Cline's Sister: Betty Wierengo

Cline had only one sibling, a sister, Elizabeth Forsyth Cline (known in adulthood as Betty), who was born two years before him, on 22 June 1891.  She attended Wellesley College for a year (1909-1910), and the University of Michigan for a year (1911-1912).

Betty Wierengo in 1927

She married John Leslie Wierengo (1886-1945) in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on 29 May 1912.  They settled in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and had three sons. Her husband ran a local advertising firm.

In September 1927 she stood by her brother when he was brought to trial for first degree murder in Connecticut.

She organized the Michigan Unit of the American Cancer Society, and led that group from 1930 to 1941. She held a national post from 1942 to 1952.  Later she became a real estate agent. Betty Wierengo died in Grand Rapids on 1 December 1966.

Cline's Second Wife: Katharine Gridley

Katharine Gridley in 1927

Cline knew Katharine Doolittle Gridley (1895-1947) in the 1910s and early 1920s when he was on the staff of the Detroit News.  Katharine was soon living in New York, with her common-law husband Holger Cahill (1887-1960), but around 1923 they separated and Katherine paired up with Cline. (Cline's first wife divorced him for adultery in 1924.)  Katharine and Leonard were eventually married in Stamford, Connecticut, on 9 November 1926, but their relationship was frequently difficult. After Cline was charged with first degree murder in the shooting death of a friend visiting the Cline house in Willimantic, Connecticut, in the summer of 1927, Katharine deserted Cline and they were divorced in 1928.

Katharine worked as an artist, and as a newspaper illustrator and occasional writer. Cline's first novel, God Head (1925), is dedicated to her, and a sketch of Cline by Katharine (reproduced at right) appears alongside a review by Professor Warren Bower of the University of Michigan of God Head in The Lansing State Journal c. 19 March 1926.

After leaving Cline, Katharine returned to the Detroit area, where many members of her family lived, and in the 1930s she married a man surnamed Brown, but this marriage did not last. Katharine moved back to New York, where on 11 July 1942 she married a man named Daniel McMahon. Katharine was widowed before her death in Detroit at the age of 51 on 17 January 1947.

Cline's First Wife: Louise Smurthwaite

Louise Cline in 1927

Cline's first wife was born Mary Louise Smurthwaite (1893-1980), but she was always known familiarly as Louise. Cline seems to have met her in Ann Arbor, in the early 1910s, when Cline and at least one of Louise's sisters were students at the University of Michigan.  Louise was perhaps a student there as well, but apparently only for a short time (her name does not appear in the contemporary University of Michigan registers). She and Cline were married in her native town of Manistee, Michigan on 28 October 1913.  They had one daughter and one son.

In March 1922 Cline joined the staff of The Baltimore Sun, and the family moved to Maryland. In 1924 Louise divorced Cline on the charge of adultery.  In Baltimore Louise became a radio singer at WBAL, and originated a popular annual Christmas carol program at a local department store. She taught singing at the Peabody Conservatory's Preparatory School for forty-four years.

Hazelton Spencer

She and Cline reconciled in 1928, and they planned to remarry, but Cline died suddenly in January 1929. Around 1932 or 1933, Louise became the second wife of the literary scholar Hazelton Spencer (1893-1944), who had been educated at Boston University (A.B. 1915) and Harvard University (A.M. 1920; Ph.D. 1923). Hazelton began to teach English at Johns Hopkins University in 1927 and became a Professor of English there in 1937. He authored books on Shakespeare, and edited The Selected Poems of Vachel Lindsay (1931) and Elizabethan Plays (1933). 

Louise Spencer died at the age of 87 in Alexandria, Virginia, in May 1980.