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

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NEW YORK, Sunday—Saturday noon I left New York City to go to Andover, Mass. I spent the night at the Andover Inn, and went over to Lawrence to speak to the International Institute. On Sunday I had the pleasure of having my grandson, Elliott, Junior, and a friend of his spend a few hours with me and enjoy a meal away from school.

I am sure all of my readers have been hearing of late, as I have, about a possible shortage of doctors. The problem is discussed in a report issued by the President's Commission on the Health Needs of the Nation. The report says: "We seek the expansion of our educational system so that an adequate number of physicians and all other needed personnel will be trained, with every qualified boy and girl having equal opportunity to enter the professions. We favor continued research into health problems, including the training of an adequate number of scientific workers and providing them with facilities to carry out their work."

One of the things which has always troubled me greatly is the fact that it is so often impossible to find a place for a boy to study medicine in this country. As you may know, New York City is about to build its first medical school in 54 years; this is one of the three new schools to be projected in the entire country in the last 25 years. The new college of medicine is sponsored by Yeshiva University, and though it is a Jewish university admission is on non-sectarian lines. No one attending is asked his race, color or creed. This will give to many young people hitherto unable to achieve their goal of a medical education a chance for which they have long striven, sometimes even in far-distant countries.

The American Red Cross fund drive begins on March 1, and I think we need to be reminded that the Red Cross serves the needs of people every day. It is not just an organization for meeting disaster or war situations. It is constantly being called upon to do things right here and now.

For instance, the Brooklyn chapter of the Red Cross sent me a story the other day about an incident which took place on Friday, January 30, which is my husband's birthday. At 4:30 in the afternoon, the telephone rang in the Red Cross field director's office at the New York Port of Embarkation. Camp Kilmer was calling, relaying a wire from the Red Cross chapter in Newport, Arkansas, concerning a soldier whose wife was critically ill after losing her baby. The sergeant was already on board a ship which had left port, but the Red Cross, acting as liaison between the Army and Navy, arranged for the ship to turn around and drop the man off at Ambrose Light. At 1 a.m. he landed at a Brooklyn pier. The Red Cross met him with his airplane ticket and arranged for his transportation to Idlewild Airport. At 6 he was on his way to his wife. Only the Red Cross could have brought about such a happy solution in such difficult circumstances.

E. R.

(WORLD COPYRIGHT, 1953, BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC.; REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART PROHIBITED.)


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, February 9, 1953

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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Digital edition published 2008, 2017 by
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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 UFS wire copy of a My Day column instance archived at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library.
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