Nina Auchincloss Straight

Nina Gore Auchincloss Straight (formerly Steers, born January 10, 1937) is an American author, journalist, and socialite. She is the mother of writer/director Burr Steers and artist Hugh Auchincloss Steers, half-sister of Gore Vidal, step-sister of First Lady Jacqueline Onassis and socialite Princess Lee Radziwill. Early life Nina Gore Auchincloss was born in 1937 to Hugh Dudley Auchincloss, Jr. (1897–1976) and Nina (née Gore) Auchincloss (1903–1978). Her father was an American stockbroker and lawyer, and a cousin of the novelist and lawyer, Louis Auchincloss. Her father had previously been married to Maya de Chrapovitsky, a Russian noblewoman with whom he had one son, Hugh Dudley Auchincloss III. Her mother had previously been married to Eugene Luther Vidal, a commercial aviation pioneer, with whom she also had one son, the writer Gore Vidal. Hugh and Nina had married in 1935 and besides young Nina, the marriage produced one additional child, Thomas Gore Auchincloss. Young Nina's parents divorced in 1941, and a year later, Hugh remarried for the third and final time to Janet Lee Bouvier, in 1942. Janet was the mother of future First Lady Jacqueline Lee Bouvier and Caroline Lee Bouvier. Nina's father had two more children with Janet, half-siblings to young Nina, Janet Jennings Auchincloss and James Lee Auchincloss. Hugh and Janet remained married until his death in 1976. Also in 1942, Nina's mother remarried for the third and final time to Robert Olds, but only remained married a short time until Robert's early death of pneumonia in 1943, after hospitalization for constrictive pericarditis and Libman-Sacks endocarditis, at the age of 46, just prior to his son Robin Olds' graduation from West Point. Nina's paternal grandparents were Hugh Dudley Auchincloss, Sr., a merchant and financier, and Emma Brewster (née Jennings) Auchincloss, the daughter of Oliver Burr Jennings, one of the original stockholders in Standard Oil. Her maternal grandparents were U.S. Senator Thomas Gore and his wife Nina Belle (née Kay) Gore. Debutante In 1955, Auchincloss made her debut at a formal ball given by her father and stepmother Janet (who lived in McLean, Virginia), at their summer home, Hammersmith Farm in Newport, Rhode Island. The ball was attended by over 700 guests. In 1957, she inherited a $225,000 trust.