Joanna Mercedes Alessandra Sturm is an American philanthropist and historian.
Background
She is a great-granddaughter of President Theodore Roosevelt, Junior. and the granddaughter of Alice Lee Roosevelt. Sturm is the daughter of Alexander McCormick Sturm and his wife, Paulina Longworth. Joanna Mercedes Alessandra Sturm is the daughter of Alexander McCormick Sturm and his wife Paulina Longworth.
She is the great-granddaughter of Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States and the granddaughter of Alice Roosevelt Longworth.
Joanna was born in July 1946. In November 1951, her father, Alex, died of hepatitis.
Career
While Nicholas Longworth was legally Sturm"s grandfather, Alice Lee Roosevelt Longworth"s diaries reveal that Senator William Borah was Sturm"s biological grandfather. Widowhood plunged Joanna"s mother, Paulina, deeper into depression and drug dependency. Early in 1957 in January, Paulina died of an accidental overdose of sleeping pills, leaving Joanna an orphan at a very young age.
In an article in American Heritage in 1969, Joanna was described as a "highly attractive and intellectual twenty-two-year-old" and was called "a notable contributor to Mistress
Longworth’s youthfulness." Whether discussing the famous Roman Catholic medieval theologian, Saint Augustine or what the article described as the fine points of horsemanship, ".. it is often the older woman who is the less inhibited and the more opinionated. The bonds between them are twin cables of devotion and a healthy respect for each other’s tongue.
In accordance with her mother"s wishes, Joanna received a Catholic education, attending Stone Ridge, the Sacred Heart day school in Bethesda, Maryland where she graduated in 1963. After graduation, Joanna attended Newton College of the Sacred Heart in Newton, Massachusetts and later did graduate work at Georgetown University.
Number fewer than six of them have been written about Alice Lee Roosevelt.
In virtually every major work on either of these Roosevelts, Sturm has been a significant cited resource. In the interest of preserving Alice"s recollections, Joanna made two oral history recordings of her that are now in the Library of Congress.