He served in the Pacific during
World War II. He was commissioned in the Naval Reserve on August 19, 1940 and was promoted to lieutenant on March 1, 1943.[2] Later in the war, he served as captain of the
USS Greene, (APD-36).[3] With the Greene he supported the invasion of southern France in August 1944 and later served on escort duties in the Pacific.
On December 22, 1943, while a lieutenant in the Navy, Roosevelt married first Nancy Thayer in
New York City. At the time, she believed her father was the poet
Scofield Thayer, however, she was actually a daughter of poet
E.E. Cummings. Before their divorce in 1954, they were the parents of two children:[4]
Simon Willard Roosevelt (1945–1965), a student at
Columbia University who died in a motorcycle accident at age 19;[5] he married Ann Whitney Alexander in
Pittsfield, Massachusetts in January 1964. After his death, she became the editor of BMD Monitor.[6]
Elizabeth Françoise Roosevelt (b. 1947), who married Derek C. Aldred in January 1966 in
Hammersmith, England.
After his divorce, Roosevelt was married on May 28, 1955 in
Mendon, Vermont to Carol Adele Russell (1935–2022), a daughter of Eleanor Lavinia Rassmussen and Joseph John Russell.[7] They had three children:
Three Songs from Poe for soprano, clarinet and piano (1977); words by
Edgar Allan Poe
Two Songs for voice and piano (1967); words by
E. E. Cummings
Two Songs for voice and piano (1973); words by Lloyd Frankenberg
War Is Kind (Our Dead Brother Bid Us Think of Life) for soprano, narrator, dancer and chamber orchestra (1976); words by
Stephen Crane and
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.