The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Digital Edition > My Day
JUNE 1, 1951
[This column has emendations. View original version]
HYDE PARK, Thursday—I am having a most peculiar experience. Several letters have come to me lately enclosing anonymous communications which were received by my correspondents. In these communications they were told not to subscribe to the drives for funds for the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic or the stadium concerts, and that they can find out from me that I am opposed to these organizations because they prevent legitimate artists from singing!
In each case, of course, I have had to write back that there is not a word of truth in the statements. As a matter of fact, I would urge people to contribute to all of these organizations.
As these communications are anonymous, it is difficult to identify their source. But they sound curiously like some other communications I have been receiving for some time past. An individual has been sending me as many as three or four telegrams a day, always foolish and somewhat irrelevant. And this individual, a woman, seems to be a singer and laboring under the strange idea that in some way she has been frustrated in carrying out her career by me, and that I have joined forces with Marian Anderson and Sergei Koussevitzky!
Needless to say, I have done nothing, either alone or in collaboration with either of these artists.
I got so tired of being bombarded with messages that I asked the FBI if I could do anything to discourage them. I was told that unless a threat was made on my life there was nothing that could be done. I then asked Western Union not to accept these wires and they responded they could not refuse, so the telegrams continued to come and we continued to ignore them.
I think I am more or less free of them now, but I cannot help wondering if the lady has changed her tactics from telegram sending to this anonymous writing of epistles to people I never heard of and telling them to apply to me for information.
Yesterday the ceremonies for Memorial Day were held in the rose garden as usual and Senator Brien McMahon made the main speech. It was a most interesting speech and I was grateful to the Senator for coming up.
A great many old friends were among the crowd that stood along the path inside the high hemlock hedge and joined in the services. I can never hear taps blown as is always done after the laying of the wreath by the Roosevelt Home Club without a tightening of the throat. It makes me think of all the many men who have given their lives for their country and who lie in far-off cemeteries in order that this land and its people may live in peace and liberty.
E.R.
Names and Terms Mentioned or Referenced
Persons
- Anderson, Marian, 1897-1993 [ index ]
American singer
[ LC | ISNI | VIAF | Wikidata | SNAC | FAST | US Nat. Archives | ANB ] - Koussevitzky, Serge, 1874-1951 [ index ]
Boston Symphony Orchestra conductor
[ LC | VIAF | Wikidata | SNAC | FAST | ANB ] - McMahon, Brien, 1903-1952 [ index ]
American politician
[ LC | VIAF | Wikidata | SNAC | FAST | US Nat. Archives | ANB ]
Geographic
- [ index ] Hyde Park (Dutchess County, N.Y., United States)
About this document
My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, June 1, 1951
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.
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