From John Ray's shorter notes




October 09, 2017

Envy of success-- and Miss DuPont's wedding

A nice looking couple from a wealthy background get married but they reveal too much of their privileged background in the wedding announcement.  In an envious world I suppose that was crass but they were just doing what was normal for them.  And why should they hide their background? Their announcement has however attracted much criticism

Envious people could perhaps reflect on John F. Kennedy Jr., a very privileged person  who married a privileged lady, Carolyn Bessette.  They became the focus of society attention, including being invited to the White House by Bill Clinton. So they surpassed the couple below in social success.  But, like many of his class, Kennedy owned a light plane that he liked to fly. On  July 16, 1999, Kennedy crashed it, killing both of them.  Carolyn was only 33 at the time.  Light planes are always dangerous and Kennedy was probably coked up when he crashed it so "privilege" is not always what it seems, is it?



Imagine the distress of Carolyn's parents -- to have seen their beautiful daughter taken to the heights of social eminence, only to die young without even leaving the consolation of a child


THERE’S a specific type of upper class New Yorker who gets their wedding announced in the New York Times. They’re usually white, blonde, Ivy League educated and very, very rich.

Grace Hays Holcomb du Pont and Conor Jackson Sutherland — yep, those are their real names — fit those criteria perfectly. She’s a teacher and he’s an investment banker.

They were married on Saturday and their hilariously obnoxious and out of touch wedding announcement in the Times went viral on the weekend.

“Nothing at all elitist about them. Just your average Americans, offspring of ordinary hardworking billionaires, falling in love and deciding to walk through life hand-in-hand together,” wrote one Facebook commenter.

Another declared it, “The greatest white person wedding announcement of all time.”

The announcement:

Grace du Pont, Conor Sutherland



Grace Hays Holcomb du Pont was married Sept. 30 to Conor Jackson Sutherland in Manhattan. The Rev. J. Donald Waring performed the ceremony at Grace Episcopal Church. The bride and groom both graduated from Princeton, she cum laude and he magna cum laude.

Mrs. Sutherland, 26, was until Thursday at Achievement First Apollo Middle School, a charter school in Brooklyn, where she worked on special projects as a member of the operations team. From 2012 to 2014, she taught sixth-grade science with Teach for America at Ranson Middle School in Charlotte, N.C. She also received a master’s degree in teaching from the University of North Carolina, Charlotte.

She is a daughter of Jean Young du Pont and Pierre S. du Pont V of Tarrytown, N.Y. The bride’s father is a partner, in Manhattan, at HPM Partners, an investment and wealth management firm. Her mother was until 2016 the president and chief executive of the Garden Conservancy, an organization in Garrison, N.Y., and is now a legal, strategic and development consultant. The bride is a descendant of Éleuthère Irénée du Pont, the founder of what is now known as the DuPont Company. She is also a granddaughter of Pierre S. du Pont IV of Rockland, Del., who was the governor of Delaware from 1977 to 1985, and is a great-great-granddaughter of Llewellyn Powers, who was the governor of Maine from 1897 to 1901.

Mr. Sutherland, 30, helps buy, manage and sell companies in the portfolio at Apollo Global Management, an investment firm in Manhattan.

He is the son of Denise Jackson Sutherland of Glen Cove, N.Y., and the late Donald J. Sutherland. His mother was a principal dancer with the Joffrey Ballet in Manhattan from 1969 to 1986, and served from 1987 to 2014 as a trustee of the Professional Children’s School in New York. His father was the founder and chief executive of Quincy Partners, a leveraged buyout firm that was in Glen Head, N.Y.

The couple dated at Princeton, but had met a few years earlier, in 2007, in North Haven, Me., when Ms. du Pont offered a ride to Mr. Sutherland and a friend, whom Ms. du Pont knew. The two men had just moored their sailboat and were preparing for a long row back to the dock, whereas she was piloting her family’s motorized tender. They took the ride.

SOURCE

Some wisdom from ancient times summarizes the matter: "Envy not the glory and riches of a sinner: for thou knowest not what his ruin shall be". (Sirach 9:16, Douay)





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