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

      

NEW YORK, Wednesday—Yesterday was a beautiful day at Hyde Park and a great number of friends gathered for the memorial services.

There was a wreath from the people of France, sent up by the French Gratitude Train, which Drew Pearson placed on my husband's grave at the same time as the wreath from the board of the Memorial Foundation. There were other wreaths as well and there were representatives present from many groups and societies. Later in the day the Liberian delegation to the United Nations brought a wreath and placed it on the grave.

The promise of growing things everywhere spoke of ever-recurring life. I was happy to have so many of my family here, as not only Elliott and Faye could be with me, but Johnny and Anne, and Franklin, Jr., were able to come up for the day.

On this fourth anniversary of President Truman's acceptance of the responsibility of the Presidential office, I am sure all the citizens of our country will join with me in wishing him strength and health and vision and courage through the coming years.

His confidence that in two years' time we may hope to feel assured of world peace is certainly something I am very glad to hear. I hope ways may be found to bring us that security even sooner, for I cannot believe that sensible peoples—no matter where they are in the world—really want to continue this jittery performance of suspicion which may lead to war.

It seems rather amusing that one of the first moves to help get the President's program under way has come from five Republican Senators. They seem anxious to have the Displaced Persons Act liberalized.

Whether it will make the Democrats happy to know that Senator Pat McCarran, of Nevada, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has a letter from the Republican members "respectfully urging" that he go forward with his long pending bipartisan amendments to the law is a moot question. Nevertheless, those of us who want to see something done about the law cannot help being glad to have this unforeseen aid. I keep getting the most heartbreaking letters from people in Europe, good people, who are so anxious to start life anew and who probably would make a great effort to make good if once they could get permission to reach this country and settle down.

One of the things that would seem to require really rapid action is finding a way to fulfill the desires of people who wish to adopt war orphans. One very fine letter came to me a short time ago from a mother whose boy had died and who made up her mind that she would take some child from overseas whom the war had left without parents and give him a home. She feels that in this way she could ease her own pain through watching an adopted youngster's happiness. She is ready right now to accept a child, but she is facing endless months of waiting before it can be accomplished.

I have letters very often asking me whether people can bring over the children of relatives, whom they are willing to adopt, in the cases where the children's own parents are unable to keep them and give them the opportunities they would have here. Children should not be made to wait if we can do anything to prevent it.

E. R.

(WORLD COPYRIGHT, 1949, BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC., REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART PROHIBITED.)


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, April 14, 1949

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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