A Union of Families, Politics and Society

We are a nation without nobility, but we have frequent political dynasties, great families that marry great families to produce important American clans. The Adamses, the Roosevelts, the Kennedys, the Bushes.

In love, as in politics, the name counts for a lot.

A 'Victorian' Upbringing

The groom-to-be's parents met through friends at a country club in Richmond.

It was 1970. She was somebody and he was going places, and they married within six months of their first date.

Even now, the language people use to describe Maggie Hager comes from another era. They call her "courtly" and a "gentlelady." Maggie had been raised in Richmond and New York. Her mother belonged to the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America, and her father was said to be related to former chief justice Salmon P. Chase.

A family friend, Marie Louise "Pie" Friendly, recalls Maggie and her sister dressed by their mother in organza with satin sashes. They had a German governess and a strict "Victorian" upbringing, Friendly says.

Richmond during mid-century was "arch-conservative, at least the West End where we grew up," Friendly says. "We didn't know people who went to public school. It was awful -- there was the Country Club of Virginia and that was it."

John Hager was tall and hardworking. He and his older sister had grown up in Durham, N.C. His mother was involved with the city's Debutante Ball Society, the country club and the garden club, according to her obituary. John's father, like John's uncle and grandfather, was an executive at the now-defunct American Tobacco Co., maker of Pall Malls and Lucky Strikes. After Purdue and an MBA at Harvard, John joined the company, too.

Then John got the flu, which turned out not to be the flu at all. It was instead a rare case of polio in 1973, contracted from an excessively virulent dose of the vaccine with which his first child, Jack, then an infant, had been inoculated. Even now he uses a wheelchair.

The company rescinded a promotion he'd just gotten to executive vice president. John stayed on in lesser positions until he retired in 1994.

With his newfound time, he took an increasing interest in politics. His son Henry would be at his side in his unsuccessful race for governor.

Quiet Influence

During an era when the name Trump has become synonymous with money and power, it's easy to forget that you don't need your name on a building or on a bottle of vodka to be influential. And while Trump's standing depends on his wealth and celebrity, there are people whose standing depends on neither, but on who they are, who their people are, and the role they occupy in their community.