The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Digital Edition > My Day
JANUARY 4, 1945
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WASHINGTON, Wednesday—We had a real treat yesterday. A young man now in the army had written to me about some writing which he hoped to do in the future, and sent me copies of the camp paper he is editing. As he was home on furlough, I invited him to lunch.
In the course of conversation it turned out that he had worked with Paderewski, and so we asked if he would like to see the piano on which this great artist practiced when he stayed here. Afterward I asked our young man to play on the piano in the East Room, which is so rarely used nowadays since we no longer have musicales or evening entertainments. It was really a treat, and was much enjoyed by one of my other guests, a boy back from the Pacific who brought the President a war club which was a gift from the head of one of the villages in British Samoa.
In the evening young Colonel Hoover, who is one of our son Elliott's pilots, brought his new wife to dine with us. The colonel had not gone back with the rest of the crew because he decided to get married, but he will follow them after a brief leave. Out of the whole crew only one enlisted man and one officer went back unmarried, which shows, I think, the urge that the men who go overseas have to leave someone waiting just for them on this side of the ocean.
A group of student veterans of World War II, who are at present studying at George Washington University under the vocational rehabilitation and the G.I. Bill of Rights programs, came in at 7 o'clock to see a movie. Afterward they came up to the State Dining Room for refreshments, and we all sat around and talked for a while.
After an early lunch today, Mrs. Henry Morgenthau Jr. and I are going to New York City. Tonight we are going to the play, but I will tell you more about that tomorrow.
In the meantime I want to tell you about a very lovely Christmas card from the Rev. Frederick Brown Harris, pastor of one of our Washington churches. The first two paragraphs struck me as something we might all find comforting in these days, so I pass them along to you:
“In the year 1809, with Napoleon on the march, men's feverish thoughts were on the
latest news of the war. And all the while, in their own homes, babies were being born.
But who could think about babies? Everybody was thinking of battles.
“In that very year, in the birth lists, were written the names of Gladstone and Tennyson
and Oliver Wendell Holmes and Darwin and Abraham Lincoln and Chopin and Mendelssohn
and Samuel Morley and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. But nobody thought of babies. Everybody
was thinking of battles.”
E. R.
(COPYRIGHT 1945 BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC.)
Names and Terms Mentioned or Referenced
Persons
- Harris, Frederick Brown, 1883-1970 [ index ]
American clergyman
[ LC | ISNI | VIAF | Wikidata | SNAC | FAST | US Nat. Archives ] - Hoover, Colonel [ index ]
served with Elliott Roosevelt in the US Air Force - Morgenthau, Elinor, -1949 [ index ]
American Democratic Party activist; spouse of US Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr.
[ LC | ISNI | VIAF | Wikidata | SNAC | FAST | US Nat. Archives ] - Paderewski, Ignacy Jan, 1860-1941 [ index ]
Polish pianist and composer
[ LC | ISNI | VIAF | Wikidata | SNAC | FAST | Brittanica ] - Roosevelt, Elliott, 1910-1990 [ index ]
American aviation executive; ER's and FDR's son
[ ERPP bio | LC | VIAF | Wikidata | SNAC | FAST | US Nat. Archives | ANB ] - Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano), 1882-1945 [ index ]
American politician; 32nd President of the United States
[ ERPP bio | LC | ISNI | VIAF | Wikidata | SNAC | FAST | US Nat. Archives | ANB ]
Geographic
- [ index ] Washington (D.C., United States)
About this document
My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, January 4, 1945
Digital edition created by The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project The George Washington University 312 Academic Building 2100 Foxhall Road, NW Washington, DC 20007
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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