Thomas M. Gorman, real estate agent of Port Washington, will insist on the validity of his secret marriage to Miss Natalie Guggenheim, 18-year-old copper heiress, he said yesterday. It had been reported that the Guggenheims planned to seek an annulment.
“We were married in Great Neck some time ago,” he said. “I don’t remember the date. I don’t see how the marriage can be annulled.’
He declined to say what arrangement he expected to make with his wifes family or whether she would leave the Guggenheim estate at Roslyn, L. I., to live with him.
Gorman is believed to have visited Mr. and Mrs. Edmond A. Guggenheim Tuesday night at the request of his wife’s family or whether she would White Sulphur Springs, Va., upon learning of the elopement. What occurred is not known, but some announcement is expected from the Guggenheims.
Young Gorman helped his father handle Long Island Railroad freight before he embarked in the real estate business two years ago. Gorman is a Catholic, while his wife is Jewish. Gorman refused to discuss this phase of the union beyond saying that he would remain a Catholic.
Gorman denied a report, attributed to Mrs. Guggenheim, that he had been twice ordered from the Guggenheim estate.
“I have known Natalie for years,” he said. “There has never been any trouble between her family and myself. I never announced I was courting her, but her father and mother must have known I was fond of her.”
The wedding took place April 6 in All Saints’ Protestant Episcopal Church in Great Neck. Joseph L. O’Connell, lawyer and real estate agent, of Great Neck, was best man, while Miss Guggenheim was attended by Miss Betty Weed. a chum of New York.
Twice before the marriage, it was said, plans for a secret wedding had been frustrated by the watchfulness of the Guggenheim family.
According to reliable information. Natalie Guggenheim, granddaughter of Murray Guggenheim, and Mr. Gorman encountered difficulty in finding some one to marry them. Gorman and Miss Guggenheim attempted to obtain the solemnization of their marriage by the local Catholic priest who without a dispensation was unable to comply with their request. After visiting a Justice of the Peace, they failed to induce him to perform the ceremony because she is only 18 years of age. The couple prevailed upon the Reverend Kirkland Huske of the Protestant-Episcopal church to perform the marriage.
Prize winners in the short story contest conducted by the Brith Sholom News, organ of the Independent Order Brith Sholom, were announced. Miss N. B. Sokoloff. Washington. D. C. won the first prize with her story “Commissar Zaharoy. Other winners were Alexander H. Carasso. Brooklyn; Moses Bragin, Brooklyn; Miss Pearl Sanders, Cleveland, and Nettie Duga Pilcher, Whittier, Cal.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
