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

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New York, City, Wenesday—Having done all we could at Hyde Park, we came to New York City yesterday morning to meet my daughter and her children, so that Johnny could get a nap at our apartment between trains. Then I saw them off on a train for Hyde Park and went back to my apartment to have a quiet pre-Christmas dinner with an old friend.

I have had several appointments today but a part of the day was spent with a friend and her children. This is the children's season and they are about the only ones to whom a happy Christmas spirit is possible. I take the midnight train back to Washington and many duties await me tomorrow.

I was very sorry to learn a few days ago that Mrs. Dwight Davis had to resign her position in the Red Cross because of ill health. She has done so well with her volunteers. While I am sure her successor will continue to do good work, everyone must regret the loss of Mrs. Davis' executive ability.

I have been thinking a good deal these days of the boys who are now in the fighting forces but, who, at one time, passed through the hands of the Vocational Foundation Inc. To many of these boys, this organization seems to have meant the only real interest they could count on. All of us on the board were asked to send Christmas remembrances to those who had no other people who would be thinking of them at Christmas time. These were a goodly number.

It is easy to understand how young boys and girls get into trouble when they have no background of home life. Now the Foundation is finding many of its boys coming back, discharged from the services, and looking for a job as well as readjusting to civilian life. Some of them with an added physical handicap find it even more difficult than it was before.

On January 12th, at Carnegie Hall, the Vocational Foundation will have a concert at which Nathan Milstein, the violinist, will play, and Valentin Pavlovsky will be at the piano. The program sounds delightful and I wish that I could be there myself. I hope the house will be packed for the benefit of the foundation and that there will be some seats given to service men by people who, like myself, would like to be there but can not attend on that particular date.

I have had a very kindly reproof from Mr. William R. Harshe, who says that unintentionally I may have done harm by grouping Nurses' Aids and the Nursing Cadet Corps together. I thought it was well understood that a Cadet Nurse, enrolling under the Bolton Bill, was pledged from two-and-one-half years to three years of service.

Naturally, she will look on nursing as a career, unless she marries. Nurses' Aids are volunteers who take a Red Cross course and then pledge themselves to a certain number of hours work in hospitals, but not on the level of a professional nurse.

E.R.

(COPYRIGHT, 1943, BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC.)


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, December 23, 1943

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
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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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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