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

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LOS ANGELES, Wednesday—On Monday I drove over to Ventura right after lunch. It had been planned for me to fly over in the morning but my hostess, Mrs. Alphonso Bell, said she was going to see a niece and that it was a short drive, only a little over an hour. So Mrs. Neil Stiver, who had invited me to lunch, changed her lunch party to a tea party and Miss Corr and I were deposited at the Pierpont Inn in Ventura at 3:45 p.m.

Mrs. Stiver was there ready to drive me to the Ojai Country Club where she was giving her party. I had not seen her since she had been my guide at the training camp for WACs in Des Moines, Iowa, when Mrs. Hobby and I visited it many years ago.

At the club, which is beautifully situated with mountains all around, about a dozen women awaited us for tea and it was a very pleasant party. I was happy to renew this association.

I got back to the inn in time to dress and Miss Corr and I dined with Mr. and Mrs. Joseph D. Hyde.

The meeting was one of their town hall series sponsored by Ventura Junior College. A reception was held afterwards by the local chapter of the American Association for the U.N. in the home of Mr. and Mrs. Applegate. James called for us there and we were back at Mrs. Hershey Martin's house in Los Angeles by 11:30 p.m.

It is challenging to find such good audiences for discussions of international topics. They told me this meeting, which was attended by 1,400 people, was the best they had had and I am always delighted to find that there is so much interest in knowing what the U.N. really does. Perhaps because newspapers in this area carry less about the U.N. than they do in the East, there is even more interest in information obtained in other ways.

Tuesday was a particularly good day for me to be back in Los Angeles because it happened to be the birthday of my grandson, young Jim Roosevelt, and we had a birthday party at Mrs. Hershey Martin's in the afternoon.

Tuesday evening we dined with my daughter, Anna, and her husband, Dr. James Halsted, and Wednesday noon I left Los Angeles and went to Fresno where I spoke in the evening and took the night train back to Los Angeles. There we had breakfast in the station and spent a little time visiting Olvera Street, which is just across the station plaza, before I took the 10 o'clock train to San Diego.

I am deeply disturbed, as many other citizens must be, by the attack on one of our airplanes by the Soviets. It seems incredible that the Soviet Union should fire on one of our ships during peacetime even if it was off its course. We are not at war, and it seems to me there is no excuse for shooting down an airplane which happens to be where it shouldn't be. A communication could be sent to the pilot to warn him that he had gone off his course, but shooting in peacetime is inexcusable and the Soviet Union should be told this in unmistakable terms. I do not agree with Senator Knowland that we should break off diplomatic relations, but we should use those relations to express our feelings not only to the Soviet Union but to the world community in the U.N.

E.R.

(WORLD COPYRIGHT, 1954, BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC. REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART PROHIBITED.)



About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, November 11, 1954

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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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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