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

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HYDE PARK, Sunday—The country looks very lovely, but we went so long without rain that I am afraid the strawberries throughout our vicinity are a very poor crop this year. Everything looks nice in the garden, however, and we have now had several showers. Having quite a number of children here over the weekend is keeping us all very busy.

I still find myself thinking of that extraordinary feat performed by our air force when it again bombed Japan. When I read about Superfortresses and new weapons such as the Germans are now using, I find myself taking it for granted and fully expecting every day to hear of some new and horrible discovery for the destruction of human beings. If, however, they hasten the end of the war, I shall rejoice and then I hope we turn them all to constructive peacetime uses.

Friday afternoon I went up to Mrs. Herbert E. Saulpaugh's home in upper Red Hook, N.Y. for a meeting of the members of the Germantown and Red Hook Garden Clubs and the Red Hook Historical Society. The rooms were crowded and I was worried when I arrived because I thought I was late.

Fortunately, my hostess informed us she had asked her guests to come early so as to have them seated before I came. Most of the women present had sons or husbands or brothers in the war somewhere. One woman said, "I am going home now that I have heard about the Southwest Pacific and I will write to my marine son who is still down in the Solomons." Another one said, "My son has been two years and a half in New Guinea, but we are expecting him home any minute." I could see that it was hard to wait for that moment to arrive.

As soon as I got home I went to the station to meet some guests who were coming for the weekend, and on the station platform I saw three marines. I asked them if they were back from overseas. One boy, who looked well now, told me he had been on Guadalcanal and had had twenty-two attacks of malaria. We talked and he suddenly asked, "Have you been to Guadalcanal?" I said, "Yes, I was there last summer." He replied, "I didn't think there had ever been any women there and I used to say I would give a tea party when one arrived." I told him that Miss Coletta Ryan and I had both been there and that now there was an American Red Cross Club there with women in charge. I was sorry when the train came in because I had begun to feel that we were old friends and that we had many more things which we could talk about.

E.R.

(COPYRIGHT 1944 BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE)


Names and Terms Mentioned or Referenced

Persons
  • Ryan, Marie Coletta [ index ]
         American Red Cross volunteer in World War II Pacific
  • Saulpaugh, Herbert E., Mrs. [ index ]
         American socialite from New York
Geographic
  • Hyde Park, New York, United States [ index ]


About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, June 19, 1944

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)
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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.

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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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