THE TALE OF TWO SCOTTISH TEENAGE PEN PALS AND DONALD TRUMP'S MUM

MARY ANN

AGNES

THE DAILY RECORD

REUNITED IN 1995

CATHY BRETT told a romantic story in her January lecture about two teenage girls who had no idea how exciting their lives were going to be. It was the story of her grandmother, Dr Agnes Bentley. When she died in 2001, Cathy inherited her large photographic archive and wartime diaries.

  

By 2015 Cathy had become a successful author and book illustrator. She took an MA in Illustration and Book Arts at UCA Farnham and one of her assignment themes was ‘memory’. Out came the archive and she created a series of illustrations using the photographs. Then in the summer of 2016 she found seven tiny snaps showing Agnes’s teenage pen pal friendship with  Mary Anne MacLeod from the Isle of Lewis - mother of  US presidential candidate Donald Trump! She posted the pictures on FaceBook.

  

Her friend and Scottish publisher Mairi Kidd replied immediately and asked if the photos could be forwarded to another friend, Torcuil Crichton, a journalist from the Isle of Lewis. He was working in London as political correspondent for several Scottish newspapers. Torcuil duly met Cathy and in August his article about the photographs was published in Scotland’s Daily Record.

  

The story was as follows. In the late summer of 1926, Agnes, age 14, returned to her Dundee home after a family holiday. Waiting for her was a letter from one Mary Ann MacLeod, also 14, who lived at Tong, near Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis. She had seen an article in the Dundee Courier about Agnes’s success in a painting competition. Mary Ann asked if they might become pen pals and enclosed a photograph. A regular correspondence followed and photographs exchanged. Mary Ann’s father was the village postmaster in Tong. The port of Stornoway was thee miles away and the rest of the island community consisted mostly of crofts and poor fishing villages.

  

In Dundee, Agnes, an only child, lived with her parents in a poor tenement. Her father had worked in the Blackness Foundry before World War 1 and now did odd jobs, collected rent and ran a small corner shop. But Agnes was very bright and secured a scholarship to Dundee High School. She wrote in her memoir about being bullied and feeling ashamed of her home-made uniform but she made friends and thrived, winning medals and coming top of her class.

  

Mary Ann continued to write, complaining of loneliness as many people were leaving Lewis to emigrate to Canada and New Zealand, including all of her nine siblings. She was the last and alone with her parents. In early 1930, Agnes got a letter from her saying she was leaving too. She had been invited to New York by her sister, who was going to help her to get a job. Mary Ann asked if Agnes would come to Glasgow to see her off on the ship. In the spring of 1930, the girls met for the first time there aged 17.

  

By then Agnes was at St Andrews University, studying French and German. They continued to write and exchange photos and gifts even after Agnes won a scholarship to continue her studies at a German university. In September 1933, she travelled to Marburg to begin her doctorate. At the end of her first year she travelled home to Scotland for the summer holiday. By chance Mary Ann was home in Lewis too but preparing to settle for good in New York.

  

The girls had a day together shopping in Glasgow. Mary Ann was looking for a gift for her new boyfriend, Fred, and they found some fashionable fur-backed gloves that Mary Ann thought would be ideal.  Agnes bought a pair for herself. They said their goodbyes and Mary Ann set sail on the Transylvania. She turned 18 on the voyage.

  

At the end of the summer, Agnes returned to Marburg and in 1934 met her future (first) husband, Werner Schurhoff, a fellow student. Before the end of the decade both girls were married, Mary Ann to Fred Trump, a property magnate, and Agnes to Werner. They continued to write, sharing landmark events like marriage and children until the outbreak of war. The letters then stopped and they lost touch. Agnes resettled in Britain with her children after the war.

  

Following the story’s appearance in the Daily Record, Cathy was approached by Mirror Group Newspapers which wanted to add the pictures to its photo stock. In 2016 the mother of presidential candidate Donald Trump was potentially an interesting story. Cathy was offered a licence for the photos but warned they might not raise much money. She pushed for a 70/30 split and thought nothing more until the November election shock. Suddenly everybody wanted the pictures and the money started to roll in.

  

Torcuil said the story should be pitched to BBC Scotland as an original drama. Nothing happened for a few months but then he suggested developing it as a documentary. At Westminster he asked Cathy if she would be willing to be interviewed for a programme. He had already approached Calum Angus Mackay, a producer/director friend from the Isle of Lewis who had agreed to make a ‘taster’ film. This was pitched to  BBC Alba, the Gaelic language channel, which approved it and provided funding together with TG4 in Ireland. Distribution deals were agreed in the US too.

  

Early last year location shooting began, including Trump’s fleeting visit to Scotland, with protest marches filmed in Edinburgh. Filming in Dundee astonished Cathy’s family who had never previously seen the tenement where Agnes grew up. On the Isle of Lewis people were interviewed who had known Mary Ann before she married Trump’s father. Then in early summer they filmed in New York and Washington.

  

Cathy was filmed at her desk in Surrey as she turned the story of Mary Ann and Agnes into a graphic novella. Images were included in the film. In September she drove up to the Western Isles to see where it had all begun. She met Calum Angus in Stornoway. He had finished editing and was about to deliver the film to the BBC. She saw it at the Art Centre An Lanntair where it was to be premiered the day after she left. She was filmed there for the local news. The premiere was a sell-out even before it aired on BBC Alba.

  

Cathy finished the book in October and had 100 copies printed for the Yorkshire Comics Festival, Thought Bubble, in November where it was a sensation. Copies are now available at GOSH Comics in London and online.

  

But that was not quite the end of the story. In 1995, 50 years after World War 2, Agnes chanced to see a late night TV programme. Selina Scott had filmed a profile of the  tycoon Donald Trump with  cameras in Trump Tower, New York, in his mother’s apartment.  She was referred to as the former Mary Ann MacLeod from Lewis Scotland. Agnes jumped. This elegant lady with blonde hair was sitting with her legs crossed, just as the original Mary Ann had done.

   

The next day Agnes wrote to her old friend at Trump Tower and got a swift reply. Later that summer, Mary Ann visited London on route to Scotland and invited Agnes to lunch at The Dorchester.

  

Mary died in 2000 and Agnes a year later so neither saw Trump become US President. What might the old friends from 1930s Scotland have thought of that, not to mention the TV documentary and book?