who died at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan on July 21st, 2019, ten days before his 100th birthday.
She is also a winner of the Pulitzer Prize, for her reporting on the life and death of Diana Oughton, a member of The Weathermen, an anti-Vietnam war terrorist group, winning the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 1971, together with Thomas Powers.
She is the youngest person to win a Pulitzer.
Lucinda Franks Background
Lucinda Franks was raised in a Christian family. She is the daughter of Lorraine and Tom Franks, in Wellesley, Massachusetts. She graduated from Vassar College; after school, she moved to London, where she reported for United Press International in 1968. In 1973, she was transferred to New York City. Franks discovered that her father had been a secret agent during World War II, and wrote a book about it, My Father’s Secret War: A Memoir, in 2007. Her second memoir is about her marriage: Timeless: Love, Morgenthau, and Me (2014).
Lucinda Franks Husband (Robert Morgenthau) & Children
Lucinda was married former longtime district attorney for New York County, Robert M. Morgenthau, a widower and member of the Lehman family in 1977. They had two children: Joshua (born 1984) and Amy (born 1990).
In 1979, the Supersisters trading card set was produced and distributed; one of the cards featured Franks’s name and picture.
That love story is the subject of the book written by the former DA’s wife, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Lucinda Franks, titled “Timeless: Love, Morgenthau and Me.”
In a 2014 interview with CBS, Franks talked in length about the book saying: “I think my husband is one of the great men of our time. And he is known as a stern, tough prosecutor. I wanted him to have a whole image. I wanted people to know his foibles, his strengths, his goofiness, his singing — everything he does at home that make him a real person.”
Franks said the book touches on how late in Morgenthau’s life, they discovered he suffered a form of post-traumatic stress syndrome — related to World War II and a number of other traumas in his life.
Who is Robert Morgenthau? His Death & Cause
Robert M. Morgenthau was born on July 31st, 1919 and died on July 21st, 2019. He was an American lawyer. From 1975 until his retirement in 2009, he was the District Attorney for New York County (the borough of Manhattan), having previously served as United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York throughout much of the 1960s on the appointment of John F. Kennedy. At retirement, Morgenthau was the longest-serving district attorney in the history of the State of New York, although William V. Grady of Dutchess County surpassed this record at the midway point of his ninth term on January 1st, 2018.
Morgenthau first wife was Martha Pattridge, a Christian, whom he met in college. The two had five children: Joan Morgenthau Wadsworth, Anne Pattridge Morgenthau Grand, Robert Pattridge Morgenthau, Elinor Gates Morgenthau, and Barbara Elizabeth Morgenthau Lee. They raised their children in the Jewish faith. Martha died in 1972. Morgenthau was devastated by her death, and for a while afterward, he refused to talk about her in order to avoid memories of her passing.
Morgenthau died at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan on July 21st, 2019, ten days before his 100th birthday.
