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

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HYDE PARK, Sunday—I landed in Newark Friday night after a very comfortable trip across the continent though I must say, all night and most of the day on a plane makes you feel rather pleased to reach home and a real bed for the night. When we got off at Salt Lake City at 4:50 a.m. I was greeted as usual by cameras with flashing bulbs and had a horrible feeling that my hair was untidy and that I looked sleepy. When we reached Denver at eight o'clock, the ever present cameras were still on hand, and I felt even more squeamish as to what those pictures would look like! However, I had a chance to wash my face and tidy up before we started again. After we had been in the air a short time, the man who was sitting just ahead of me, turned around and said. "This is my first flight and I am 74 years old, but it isn't going to be my last." I liked that spirit and so off and on through the morning we held conversation together. He told me his home was in Warren, Pa., but he had a son, growing potatoes in one of the valleys of the southwest and he had been out spending a month with him. The month had been full of thrills. Taos and the Indians in their Peublos—Santa Fe, and a wedding he had seen in the Patio of the very interesting Inn there, stood out as highlights of his trip and finally this return journey by air. He thought he was travelling alone, but when he got on board his son came in with him and sat down in the seat across the aisle, the door closed and he said, "you better get off son," and only then discovered his boy was going with him to Chicago, where another son would meet them.

As we passed over Omaha the clouds which for a time had hidden the ground lifted, and he said, "I am so glad I can see the city for I have a daughter working here in a hospital, and she knows I am coming over this morning." I hope when I am 74 I will be as keen about new experiences and get as much out of life as my friend of this trip.

In Chicago, Mayris Chaney joined me, which made the last part of the flight seem short and at Newark, to my surprise my brother met me, so I had a real welcome back to the East. It is hard to believe that yesterday I came up to Hyde Park and am spending a quiet day here when I only left my husband and our little Seattle family Thursday afternoon at five o'clock. I gather that their trip has progressed successfully since then. Each time I fly across the continent I am more grateful for this new method of transportation which makes it possible to feel that your children who settle far away from home are within reach at 24 hours notice. I thought that on this trip I would have an opportunity to take a sleeper plane, but that is still an experience which I must wait to try out at some future time.

E.R.


Names and Terms Mentioned or Referenced

Geographic
  • Hyde Park (Dutchess County, N.Y., United States) [ index ]


About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, October 4, 1937

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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  • Regenhardt, Christy (Associate Editor)
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  • Black, Allida M. (Editor)
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  • Binker, Mary Jo (Associate Editor)
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  • Alhambra, Christopher C. (Electronic Text Editor)
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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: June 9, 2017.

HTML version generated and published on: May 3, 2022.

Transcription created from a photocopy of a draft version of a My Day column instance archived at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library. My Day column draft dated October 3, 1937, FDR Library, Hyde Park, NY
TMsd, 3 October 1937, AERP, FDRL