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

[This column has emendations. View original version]

      

HYDE PARK, Sunday—I arrived back in Hyde Park a little after 5 p.m. Saturday to find my four young English guests already here. They come from Nottingham on scholarships raised in memory of my husband. The Lord Mayor of Nottingham wrote me that the money had been given because of the gratitude felt by their people for everything done in Great Britain during the war by my husband. They wished to send young businessmen of their area to this country for a three or four-months period to study American business and American life.

The four young men have now completed their tour and this is their last weekend in this country. I will be much interested in hearing the impressions which they have gathered in their time over here.

Meantime, I must go back and tell you something of my own trip these past few days. After speaking at Columbia University Tuesday evening, I boarded the midnight plane for Atlanta, Georgia. But instead of arriving very early in the morning, as I anticipated, I spent a long time in Charlotte, North Carolina. There we waited for hours until the weather cleared sufficiently to allow us to land in Atlanta. The delay made little difference in my plans for the day, except that I did not get the hour or two of sleep I had hoped for in a comfortable bed before I started out for Warm Springs! I did have time to wash up and breakfast, and then Mr. and Mrs. Henry J. Toombs motored me to Warm Springs.

It is over four years since I have been there, and I think all the buildings spreading out in a square from Georgia Hall are now complete. Everything in the way of trees and shrubs has grown luxuriously, and it is very beautiful. After luncheon in the main dining room, I went up to see my husband's little house. They had their one hundred thousandth visitor the other day. The basement has been turned into a little museum, but the other rooms look just the same and the approach is gradually being made very lovely, with terraces and flowers everywhere. I thought everything had been done with loving thought and great care. I wish that the flowers around the house could be brought back in the way that Mrs. Michael Hoke had them during her stay there. They always gave my husband great pleasure, and I think it would add a great deal to the present surroundings of the house.

After driving around the other buildings and looking at the exercise pool, I went back to talk with the patients in Georgia Hall. Then I drove back to Atlanta, where our old friend, Lizzie McDuffie, came to see me at Mrs. Toombs' house. A number of pleasant people came to dine that night, and I enjoyed seeing them and being again with my hosts. Elliott, who had driven his children to Texas, arrived late Wednesday afternoon.

All day Thursday I spent in meetings with the groups sponsoring a workshop to study the Universal Bill of Human Rights. In the evening I spoke before an audience of 2000 people on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the draft of the Convention. At 5:30 a.m. Friday, Elliott and I started on the drive home. It was quite a long pull, but we accomplished it very successfully and I am glad to be back, though the mountain of mail awaiting me is quite terrifying.

E. R.

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


Names and Terms Mentioned or Referenced

Persons
  • Hoke, Laurie H. Harrison, 1880-1964 [ index ]
  • McDuffie, Lizzie [ index ]
         White House housekeeper
         [ SNAC ]
  • 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 ]
  • Toombs, Adah [ index ]
         American, active in Atlanta civic movements; Georgia prison reform campaigner
  • Toombs, Henry (Henry Johnston), 1896-1967 [ index ]
         American architect and sculptor
         [ LC | VIAF | SNAC | FAST | US Nat. Archives ]
Organizations
Geographic
  • Hyde Park (Dutchess County, N.Y., United States) [ index ]
Other Terms and Topics


About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, September 12, 1949

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)
    [ VIAF | ORCID ]
  • Regenhardt, Christy (Associate Editor)
    [ ISNI ]
  • Black, Allida M. (Editor)
    [ VIAF | ISNI ]
  • Binker, Mary Jo (Associate Editor)
    [ VIAF | ORCID ]
  • Alhambra, Christopher C. (Electronic Text Editor)
    [ VIAF | ORCID ]

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.

XML master last modified on May 2, 2022.

HTML version generated and published on May 3, 2022.

Transcription created from a photocopy of a UFS wire copy of a My Day column instance archived at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library.
TMs, AERP, FDRL