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

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WASHINGTON, Thursday—Yesterday the Cabinet ladies and I had the pleasure of giving our annual picnic lunch for the ladies of the Senate. It turned out that rationing provided us with a rather more nutritive lunch, if not such a varied and attractive one as we formerly had.

Tomorrow, May the 21st, is the 62nd anniversary of the founding of the American Red Cross. How grateful the world is for the good which this organization has been able to accomplish in alleviating suffering. It receives from us all our wholehearted support and cooperation, and will continue to do so as long as there is pity for human suffering and determination on the part of human beings to help each other.

I want to share with you today two letters which I have received. One, because it shows the spirit of our own boys and must bring happiness to the people who run the Greer School, near Hyde Park, in which I have long been interested. This is an institution where youngsters, who have had a hard time, receive some real training. It has sent some 107 boys and girls into the armed forces and the letters come back from all over the world. I want to quote from one:

"While it may not be an easy life I have now, it is a good one because I hope and think I am doing my part, though it is small, to keep places like Greer School going in the American way. I may not get back, but that is incidental ... for through my small sacrifice I give others life and freedom. Eugene 'Bosco' O'Rourke."

The second letter comes to me from Great Britain and also shows the spirit of our boys. I quote it in part:

"The voyage had been a hazardous one, and it sometimes seems to me as if men try to drown remembrance of peril and hardship by indulgence in many grave temptations which beset them when they reach port. But this American crew had one common impulse, to worship God Easter Sunday.

"When speaking of this experience, my son said that among the strange and wonderful happenings he had seen, and of which he had heard in his work, this was the most wonderful. Not only did they ask for directions, but as many as could, accepted it, some of them going to the missions chapel, other farther afield."

E.R.

(COPYRIGHT, 1943, BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC,)


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, May 21, 1943

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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