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

[This column has emendations. View original version]

      

HYDE PARK—On Tuesday evening I attended a dinner given by the Edward Bok American Foundation to present a newly finished work—a two-volume report that covers all phases of medicine and the impact of biology, physics, chemistry, atomic energy and mathematics on medical advance. The survey, which has taken many years of preparation, was put together by Miss Esther Lape, the director of the studies on the present situation of medical research.

Miss Lape was assisted by a group of 26 medical consultants, and many of them were in attendance at the dinner, as well as a number of science writers from newspapers and magazines. The dinner was presided over by Judge Curtis Bok, son of the late Edward Bok.

Chairman of the dinner committee was Mrs. Frank A. Vanderlip, and I think Mrs. Vanderlip, Mrs. Ogden Reid and myself were the three people present who had served on the board from the very earliest days. It was a most interesting dinner, though I will have to confess that being ignorant of much of the vocabulary of science I was not quite sure that I understood everything that was said in the many speeches.

Professor F.O. Schmitt of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, however, did talk so plainly that even I could understand what macromolecules were!

On Wednesday morning I left on an early plane for Syracuse and hoped to spend two hours with my daughter before going to the lunch given by the National Council of Jewish Women to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the United Nations. Wednesday morning, however, turned out to be not only rainy but somewhat foggy and quite rough for flying. As a result, we were three-quarters of an hour late in reaching Syracuse.

I dashed home with Anna to find her husband, Dr. James Halsted, waiting for us and I had the fun of seeing the apartment they are living in temporarily on the grounds of the Veterans Hospital.

I also saw the office where Anna works nearby and had a glimpse of the Veterans Hospital where Jim's office is. So now I can picture in my mind's eye where they carry on their daily life and can even know how their dog behaves. Their dog does not like apartment life, so he spends a good deal of his time in the car going wherever they are going and simply waiting curled up in the car while they are out.

By 12:15 I was down at the Onondaga Hotel and there we went through the routine of press conference and recorded interview, etc. I had a short chat with the heads of our AAUN chapter and then went down to the lunch.

By 3:30 Mr. and Mrs. Bernard Carp, who had kindly volunteered to motor me to Ithaca, had me in their car and we started. They had a boy in Cornell who when he was in school belonged to the Watermargin Club. This is the organization at Cornell before which I spoke five years ago, when it had only been going a very short time. It is a group that does not exclude anyone from membership because of race, color or creed and it does an excellent job of carrying on an educational program.

Wednesday night the Watermargin held a meeting at which I spoke and Bailey Hall was filled to overflowing. My subject was the United Nations and the underdeveloped areas of the world.

Cornell has a number of foreign students and at the reception after the meeting at the Watermargin clubhouse I had the pleasure of meeting a good many of those who are here from foreign countries.

The chef had remembered my last visit and came out to shake my hand warmly, which made me feel most welcome. The boys could not have been better or kinder hosts.

E.R.

(Copyright, 1955, by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.)


Names and Terms Mentioned or Referenced

Persons
Organizations
Geographic
  • Hyde Park (Dutchess County, N.Y., United States) [ index ]


About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, November 19, 1955

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