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

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CAMPOBELLO, N.B.—Yesterday afternoon the Pontchartrain, a Coast Guard Boat, carrying the Secret Service men suddenly appeared in our Bay and anchored opposite the house. We did not know what boat it was, and as no one put off and came ashore, after the first excitement we paid little attention to it. A little later in the afternoon when Miss Dickerman and I were playing tennis, the Captain came up with one of our Secret Service men to tell us the sad news that they had found Mr. Hollinger of the White House Secret Service dead on calling him that morning. He evidently died in his sleep which is perhaps an easy way to go, but a great shock to his family and to all of us who were really fond of him. Life seems full of the unexpected. Just as you think everything is serene around you it seems to be necessary to remind you that everything is uncertain and that life should always be lived with the feeling that this may be one's last day on earth!

Today Mr. and Mrs. Hopkins and Captain Harrison have gone off with Colonel Fleming to see the Quoddy project. We are wondering if the other boats in the President's party may not appear here today for my husband reached Grand Manan Saturday night, twenty-four hours ahead of his schedule and I can not imagine that they will spend more than a day over there so we are hoping that they will get here a little ahead of time.

We usually have one big picnic when my husband is here down on the beach, so everyone is busy preparing for that event and hoping that the good weather will hold. They tell me they have had a great deal of fog and rain this year with only occasionally sunny weather. I know that it seems to me far colder than it did last year and I can not imagine really being comfortable in a thin dress. All of us have worn sweaters since we arrived and had a fire going every evening and most of the day when it was rainy.

The mail still takes up much of my time but I finished "The Last Puritan" the other evening and I did feel that I was saying goodbye to some one I had grown to know quite well. There is all together too much concentration on himself in Oliver's makeup. He was a fine character but missed, I think, the greatest fineness which is the ability to minimize your own importance even to yourself.

E.R.


Names and Terms Mentioned or Referenced

Persons
Geographic
  • Campobello Island (N.B., Canada) [ index ]


About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, July 28, 1936

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

  • Brick, Christopher (Editor)
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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.

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Transcription created from a photocopy of a draft version of a My Day column instance archived at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library. My Day column draft dated July 27, 1936, FDR Library, Hyde Park, NY
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