Una delle donne più ricche d'America all'inizio del XX secolo, Dorothy era una filantropa e attivista sociale che sosteneva i sindacati delle donne e le organizzazioni educative e caritatevoli come la Junior League. Divenne la prima presidentessa dell'Associazione delle Juniores Leagues International nel 1921. Insieme al marito, fondò il settimanale The New Republic e la New School for Social Research[4].
Era una benefattrice delle cause artistiche, femministe e pacifiste, nonché delle riforme sociali e del lavoro. Ha prestato sostegno finanziario all'educazione alternativa progressiva più la ricerca accademica. Nel 1937, creò la William C. Whitney Foundation in onore di suo padre[4].
Michael Whitney Straight (1916-2004), sposò in prime nozze Belinda Crompton, in seconde nozze Nina Gore Auchincloss, e in terze nozze Katharine Gould[9].
^ Newspaper Enterprise Association, The World Almanac & Book of Facts, Newspaper Enterprise Association, 1914, p. 662. URL consultato il 15 luglio 2014.
«Willard D.Straight, the handsome young American diplomat who has had a career in the Far East that Midas himself might have envied, who has, within the past year, obtained millions for the houses of Morgan and Rockefeller, is now, for the first time in his eventful life, on the fair road to fortune in his own right.»
«Michael Straight, who has died aged 87, was the former Soviet spy responsible for telling MI5 that Anthony Blunt — whose lover he had briefly been at Cambridge in the 1930s — was a mole.»
«Mrs. Dorothy Payne Whitney Elmhirst, the former Mrs. Willard Straight, renounced her United States citizenship yesterday in an affidavit filed with Federal Judge William Bondy.»
«London, Dec. 15—Mrs. Dorothy Payne Whitney Straight Elmhirst, philanthropist, pioneer in progressive education and suffragist, died last night at Dartington Hall near ...»
Bibliografia
Anonymous, Dartington, Webber & Bower, 1982
Young, Michael, The Elmhirsts of Dartington, The Creation of a Utopian Community, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982