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

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HYDE PARK, Sunday—Last Friday was a long day. I started for Philadelphia and, before I reached there, a young reporter boarded the train. I explained to her, as I did to those who met me when I got out at the station, that all I was doing was to meet the President to see him receive a degree and, therefore, was not news for the day.

Colonel Starling had arranged for me to be taken in a car to the Navy Yard and the President had arranged for luncheon in his private car at the station. Mrs. Curtin Winsor and our grandson, Bill Roosevelt, together with Ambassador Bullitt and Ambassador and Mrs. Biddle, joined us. One little remark of Mr. Biddle's illuminated me as to what they had been through.

He said: "I used to pray every morning that I would be so busy until I went to bed at night that I could not stop to think. If you had nothing to do, the sights you saw were too overwhelming."

After lunch we drove to the municipal auditorium and the exercises which closed the Bicentennial Celebration of the University of Pennsylvania were dignified and extremely interesting. Academic robes are so often black that to find two brilliantly colored ones on the platform was a decided novelty.

I enjoyed the band and all the speeches, but at the close I had to make a dash for my train. I stepped into a car and left ahead of the President and soon realized that any car which did not contain him, seemed a disappointment to the crowds. I made my 5:00 o'clock train and was in my apartment in New York City in plenty of time to dress, dine and be at the movie theatre for the opening there of "Pastor Hall."

It seemed strange to see my son's name blinking at me from the front of a Broadway theatre and it seemed even stranger to see myself announced at the beginning of a feature picture. I can't say that I like myself on the screen, but I do hope people will go to see the picture and remember the lesson it carries.

Hate and force cannot be abroad in such a great part of the world without having an effect on the rest of it. Just as this little village was changed by the new spirit which came into it, the world has been changed. If ever we are to win back a world of peace and goodwill, force and hatred must be crushed. It is important for us to see what a system can do to human beings when it brings out all that is worst in them.

E.R.

(COPYRIGHT, 1940, BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE.)


Names and Terms Mentioned or Referenced

Persons
  • Biddle, Anthony Joseph Drexel, 1896-1961 [ index ]
         American diplomat
         [ LC | ISNI | VIAF | Wikidata | SNAC | FAST | ANB ]
  • Biddle, Margaret 1896-1956 [ index ]
         American writer, wife of Anthony J Drexel Biddle Jr
         [ LC | ISNI | VIAF | SNAC ]
  • Bullitt, William C. (William Christian), 1891-1967 [ index ]
         American diplomat
         [ LC | ISNI | VIAF | Wikidata | SNAC | FAST | US Nat. Archives ]
  • Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano), 1882-1945 [ index ]
         American politician; 32nd President of the United States
         [ ERPP bio | LC | ISNI | VIAF | Wikidata | SNAC | FAST | US Nat. Archives | ANB ]
  • Roosevelt, William Donner, 1932-2003 [ index ]
         ER grandschild
         [ ISNI | VIAF ]
  • Starling, Edmund W. (Edmund William), 1875-1944 [ index ]
         Head of Secret Service White House Detail
         [ LC | VIAF | FAST ]
  • Winsor, Elizabeth Browning Donner, 1911-1980 [ index ]
         Spouse of Elliott Roosevelt
Organizations
Geographic
  • Hyde Park (Dutchess County, N.Y., United States) [ index ]
Other Terms and Topics


About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, September 23, 1940

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