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

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LOS ANGELES—On Saturday I found myself in Los Angeles after a jet trip that was smooth and uneventful—after we once got started! After taxing out to the starting point at Idlewild Airport we found that some slight mechanical trouble caused us to return to the ramp and then we were asked to keep our seats in the plane.

I sat for two hours, but I didn't mind because I was reading page proofs of a book that will be published, I think, next month. I don't know the exact release date but I think it is generally known that Eddie Cantor has written another book, and I am probably not doing anything wrong when I tell you that except for a few pages I read the whole book in my way out here. You will like it, too, I think.

I arrived in Los Angeles at 5 o'clock in the afternoon, but for me it was already 8 p.m. Then I went to a fund-raising dinner at 10 p.m. my time, and finally to bed at 1:30 a.m.

I flew out here in the interest of the new cancer research laboratory that is to be built in connection with the American Medical Center at Denver. This hospital has always taken patients of every denomination and race, and since it doesn't have as many tuberculosis patients now it is taking cancer patients. The new laboratory will use this hospital in connection with its research and it will be connected with the University of Colorado.

It is good to have a research institute in this area of the country, and I am sure that when the building is finished it will attract an outstanding faculty. My hope is that it will be a factor in the final discovery of a cure for this disease that takes such a heavy toll of so many grownups and now also is taking a toll among so many children every year.

Every time we establish private facilities for research, I feel that the government—state and Federal—should feel a greater obligation to contribute to the running of these institutions and, when necessary, even to help in expansion.

Reaearch in every field is one of the areas in which our Soviet adversaries seem to be more aware of the need and the value than we ourselves are. In forestry alone, the Soviet Union has, I believe, at least 10 institutions of research, and, in the medical field, I have been through quite a number in Moscow and Leningrad. And they probably are increasing throughout the nation.

The Soviet laboratories are not perhaps quite as good as ours, but the consciousness on the part of the government of the value of research is perhaps keener than we find it, as a rule, in either administration circles or among Congressional members in our country.

I spent the night here with my friends, Mr. and Mrs. Hershey Martin and their two daughters, and I haven't found anyone who seems lacking in interest in the talks just concluded between President Eisenhower and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.

As everyone knows, the official welcome to Mr. Khrushchev here was not exactly a warm one, but they must have recognized the force of his personality before he left. The people of Los Angeles must not forget that to create an atmosphere for better negotiations, which the President eventually hopes for, is through friendly discussion and not through antagonism.

E.R.

(Copyright, 1959, by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.)


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  • Los Angeles (Calif., United States) [ index ]


About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, September 29, 1959

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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