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

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Orange, New Jersey, Sunday—On Friday afternoon, the President and I went over to the 4 H Club encampment, which is held under the auspices of the Department of Agriculture every year. I have usually had an opportunity to visit the camp, but it was particularly fortunate that the President could go over this year. These young people come from all over the United States and they have gone through various competitions before they obtain this opportunity. It is the exceptionally able ones who are gathered here.

My husband fully expected to find that the Secretary of the Interior had allowed them to bring to Potomac Park, their various prize calves, bulls and pigs, but the Secretary of Agriculture said that he had too much consideration for the Secretary of the Interior's feeling to ask for this permission.

I heard a rather amusing story told there. Lately they have put a group of domestic animals in the zoo, and these attract more attention from the young visitors than the wild animals.

In the evening I attended the dinner and the jury trial staged by the Washington Youth Council. The Subject was "Youth and the District Institutions." I am sorry again to have to say that the District of Columbia can hardly have a clean bill of health where its contacts with youth are concerned. One can only hope that such efforts as these will finally awaken public opinion to the fact that the young people in the District are not getting a square deal.

I left Washington on the midnight train and did various necessary errands yesterday, including an hour at the dentist, which can never be considered a very happy occupation.

In the afternoon, I motored out to my cousins, Mr. and Mrs. Henry Parish, in Llewellyn Park, Orange, New Jersey. This is a restful quiet household which seems far removed from the hurly-burly of ordinary life. I am always happy to have the opportunity of being with Mr. and Mrs. Parish. It takes me back to the days of my girlhood, which seem at present very calm and far away.

The appeals coming in from the women of France in the areas not already devastated, begging the women of America, through me, to do all they can to assist them, are heartrending when one can do so little. It must be stark anguish when these women receive the refugees from other places, knowing that their own fate may be similar in the course of the few next days, and realizing that their men may never return.

E.R.

(COPYRIGHT, 1940, BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC,)


Names and Terms Mentioned or Referenced

Geographic
  • Orange (Essex County, N.J., United States) [ index ]


About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, June 17, 1940

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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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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