Half a century ago, when she was just a youngster of 54 years, Barbara “Bootsie” Mandel was the most famous scorned woman in America. She was the wife left behind when her husband, Maryland Gov. Marvin Mandel, departed for another woman.
She was also among the first wave of deserted women telling a whole generation of ex-wives: Do not despair. Do not whimper and moan. Stand your ground.
Those hectic days of 1974 come back now with news that Mrs. Mandel died earlier this week at 103. Even at that age, the news was shocking. When some of us saw her a few months ago, she was in a wheelchair but her mind was sharp and her wit biting as ever.
It was a Fourth of July holiday weekend in 1973 when Gov. Mandel announced that he was ending their 32-year marriage, a romance that began when the two were Northwest Baltimore high school sweethearts.
Then came the weekend Gov. Mandel’s press secretary, Frank “Flip” DeFilippo, marched into local newspaper offices and handed over the official announcement.
“Here’s your Fourth of July firecracker,” DeFilippo said.
“I am in love with another woman, Mrs. Jeanne Dorsey, and I intend to marry her,” the governor’s official announcement stated.
But Bootsie wasn’t buying it. She never even heard it directly from her husband, who’d been having an affair for a couple of years with Jeanne Dorsey, the wife of a former state senator.
When the news hit the airwaves and the newspapers, Bootsie got on the phone and started calling local reporters with her side of things.
She told one newspaper reporter, “The governor crawled out of my bed this morning. He has never slept anyplace but with me. I think the strain of the job has gotten to him.”
“I am astonished, amazed and unbelieving,” she told another reporter. “I will remain in the governor’s mansion until he comes to his senses. … [He] needs to see a psychiatrist.”
And that’s when she became the most famous scorned woman in America.
She refused to move out. The governor had to move into a five-room apartment while she stayed in the 54-room state mansion. She was still, after all, the official First Lady of Maryland.
She wasn’t going to get pushed around. She wasn’t going to play anybody’s meek victim. If they wanted her out of the mansion, there’d be a price to pay. And the immediate price was a torrent of bad publicity for the governor.
Everybody wanted her side of the breakup.
In a New York Magazine article titled “Divorce, Maryland Style,” a young Nora Ephron wrote, “The Ladies Home Journal is after her. Cosmopolitan is after her. I am after her.” In the meantime, Ephron tore the governor to shreds.
At the same time, Bootsie was telling Time magazine in a piece headlined, “Domestic Politics: She Shall Not Be Moved,” “I’m not getting a divorce, I’m trying to save a marriage. I’ve had a happy married life for a long time. I worked while he went to law school. We climbed the ladder together. We reached the impossible dream.”
The dream dissolved, but Bootsie Mandel’s resolve remained firm. She stayed in the mansion until the following December while attorneys worked out the details of their divorce. That divorce became embedded in the details surrounding Marvin Mandel’s subsequent federal indictment and imprisonment before he was ultimately exonerated.
For the next half-century, Bootsie lived a contented life in an apartment off Park Heights Avenue, nurturing her children and grandchildren and Northwest Baltimore friends.
Three years ago when Bootsie hit 100, Frank DeFilippo, the Mandel press secretary who’d broken the initial divorce news so long ago, wrote a celebratory piece about her on the Media Matters website headlined, “Happy Centennial, Bootsie Mandel!”
DeFilippo wrote, “Former Gov. Marvin Mandel had five words he lived by: ‘Don’t get mad, get even.’ His first wife, Bootsie Mandel, did exactly that. She’s lived to be 100.”
Bootsie’s ex-husband made it to 95. Frank DeFilippo, who spent his post-Mandel years as a media political analyst, made it to 94. Ironically, Flip died over the weekend, barely 48 hours before Bootsie Mandel.
A former Baltimore Sun columnist and WJZ-TV commentator, Michael Olesker is the author of six books.
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