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

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BOSTON, Wednesday—On Monday when I drove to New York City, I went directly to the Statue of Liberty in Times Square, where the motion picture industry was staging a gala demonstration for the opening of the Victory Loan Drive. Mr. Harry Brandt has promised Secretary Vinson that in this drive the motion picture industry will go over the top more gloriously than ever before, and they certainly gathered a big crowd for their opening on Monday.

A galaxy of entertainers from stage and screen trouped up to the platform and sang their songs or said their say to encourage the sale of bonds. I was a little appalled when Mr. Brandt handed me from one of his companies a check for $100,000, representing the bonds which they wanted to buy, and I returned it as quickly as possible so it would be transformed into bonds.

* * *

One of the young cowboys present stopped for a minute to tell me that the last time we had met was on Efate. That was an island in the Pacific where we had some very large hospitals; and at that time none of us dared mention that we had been there, because it had never been bombed and our high command hoped that the Japanese would continue to be oblivious of our occupation of the island. Our engineers had done a remarkable job of controlling the mosquitoes, and malaria had been reduced to almost nothing. But entertainers who went there were welcomed with great enthusiasm, for one can get desperately tired of lying in bed, looking out at the luxurious jungle growth and perhaps a little patch of blue sea or sky.

Next to me sat a major from the Medical Corps who had been taken prisoner at Bataan, and I wondered again how these men who have been through so much can be so generous with their assistance in the bond selling campaign. One would think they would feel that we were the ones to do this work, and that they had earned the right to take a rest.

* * *

Yesterday I took the one o'clock train to Providence to speak at a Girl Scout banquet in Fall River, Mass., in the evening. It was really very tantalizing, because my daughter and her husband wired me just the latter part of last week that they would arrive here by air on Tuesday afternoon, and I missed them by a few hours! I would have loved to greet them at the airport and take them home; but the Fall River engagement and today's engagements in Boston were made long ago and I have no right to break them, since I hope my daughter and her husband will remain East for several days. I shall be glad to get home tonight and find them in my apartment.

E. R.

(COPYRIGHT 1945 BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC.)


Names and Terms Mentioned or Referenced

Persons
  • Boettiger, John, 1900-1950 [ index ]
         American psychology professor; grandson of Eleanor Roosevelt
         [ LC | VIAF | Wikidata | SNAC ]
  • Brandt, Harry N., 1897-1972 [ index ]
         American businessman; active in Democratic Party; owner of New York City area theaters
         [ NYT ]
  • Roosevelt, Anna, 1906-1975 [ index ]
         American writer and newspaper editor; ER's and FDR's daugher
         [ ERPP bio | LC | ISNI | VIAF | Wikidata | SNAC | FAST | US Nat. Archives ]
  • Vinson, Fred M., 1890-1953 [ index ]
         American politician; Chief Justice of the U.S. (1946-1953); U.S. Secretary of the Treasury (1945-1946)
         [ LC | ISNI | VIAF | Wikidata | SNAC | FAST | US Nat. Archives | ANB ]
Organizations
Geographic
  • Boston (Mass., United States) [ index ]
Other Terms and Topics


About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, November 1, 1945

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.
TMs, AERP, FDRL