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

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PARKERSBURG, W. Va.—I got into New York on time Saturday morning and went at once to have my hair done—one of those feminine necessities that men never understand!

In the afternoon I made a short recording for the Voice of America to greet the city of Djakarta, Indonesia, on its 200th anniversary. I was happy to be able to do this, for I enjoyed so much both of my short stays in Djakarta. Then I did some recordings for Mayor Robert F. Wagner's campaign for Senator and ended up by having 10 people from different parts of our country for dinner.

Sunday was a quiet day until 3 p.m. when two West Point cadets, Mr. Bone and Mr. MacDaniel, called for me with C.R. Smith of American Airlines to fulfill my engagement for a lecture in an extracurricular course run by the cadets themselves in an effort to get a broad view of American public affairs.

My subject was American aid to foreign countries and I tried to cover as many different kinds of aid as possible as well as to give this extremely important group of young men an understanding of the fact that nothing we do today is unrelated to other things.

Aid does not stand by itself. It is part of the defense of our country; it is part of our efforts to make friends in the world and sometimes it is successful or unsuccessful, depending upon the attitude of the people who administer it, who work with the program, or who just happen to be American tourists in the country and talk about it.

So many things are tied together that it is difficult to talk about one subject and not touch upon many others.

I was home by about 10 p.m., giving me time for my travel preparations, since I started for West Virginia Monday morning.

This week I am combining a campaign trip with two lectures to educational associations on completely nonpartisan subjects. I will fly back here for a few hours on Thursday evening but hope to return late Saturday night and have all day Sunday at home.

This, I hope, will give me a chance to see some of my family and friends.

When one is away as much as I am at present, one gets a little lonely for the intimate contacts that are, after all, the important things in everybody's life.

It was interesting to read the news of the rift between Moscow and Belgrade and that Belgrade evidently was not changing its point of view. There seemed to develop immediately some question of other Iron Curtain countries orienting their thinking with that of Yugoslavia.

Every move for greater independence of thought seems important to me, and I think we should be happy when there are signs that less regimentation is going on in the thinking of the world.

E.R.

(Copyright, 1956, by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.)


Names and Terms Mentioned or Referenced

Persons
  • Smith, C. R. (Cyrus Rowlett), 1899-1990 [ index ]
         American businessman and civil servant; CEO of American Airlines from 1934 to 1968 and 1973 to 1974; Secretary of Commerce from 1968 to 1969
         [ LC | ISNI | VIAF | Wikidata | SNAC | FAST ]
Geographic
  • Parkersburg (W. Va, United States) [ index ]
Other Terms and Topics


About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, October 4, 1956

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)
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  • Binker, Mary Jo (Associate Editor)
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  • Alhambra, Christopher C. (Electronic Text Editor)
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Digital edition published 2008, 2017 by
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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.

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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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