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

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HYDE PARK, Monday—Some years ago, friends of mine were kind enough to give a helping hand to a young man who wanted to study medicine. He was not at all sure whether he could get through the long years of training.

Yesterday he and his wife and two little boys came for a picnic lunch with us. I hope the friends who gave him a helping hand when he needed it will be as happy as I am over the fact that he now has been offered a fellowship in the Mayo Clinic for three years.

After that another fellowship awaits him at Duke University. It now looks as if he were worthy of the help given him in his student days.

He and his wife both are a most enterprising young couple. She has been taking nurse's training, will soon be a full fledged nurse and prepared to teach. When her little boys are older, she can take a part-time job. It gives one a great sense of satisfaction to see a young couple really carrying through their ambitions with so much energy. I am hopeful that real success awaits them in the future.

Mr. Philip Murray dropped in to see us yesterday with some of his co-workers. We were all glad to see him, but we had to leave soon after lunch, so his visit was short.

I went to a Democratic clambake during the afternoon in the town of Highland, across the Hudson River. They have had to reorganize their county committee, but they must be doing a good job, for they had a good crowd.

Though I could not stay very long, it certainly was an enthusiastic meeting, with everybody getting along well together and having a good time. That is a good prelude to work which might be expected of them during campaign time.

I have been reading with much interest and appreciation Miss Grace Tully's articles, and I feel that I must say a few words in defense of Mrs. Nesbitt.

My husband wasn't very fond of any of us who had to do with his food, because all food ceased to be interesting to him in the last year or two of his stay in the White House. But Mrs. Nesbitt was never responsible for the things that displeased him.

I was the guilty person, because I always saw all menus unless I was away for a very long period and that was very rare. I came and went a great deal, but I never was away long enough at one time to feel that anyone else was actually assuming responsibility for running the household.

Mrs. Nesbitt's economies were made both at my husband's insistence and at mine. In the first years that we were there, I even had some menus served which were designed for people on relief but I did not make my husband eat them, though I did serve them to my children at different times. I remember James asked me if he could have a glass of milk by paying five cents extra.

We lived up to rationing strictly during the war.

What I want to emphasize is that if any blame is to be placed on anyone for things which displeased my husband in the running of the household, then I was the person to receive the censure and not any employee. This my husband well knew.

E. R.

(WORLD COPYRIGHT, 1949, BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC., REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART PROHIBITED.)


Names and Terms Mentioned or Referenced

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


About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, August 30, 1949

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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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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