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

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WASHINGTON, Sunday—On Friday I lunched with Mrs. Claude Wickard, the wife of the Secretary of Agriculture. We had such a pleasant time that, on reaching the station, I found I had kept my husband's train waiting five minutes. However, the important point for me was that he did wait, and then we started for Hyde Park.

Miss Thompson and I worked all the way up, except for a very pleasant dinner period. Secretary and Mrs. Morgenthau and their daughter, Joan, and Mr. Harry Hopkins were also on the train. We all had a hilarious time and then went back to work until the train reached the station at 10:30 p.m. Even then I had to finish the mail after I reached home.

Yesterday morning I was very leisurely, but I had the pleasure of talking with a group of people who are interested in making our public schools more effective in training young people for life in a democracy. I enjoyed my hour with them and then the whole family from the big house joined me at the cottage for lunch. The day was rather cloudy, but enough snow remained on the ground to give us the contrast between the dark evergreen trees and the white ground beneath them, so that the country looked beautiful.

It was very peaceful and I would have liked to stay, but a promise made months ago started me back to Washington in the late afternoon. This morning I am on my way to Petersburg, Virginia, to visit the state college there and give a short talk. I am glad, however, that the President is able to have at least two full days at home, and I hope nothing will bring him back to Washington until Monday.

I hope you saw the announcement of a new series of nationwide dramatic programs presented by the Free Company, which makes its debut this Sunday from 2:00 to 2:30 Eastern Standard time. I hope the many of you listened in because the script writers are among the best known in our country. The producers and actors are all people we know and admire. One part of their description of what they mean to do stands out before me: "It's America in the spring of 1941. It's a frank appraisal of the freedom we wish to retain, and the faults we wish to remove. It's America today. With all its flaws and all its problems, still the best place on earth to live."

They should make us realize this superlatively well. It is a good to see Americans as a whole take stock of what we want to do.

E.R.

(COPYRIGHT, 1941 BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC.)


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, February 24, 1941

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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  • Black, Allida M. (Editor)
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  • Binker, Mary Jo (Associate 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.

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

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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