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

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NEW YORK , Sunday—The concert given by the Greenwich House Music School on Friday night in New York City, was delightful. Mr. Frank Gullino, who has just signed a contract with the Philharmonic Orchestra and is one of the pupils of the school, played his violin in a masterly fashion.

Another young pupil composer, Mr. Gettel, an Army sergeant, was given leave from camp to conduct his own composition, so there was a touch of the war brought close to this entertainment.

In a large part yesterday, I did personal things, but I talked for a little while with Miss Viola Ilma, of the Young Men's Vocational Foundation. First we discussed the growing difficulty of raising funds to help boys coming out of reform schools to get jobs. Then we talked over the difficulties of their adjustment to the wartime atmosphere. Finally, we went over the fact that those who go into the Army, Navy and Marine Corps are happy and entirely content, missing only one thing—mail and packages from home.

So many reform school boys originally go wrong because of broken homes, or the death of parents, so it is not surprising to find that one boy in the Army writes to Miss Ilma: "I don't get any mail, but sometimes the other boys let me read theirs, and that feels good."

These boys with records cannot get into war industries. The records come up time after time when they are looking for jobs. Yet the only way to keep them from going back to the lives which put them into reform schools originally, is to get them jobs and keep them in them.

I have just been reading of an effort which is being made by a small group of Swedish-Americans to help raise funds for "Wings Over Norway, Inc." For years the Scandinavian countries have been admired so much here because of their accomplishments in science, art and social reform.

These countries—Finland, Norway, Denmark—are now under the heel of the conqueror. The Scandinavians in this country want to join together to assist their compatriots here who are still fighting for the United Nations.

Under Title Two of the Second War Powers Act, the secretary of the treasury may receive gifts for certain purposes, and so he has given permission to this group to raise funds to be turned over to him as a gift to the United States, earmarked to the Lend-Lease Administration, through which planes may be obtained and delivered to "Camp Little Norway" and other camps in Canada where Norwegians are in training.

E.R.

(COPYRIGHT, 1942, BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC.)


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, May 11, 1942

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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MEP edition publlished on June 30, 2008.

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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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