Elizabeth T. Bentley, the Red Spy Queen

I live next door to a historical landmark. I work within a historical landmark. It should not surprise anyone to find out that I come from a family with a long, colorful history in Chicago. At some point, I'm sure I'll write about my family's history and ties with the Catholic church, common criminals, labor organization, the smallpox epidemic of 1899, Mayor Daley, waste management, and alcohol (we are, clearly, Irish Catholics), but right now, allow me to devote some time to Elizabeth T. Bentley, the Red Spy Queen, who happened to play a role in my family's history.

Just to give some quick background--Elizabeth Bentley was a normal, bright, American girl with a family that dated back to the Mayflower, who wound up joining the communist party when invited by a friend. At first, her devotion was lukewarm, but when she began to work at the Italian Information Library, which turned out to be a front for fascist propaganda, she went to the leader of her cell and offered to act as a spy. Bentley wound up getting fired from her job at the library when they found an anti-fascist paper she had written in college, and started doing low-level espionage work for Jacob Golos, a Russian-born spy. She and Golos fell in love. Bentley took a job as an assistant to an American business leader and passed on information to Golos. She also acted as a courier and entertained men in order to get information from them. Golos's health began to decline, and Bentley took on more of his work. Eventually, she was running two rings of undercover Soviet spies. When Golos died, however, the communist leadership cut Bentley off from the work that she had been doing, and transferred authority elsewhere. Rather than wait for the Soviet organization to kill her or denounce her, she decided to confess to the FBI. She told the FBI everything. They initially planned to use her as a double agent, but she had already been denounced to the KGB. Unable to get employment from the FBI, Elizabeth went to the press with her story, and was dubbed the "Red Spy Queen." She became an anti-communist spokesperson.

Elizabeth Bentley, Red Spy Queen

At this time, Elizabeth also converted to Catholicism, based on her conversations with Bishop Fulton Sheen, a tremendously popular Catholic figure of the time who was popular on TV and the radio (he is now a candidate for sainthood). Still unable to get a job, embroiled in a lawsuit, and sensationalized by the press, she found refuge in her new faith, and was offered a position teaching at Mundelein College, a girl's school in Chicago (it is now part of Loyola University). This is where her story crosses over with mine.

When Elizabeth Bentley was hired, it, understandably, created quite a stir. Really, it's mystifying that they hired her at all. The cynic in me thinks that Bishop Sheen must have thrown his weight around and bullied a few nuns to get it to happen, although my grandfather has a different take, believing that the school stuck its neck out out of "generous motives," and that they thought that Bentley would be good for the girls because she could offer "a view of the real world they might not otherwise encounter." This is not today's Catholic Church, that's all I have to say.

My grandfather was a reporter at the Chicago Daily News, and was sent to cover the Elizabeth Bentley story at Mundelein. When he arrived, he was greeted at the door by a bright young woman with dark curls in a green suit, who had been sent to deal with the press. This was my grandmother, an alumna of Mundelein College. You know you're doing something right when a man remembers meeting you better than he remembers meeting a Red Spy Queen. The next time there was a Mundelein story to cover, my grandfather jumped on it and asked my grandmother out. This was in November of 1949. They got engaged on Valentine's Day of 1950 and were married in the following June. Their wedding brunch, incidentally, was at the Edgewater Beach Hotel which used to be right at Bryn Mawr and the lake--another landmark of Uptown during the Jazz Age. They invited Elizabeth Bentley to their wedding.

The Edgwater Beach Hotel, built in 1919

They went on to have 8 children, and have 12 grandchildren. They both are writers, and have each published a number of books. And more importantly, they are still truly, very deeply, in love. It is an absolute miracle, not just that their relationship has lasted so long or that they have had such a happy life, but that that type of love is possible and attainable between humans on this passing earth. In his toast at their 60th anniversary party, which we celebrated this past summer, my grandfather said, "You wouldn't believe it, but 60 years later we still have so much fun at home." What a blessing!