John Profumo has died

Ask any American what the major event of 1963 was, and she will say the assassination of John F. Kennedy. And so it was, but for a teenage girl growing up in a part-British household, the John Profumo scandal was certainly a close second. Profumo, Prime Minister Harold Mcmillan's Secretary of State for War, became involved with a call girl, Christine Keeler. Mcmillan was married to British film star Valerie Hobson, so their high profiles would have created scandal, no matter what, once word got out.

But the story was much greater than just that of a highly-ranked politician's cheating on his famous wife. Keeler was also involved in a relationship with a naval attache, Yevgeny Ivanov, who was a Russian spy. The scandal was huge, and Profumo, after lying about his relationship with Keeler (imagine that), resigned. But because of the compromised relationship, Mcmillan lost in the general election the next year.

As a young girl, I was fascinated with the newspapers we received from London. The scandal was front page news all the time, and though I was interested in the spy part of the story, I was, as you can imagine, a lot more interested in the call girl part. No one explained any of it to me, so I was left to conjure up all kinds of sordid images on my own.

Ironically, during this same period, the President of the United States was having one of a gazillion affairs with a woman who was also having an affair with a famous mobster, and who served as a go-between for both men, but that relationship was kept quiet until 1975.

John Profumo's story did not end with his resignation from the Mcmillan cabinet. He felt such profound remorse for what he had done that he dedicated the rest of his life to Toynbee Hall, a charitable settlement in London. He washed dishes and played with the children, raised money, and eventually became chairman and then president of Toynbee.

Before the scandal, most in-the-know British politicians and media personalities assumed that Profumo would one day become Foreign Secretary or Chancellor, but he wound up a dedicated humanitarian. In 1975, Profumo was made a Commander of the British Empire. He remained married to Valerie Hobson until her death in 1998.

Profumo died Thursday at the age of 91. His legacy will be that of a man who made a mistake and then went on to become a symbol of awareness and compassion.