The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Digital Edition > My Day
NOVEMBER 13, 1953
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SEATTLE, Thursday —Before this trip is ended we will be experts in getting up in the dark. We first saw Denver after a night on the plane before even the faintest gleam of sunrise was on the horizon. And on Tuesday morning we met in the lobby at 5:30 a.m., having been called at quarter before five to take the plane for Seattle. I mentioned to some of our hosts in Salt Lake City that I had spent a good deal of time in their airport and we added some time to this record on this trip, because soon after reaching the airport we learned that something had gone wrong with the magneto and we would be delayed for a little while. On further inquiry they said that it might be half an hour or an hour or even three hours before we could take off, so we all went into the coffee shop and had a preliminary breakfast.
On emerging from there with the morning Salt Lake City paper already carefully read, we were told that we could get on the plane and that they would serve breakfast. This kind of a trip is very disrupting to all of one's normal habits. In the first place, one barely catches up with the first and second hours that one loses before one loses the third and then where there is nothing else to do eating becomes a way of passing the time. So we ate our second breakfast on the plane and really thought that we were hungry, but I surmise that we would have got along just as well without it had we been at home.
All went well until we stopped at Boise, Idaho. We actually started to taxi down the field for a take-off and then our captain announced that we were returning as something had gone wrong with the magneto. They just say that it seems a little rough and what that means only mechanics know. So there we sat in Boise waiting to hear whether we were to wait one hour or three hours. If the magneto yielded to treatment, we might go off at any time, if it did not, we would wait for a replacement to come for us and that would require three hours.
One lady sitting in front of us announced that the next time she would take this trip by train. The people I feel sorry for are the boys in uniform, many of whom I feel sure are on their way home, which must make stopovers very tantalizing. Luckily for us we had no engagements in Seattle until five o'clock in the afternoon, though I invited a family to lunch and only hope that they ate without me. However, we finally did reach Seattle.
The eleventh of November was Armistice Day and one cannot help but think of all those who have given their lives for their country in wars that are past, including the Korean War in which so many of our men have been involved. Those who fell fought for the United States but under the United Nations flag. One only hopes that they and their loved ones realize that stopping aggression in Korea may have stopped World War III, and prevented aggression throughout Asia.
This first attempt at collective security may be a milestone in history. It had to be done on a voluntary basis and for that reason those nations that took part may have suffered more than had there been a sufficient compulsory force ready to put down aggression whenever it appeared. Let us hope that in the future through the world more people will be able to live to work for peace.
E. R.
(WORLD COPYRIGHT, 1953, BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC. REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART PROHIBITED.)
About this document
My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, November 13, 1953
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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