Though he was raised in a castle befitting a king, Sir Winston Churchill’s connections to America began before he was born. His mother, Jennie Jerome, was born in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. In a whirlwind romance, she met Lord Randolf Churchill and did what young lovers have done from time immemorial: they married against their parents' wishes.
Not long after, the Brooklyn-born beauty would move to Blenheim Palace in England and give birth to the first of her two sons, Winston. That American connection would continue throughout Churchill’s life. He crossed the ocean a remarkable 16 times—beginning in 1895 with a stop in New York City on his way to Cuba.
His final visit to America came 66 years later—in New York City in 1961. Americans have claimed Churchill as one of our own ever since his heroics helped save Europe from Nazi peril in World War II. And it is why the International Churchill Society is throwing a party in Philadelphia this week to pay tribute to the unique and historic relationship between the “The Old Lion” and the young republic that was his second home.
Though Churchill traveled to America as a soldier, a tourist, an author, a lecturer and even a prophet (his 1946 Iron Curtain speech in Fulton, Missouri), it was his winter visit to America in 1941 as a wartime leader that was his most important. The story of that visit—and the historic speech he delivered to a joint session of Congress the day after Christmas—revealed Churchill's status not just as a statesman but as a salesman, too. The day after the December 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Churchill, who had just turned 67, packed his bags and headed for America on the most important trip of his life.
"With the fall of France, Britain stood alone, decisively inferior in military power to the Nazis," said Larry Arnn, the president of Hillsdale College and author of Churchill's Trial. "The only thing that could save it was the English Channel—and entry into the war by the United States." Few understood that stark reality better than Churchill. It’s why the prime minister was on a boat crossing the Atlantic just one day after Pearl Harbor.
It was a 10-day trip through cold, storm-tossed seas. And a dangerous trip, too: German U-boats filled the Atlantic. There were serious concerns about Churchill's safety, but he wasn't deterred.
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