Updated

Curtis Roosevelt, who lived in the White House as a child when his grandfather was president and worked for two decades at the United Nations, has died at 86.

The oldest grandchild of Franklin D. and Eleanor Roosevelt died of a heart attack in Saint-Bonnet-du-Gard in southern France on Sep. 26, according to his sister, Anna Eleanor Seagraves, of Bethesda, Maryland.

Born in 1930, Curtis Roosevelt worked as an educator and political reformer in New York. As a diplomat at the U.N. from 1964 to 1983 he notably served as chief liaison with nongovernmental organizations.

Roosevelt didn't want a funeral service, but asked his friends and loved ones to "get together and have a good time, with wine and cheese," his widow Marina Roosevelt said Saturday from their French home.