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

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WASHINGTON, Monday—When I drove past the Lincoln Memorial yesterday, I noticed model boats were being sailed in the reflecting pool. Some enterprising owners had put a deep red sail and a blue one on their boats, which reminded me of the sailboats in the Adriatic. As a nation, we are really getting more of an eye for color. I hope our enjoyment will increase, for on gray days such as we have in November, it is really a great thing to see splotches of color in the landscape.

I had a very young and somewhat distant cousin, Miss Catherine Davis, to lunch yesterday. She is down here working in the Agricultural Department. A graduate of Bennington College, she is with Senator Davenport's group of young people who enter the government service for a period of practical experience. She brought a friend, Miss Gretchen Ahlswede, who is working in the Department of Commerce personnel office. Both of them seemed interested in their Washington life and I hope to see more of them during the winter.

A daughter of a friend in Poughkeepsie, Miss Catherine Conger, who is attending Catholic University, also came to lunch. We took a sightseeing trip around the second floor of the White House after lunch.

Two of my old League of Women Voters friends, Miss Marguerite Wells, national President, and Mrs. George Gellhorn of St. Louis, Mo., also came to lunch. I think they would have liked to annex, for League of Women Voters work, all the young people at the table. I like this attitude of wanting to draw in the young people, for I have a feeling that many organizations fail in vitalizing their work, because they are not willing to give young people enough responsibility to make the work interesting. That is why we find so many organizations filled predominately with older men and women, when, in order to continue the work, new blood must come in.

I am leaving here for New York City this afternoon, to fill a number of engagements in the next two days.

E.R.

(COPYRIGHT, 1939, BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC.)


Names and Terms Mentioned or Referenced

Persons
  • Garnett, Gretchen Ahlswede, 1917-2007 [ index ]
         American civil servant
         [ Other source ]
  • Gellhorn, Edna Fischel, 1878-1970 [ index ]
         American suffragist and civic worker; director of the National American Woman Suffrage Association
         [ LC | ISNI | VIAF | Wikidata | SNAC | FAST ]
  • Hayes, Catherine Conger, 1919-2009 [ index ]
         [ Other source ]
  • Stonington, Catherine Livingston Davis, 1917-1983 [ index ]
         American civil servant; ER's distant cousin from the Livingston family
         [ Other source ]
  • Wells, Marguerite M. (Marguerite Milton), 1872-1959 [ index ]
         American civic leader; President of the the League of Women Voters
         [ LC | VIAF | Wikidata | SNAC | FAST | ANB ]
Organizations
Geographic
  • Washington (D.C., United States) [ index ]


About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, November 28, 1939

Roosevelt, Eleanor, 1884-1962
[ ERPP bio | LC | VIAF | WorldCat | DPLA | Wikidata | SNAC ]

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

  • Brick, Christopher (Editor)
    [ VIAF | ORCID ]
  • Regenhardt, Christy (Associate Editor)
    [ ISNI ]
  • Black, Allida M. (Editor)
    [ VIAF | ISNI ]
  • Binker, Mary Jo (Associate Editor)
    [ VIAF | ORCID ]
  • Alhambra, Christopher C. (Electronic Text Editor)
    [ VIAF | ORCID ]

Digital edition published 2008, 2017 by
The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project

Available under licence from the Estate of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt.

Published with permission from the Estate of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt.

MEP edition publlished on June 30, 2008.

TEI-P5 edition published on April 28, 2017.

XML master last modified on May 2, 2022.

HTML version generated and published on May 3, 2022.

Transcription created from a photocopy of a UFS wire copy of a My Day column instance archived at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library.
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