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

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New York City, Monday—We spent a good part of yesterday driving through not only the heaviest rain I have ever seen, but a hail storm! I began to wonder if the hail stones would come through the top of my car, since they were bouncing off the hood to the ground and hitting hard against our windows. I could not help feeling sorry for the farmers, for it must have done much damage to their crops.

Finally, a little after one o'clock, we found a place to turn off the road and managed to eat a picnic lunch in the car while the storm wore itself out. After that, it rained very heavily until fairly late in the afternoon, but no more hail came down.

When we stopped for gas, just before 7:00 o'clock, the friendly garage man said that their storm had been chiefly wind and rain. His wife came out of the station and asked if I was Mrs. Roosevelt, saying she had recognized me, but the girls there insisted I could not be myself!

A little after 7:00, we stopped for dinner at Lamie's, which is on the corner of the road that goes to Hampton Beach, New Hampshire. They have very good food, but the crowd was so great that I wondered whether it would be worth waiting fifteen minutes for a table.

We decided that on a Sunday evening every retaurant would be crowded, and finally we sat down to a very good dinner. The proprieto said he had never had so busy a summer. On Saturday they had 3,000 people and they closed at 3:00 a.m. and opened again at 6:00 the next morning. He told me that, like many other places, they use college boys boys and girls to wait on table, but have a regular staff as well and are busy all through the winter.

We did not intend to stop in Boston, but it seemed to be the only place where we could find accommodations, so we spent the night at the Statler Hotel. Providence sometimes is kind, for I found a message there to call one of my sons who has his orders and is off tomorrow for some time. If I had not come to Boston, I would have missed saying goodbye.

I have been hearing lately how much women pilots are doing in England. They ferry planes to places of safety when they are not in use, and fill in so that men can get some rest when duty is neither combat duty nor dangerous service. I wonder if, in this country, in the CAA courses or in the services, we have begun to train women so they may perform such duties. It would seem to be wise to give women pilots this opportunity, since we know they have been so useful in other countries.

E.R.

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


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  • New York (N.Y., United States) [ index ]


About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, August 5, 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.

XML master last modified on: June 9, 2017.

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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