The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Digital Edition > My Day
My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt

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This was a varied morning! After the usual routine, I started with appointments at 11:30. First of all Mrs. Luther A. Johnson, wife of a Congressman from Texas, came in to see me about the possibility of establishing in the schools here a Stephen Foster Music Week. She had inaugurated one with great success in her own hometown and told me how very much interested all the children were. Stephen Foster has written songs which nearly all children, as well as grown-ups in this country know. "Way Down Upon the Swanee River," and "Old Black Joe" and many others are known the world over. Memorials have been erected to him but Mrs. Johnson would like to see a memorial in Washington to help the young and struggling musicians. I do not know, of course, how her plans will work out and suggested that she see the District Commissioners and the school authorities but one can not help being sympathetic to a memorial of this kind. I always wonder that more people haven't the impetus to create a memorial that will benefit the living.

Close upon her heels came Mr. A. L. Runyan with the machine which he has spent ten years working on, called the Translaphon. He told me the same story that nearly all inventors tell of years when no one would listen to him and finally the demonstration which brought him the interest of his audience. This machine will be a marvelous assistance to home education and is being tried out in schools and universities. He has given one to the White House. I only wish I had the time to start at once to learn a foreign language with its aid.

After this demonstration came Congressman White of Idaho to tell me of some wonderful pictures taken by Mr. Williams and which they would like to show the President. After that came Mrs. Martin, from Oklahoma, the Democratic Vice-Chairman of the State Committee just to shake me by the hand, which was lucky, otherwise I should have been very late for lunch.

E.R.


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, February 12, 1936

Roosevelt, Eleanor, 1884-1962
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Digital edition created by The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project The George Washington University 312 Academic Building 2100 Foxhall Road, NW Washington, DC 20007

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Available under licence from the Estate of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt.

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MEP edition publlished on June 30, 2008.

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Transcription created from a photocopy of a draft version of a My Day column instance archived at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library. My Day column draft dated February 11, 1936, FDR Library, Hyde Park, NY
TMsd, 11 February 1936, AERP, FDRL