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

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New York—This certainly has not been a fortunate winter for me in keeping speaking engagements by air.

I started Tuesday afternoon to fly out to St. Louis to keep an engagement to speak at a dinner that evening. Some premonition made me ask whether the weather was good in St. Louis, and I was told firmly that it was as good as we were enjoying in New York. So I started my flight with the virtuous feeling that I was doing my duty even if I did have to fly back the same night.

One should not have a virtuous feeling! One is always punished for it, and my punishment was swift. Before we reached St. Louis I was informed that there was such a bad snowstorm there that we would land in Louisville, with no chance of course to arrive in St. Louis by any other means in time to speak. So, I sat in the airport until one o'clock in the morning, when I took a plane back to New York, arriving at 5:30.

Two nights in succession of sleeping more or less on a plane is not my idea of bliss, nor is it a great satisfaction to miss a speaking engagement. Altogether, I hope the bad weather is over and that we will have no more of these fruitless trips.

Wednesday morning I visited a new school near Westbury, Long Island. It is a beautiful, modern building and very well equipped, and if the faculty is as good as the building appears to be the children should be getting an excellent education.

I had been asked especially to see their American history exhibit and fair, and I think the students have reason to be proud of the work of all their different age groups. I was sorry I did not have more time to spend with the youngest children, who attend a kindergarten that is in a building attached to the high-school building.

The remainder of Wednesday, however, was very busy, but the nicest part of it was the 15 minutes I spent with the Prime Minister of Israel, Mr. David Ben-Gurion, and Mrs. Ben-Gurion.

Mrs. Ben-Gurion watches over her husband very well, but she makes me think of a rather distracted mother hen at times! He must be as difficult to look after as a whole brood of little chicks. What a dynamic personality he has, what a resourceful human being! And what a joy it is to have even a few moments in his company.

In the evening I went to the opening of the United Jewish Appeal campaign where an award was presented to Mr. Charles Mayer for his creative building in Israel. But the meeting, as a whole, was overshadowed by the loss of Adele Levy, who had always given so much of her interest to the UJA.

The Arthritis and Rheumatism Foundation sent me a study that shows how advertising in the field of devices and remedies for arthritics has been badly representing the real nature of the products advertised. The foundation says that $250,000,000 is spent annually by people suffering from arthritis on these products, which are really nothing but quack remedies and which keep people from getting sound medical advice at the time it would do them the most good.

It seems to me that people should be alerted to the fact that medicines should be taken only on a good doctor's advice, and not on the fact that somebody said that something had done them good.

E.R.

(Copyright, 1960, by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.)


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My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, March 18, 1960

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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MEP edition publlished on June 30, 2008.

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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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