The Bride Wore Pink

MANNERS & MORALS

One morning last week, balding, bespectacled Bryant Bowden, editor of the weekly Okeechobee (Fla.) News, sauntered into the Okeechobee courthouse and stopped to eye the bulletin board in the main hall. Among the marriage-license applications, which, by Florida law, must be publicly posted for three days before a ceremony, he saw something which made him goggle. Winthrop Rockefeller, 35, of New York--the fourth of John D. Rockefeller Jr.'s five sons and one of the most eligible bachelors in the world--had stated his intention of marrying one Eva Sears, 31, also of New York.

Editor Bowden had a bitter moment--his paper would not be published for two days. Then he remembered that he was the Okeechobee correspondent for the Associated Press. He telephoned the A.P. office in Jacksonville. A few hours later, the whole U.S. journalistic horizon glowed a bright pink with the fireworks he had touched off.

While the first headlines blazed (and while Manhattan gossip columnists scrambled to assure their readers that they had known all about the romance for months), herds of reporters were dispatched to find an answer to the question: Who is Eva Sears? Hearst's Cholly Knickerbocker (Ghighi Cassini) haughtily announced that she was Mrs. Barbara Paul Sears of the fine old Philadelphia Pauls and thus a society girl of impeccable pedigree. He was wrong. Mrs. Sears was Cinderella, at least by all city-desk specifications.

Her parents were Lithuanian immigrants and she was born Jievute Paulekiute in a coal patch near Noblestown, Pa. In 1924, her mother got a divorce, took Jievute and her younger sister to Chicago. Mrs. Paulekas got a job in a mattress factory, married a carpenter named Peter Neveckas, settled down in an apartment near the stockyards. Jievute went to Chicago's Healy Grammar School, where two big things happened to her--she discovered that she was a very smart girl and she began calling herself Eva. At Englewood High School she shortened Paulekiute to Paul.

Blonde, buoyant Eva Paul had spontaneous, unaffected gaiety. She also had pretty legs. When the Lithuanian Daily News sponsored a Miss Lithuania contest in 1933, 17-year-old Eva Paul won it, ruled as Queen of Lithuanian Day at the Chicago World's Fair. When her mother and stepfather moved to a farm near Lowell, Ind., Eva slipped easily into the affairs of the town high school. By the time she was graduated in 1935, she was president of the Red Pepper Social Club and had acquired the highest of adolescent accolades--she was a "popular girl."

Mail-Order Model. She went to Northwestern University for a year and a half, then quit and got a job as a model. She posed for pictures for the Montgomery Ward catalogue. She went to New York, got a job playing Pearl in a road-show version of Tobacco Road.

She was in Boston on Christmas Eve, 1939. More specifically, she was on exclusive Beacon Hill, where candles were flickering, where carolers were singing and where, by tradition, old families held open house. She met a wealthy, socially prominent young man named Richard Sears Jr. He thought she was wonderful. They were married two years later, while she was in an Eddie Dowling show in New York.

In her seven years as Mrs. Sears, Eva made many friends and picked up one of those nicknames which women of cafe society wear like amusing jewelry. Hers was "Bobo." The Searses lived in Boston, where Bobo did war relief work; in Los Angeles, where she played minor roles in motion pictures; and finally in Paris, where Sears was third secretary in the U.S. embassy. Eighteen months ago, at a dinner party given by Mrs. Elizabeth ("Liz") Whitney, Bobo met Winthrop Rockefeller.

Bobo's Beau. Last October, she got a Reno divorce. She returned to New York, and with her sister Isobel moved back into the Third Avenue apartment where she had lived with Sears. Winthrop, who had gone to Yale, had worked as a roughneck in Texas oilfields, and been wounded off Okinawa, began to see a lot of her.

Two months ago, Bobo went to Palm Beach to visit Polo Player Winston Guest and his blonde wife "Zizi." A fortnight ago, Rockefeller boarded an Eastern Airlines plane for Miami. He narrowly escaped being killed when one of the plane's engines exploded (TIME, Feb. 16). When he joined Bobo, they decided to get married as soon as possible. The decision set off a series of magnificent improvisations.

The Rockefellers' Manhattan press-agents set up a conference at the Guests' palatial home to appease the clamoring press. Bobo said: "I love him very much." She talked about her early life, said that her father was dead (she was misinformed--he was mining coal in Washington, Pa.) and showed reporters her engagement ring, a 1 1/2-carat, square-cut diamond, set in platinum. Winthrop parried newsmen's thrusts with wit and a bridegroom's smile.

The wedding reception preceded the wedding, too. A goodly segment of cafe society was there: the Duke & Duchess of Windsor; "Prince" Mike Romanoff, the restaurant world's most famed pretender; onetime Glamor Deb Brenda Frazier Kelly; Rail Tycoon Robert R. Young and his wife; and the Marquess of Blandford.

Something Old. Bobo wore pink for the wedding, which began in front of the Guests' fireplace at a minute after midnight on St. Valentine's Day. She had picked the dress to have "something old"--she had bought it a week before. Her stockings were "something new," her handkerchief "borrowed" and her orchid "blue." Rockefeller wore a tan gabardine suit. His voice sank as he made the responses. Bobo answered clearly; the Presbyterian minister omitted the word "obey."

After the ceremony, the wedding party listened to Negro spirituals, sung by a choir on the lawn. After the wedding breakfast, bride & groom set out for a honeymoon in a rented automobile.

Bobo's mother and stepfather, who were unable to attend the ceremony because they were making a batch of Lithuanian cheese on their Indiana farm, both announced that they were happy. Rockefeller's mother and father, who were vacationing in Tucson, Ariz., said they were happy, too.

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