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

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HYDE PARK, Tuesday—I have a letter today from a man who tells me he has spent nearly two years in the hospital. He has been regaining his strength, however, even though he is over 65, because he has been willing to accept work which is not the kind of highly paid job which he had in the past, but is work which interests him and is connected with the sea which he has been navigating all his life.

The Seamen's Church Institute of New York at 25 South Street is establishing a public marine museum. They learned that the Museum of the City of New York on upper Park Avenue could not display many shipmodels which they owned because of lack of space, and so the Seamen's Church Institute has allotted a quarter of the second floor of its large building to display these models as a start, and they will go on adding to these models.

My correspondent, Mr. R.E. Cropley, is spending most of his time finding models which, for lack of space, have been stored away by different shipping lines and museums. Sailors Snug Harbor unearthed a few. They are also exhibiting pictures of old clipper ships and famous sea battles. The Smithsonian Institutione in Washington and the Mariner's Museum at Newport News, Virginia, are going to put on indefinite loan models and pictures of which they have duplicates.

The American Merchant Marine Institute, it is hoped, will help to acquire models of tankers, freighters, and passenger liners as well as tugs, ferries, harbor craft, Hudson River and Long Island Sound boats, fishing boats, etc. If anyone knows where models are stored on piers, or in the public or private attics or cellars, it would be greatly appreciated if they would inform Captain R.E. Cropley, librarian and assistant curator of the marine museum in Seamen's Institute of New York.

This building is open to visitors week days from nine to five and it is hoped that buses with tourists and particularly those who are taking children on visits around New York City will bring them here to become acquainted with the ships that have sailed the oceans and meant so much, not only to the defense of the United States, but to its development as a great nation in trade and intercourse with the world as a whole.

I have been asked by the Greek Ambassador to tell my readers that the American National Red Cross has graciously offered to launch a nationwide fund raising campaign for the benefit of the earthquake victims in the Ionian Islands. Support has been pledged to this campaign by Mr. Spyros Skouras and other prominent Greek and American individuals, as well as by many organizations. I feel sure that there is no one in this country who will not want to help these poor people who could not possibly have done anything to prevent the disaster which has fallen upon them and who must need every aid, for they have lost their homes and in many cases all their possessions.

If any of you ever read the I.B.M. Magazine with the startling title, "Think," I hope you saw in the May, 1953, edition a story by Dorothy Thomas about a letter written by a group of children. This letter was addressed to Ambassador Warren Austin, who at the time he received it had considerable publicity as our representative in the U.N. For some reason, the end of the letter was left off and I always thought that was particularly nice. These children told Ambassador Austin that they did not want war and one of their remedies was "to be very kind" and they asked a question that many people ask, "Why don't they love one another?" And then they signed themselves, "We love you, kindergarten playmates." Not such a bad lesson to grown-ups!

E.R.

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


Names and Terms Mentioned or Referenced

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


About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, September 2, 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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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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