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

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NEW YORK, Tuesday—Early Monday morning Queen Juliana left Hyde Park after breakfast and I took Tamas and Frannie for a walk in the woods. Luckily, the ground is drying out in our area, but I had visions that if the brook rose any more our cellars would be flooded.

By 10 o'clock we were on our way to New York City, and soon after our arrival Mr. John Golden came for me at the Park Sheraton Hotel to take me to the Waldorf for the lunch given by Mayor Impellitteri and Mr. Grover Whalen in honor of the Queen and Prince Bernhard. Because of ceremonies at City Hall and elsewhere and the procession uptown, the royal couple arrived an hour and a quarter late for lunch! I had no idea until I looked at the program that I was expected to speak just before the Queen.

Since we were so late everybody spoke very briefly and then I dashed over to the United Nations building where I was 20 minutes late. Secretary-General Trygve Lie, whom I expected to see alone, ushered me in immediately to talk with his assistants also about the U.N. work and my general impressions in the different countries on what the U.N. and the specialized agencies were accomplishing.

Then I dashed back to my apartment and had the Countess de Metazbraun for a brief visit before getting ready to go back to the Waldorf for the dinner at which I was to speak in honor of Mrs. Golda Myerson. This dinner inaugurated the sale of Israel Bonds and it was certainly a great success. I heard a very good speech by Mrs. Myerson and then sat through a long period of collecting pledges to buy bonds.

Several times messages came to me that they were ready for me at the dinner being given by the Netherlands-American Society for Queen Juliana, but, of course, I could not leave because I had agreed to open the bond drive weeks before I knew about the dinner for Queen Juliana. Finally, I went over to the Grand Ballroom just in time to hear the major part of Queen Juliana's very excellent speech.

Then I was asked to speak, a little to my surprise, because I suppose I had not had time to take in a message they had left with Miss Thompson telling me that they wished me to make a speech.

I could not help thinking that yesterday was a pretty long and exhausting day for the Queen and Prince Bernhard because by the time it had come to an end I thought myself it had been a pretty long day.

Miss Doris Fleeson picked me up at the dinner and came home with me for a few minutes, and I was so glad to see her again. She has been in most of the countries I have just been through and it was fun to compare notes with her.

I thought there was a great deal in what was said by one of our prominent columnists on the subject of what we wanted to clean up in the present situation in Washington. He said it was not sufficient to find a few people who had done wrong in the departments and fire them. The real effort should be to discover why the heads of the departments had not long ago discovered for themselves the wrongdoing of their subordinates. This is probably a much more important thing to do than just to fire a few people.

E. R.

(WORLD COPYRIGHT, 1952, BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC. REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART PROHIBITED.)


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, April 9, 1952

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

  • Brick, Christopher (Editor)
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Digital edition published 2008, 2017 by
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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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