Oppenheimer’s Daughter
Toni Oppenheimer, born in 1944, suffered polio as a child. To help her health, the family started travelling to the Virgin Islands. Like her brother, she didn’t have a good relationship with her mother because of Kitty’s alcohol abuse. Unlike her brother, she went to college, earning her degree at Oberlin. While her relationship with Kitty was difficult, Robert seems to have had a loving bond with his children. His death in 1967 affected Toni deeply.
In 1969, she applied to be a translator for the United Nations – but in shades of her father’s conflict, she was denied security clearance. This, coming so soon after her father’s death and two divorces, left Toni despondent. She moved back to the family cottage in St. Johns where she lived a solitary life. Ultimately her unusual life took its toll and she died by her own hand in 1977.
