D AV I D PAT R I C K C O L U M B I A brought her to the attention of the general public. Her friendship with the Kennedys had been well established and she was known to be a generous and caring friend to the family. Bunny was born Rachel Lowe Lambert in Princeton, New Jersey, on August 9, 1910, the eldest child of Rachel Parkhill Lowe (who bestowed the nickname of Bunny) and Gerard Barnes Lambert. Her grandfather, Jordan Lambert, invented Listerine, which her father marketed before founding Warner-Lambert Pharmaceuticals. Her father became president of Gillette Safety Razor Company, which made several common American household
products, including the razor blades, Listerine mouthwash, and Dentyne gum. The company eventually merged into Pfizer chemicals. Bunny’s first husband, Stacy B. Lloyd, Jr., with whom she had two children (a son, Stacy III, and a daughter, Eliza), was a Philadelphia socialite who served in the Office of Strategic Services during the World War II. The Lloyds were good friends of Paul Mellon, the billionaire heir of Andrew W. Mellon, and his wife, Mary Conover Mellon. When the first Mrs. Mellon died from an asthma attack in 1948, Bunny Lloyd divorced her husband married Paul Mellon within a matter of months.
Paul and Bunny Mellon were well-established members of Eastern United States society, both heirs to great well-established fortunes created from banking and industry. They were very wellknown within their world of society; she was a fulltime client of Paris couture, especially Cristóbal Balenciaga and Hubert de Givenchy, but both inclined to eschew any kind of celebrity, and so they were not famous. They were both connoisseurs of art and the decorative arts and they bred racehorses at the Oak Spring Farms. Mr. Mellon collected 18th- and 19th-century painting and Mrs. Mellon collected modern
art, including many works of Mark Rothko that she purchased at the artist’s studio. Over the years, the couple donated more than a thousand works of art to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., (which had been funded by Andrew Mellon) and to the Yale Center for British Art, which the Mellons established in 1966 (Paul Mellon was a member of the class of 1929). Despite the modest demeanor of their public personalities, the Mellons lived high, wide, and handsome, maintaining fully staffed, sprawling residences in New York, Upperville, Cape Cod, Antigua, Nantucket, and Paris, although their main resi-
Paul and Bunny Mellon with their thoroughbred Mill Reef, the Mellons’ one and only Epsom Derby winner— and the most famous horse that they owned and bred.
Bunny Mellon (August 9, 1910–March 17, 2014) 34 QUEST
Jackie Kennedy with friend Bunny Mellon