Authors:
Historic Era: Era 8: The Great Depression and World War II (1929-1945)
Historic Theme:
Subject:
October 2000 | Volume 51, Issue 6
Lonely Eleanor Roosevelt's Visits to Our College
Text Complexity Grade Level
9
The Roosevelt townhouse was only three blocks from Hunter College’s main building at Park Avenue at Sixty-eighth Street, and, one day in 1940, Eleanor just walked in off the street. The door she opened was the entrance to Echo, the college magazine. I was one of the writers, and I happened to be in the office with two other girls on the staff. We were flabbergasted. She was completely alone, without a secretary, Secret Service agent, or companion of any kind. She was looking for someone to talk to, she said, and she had slipped into a side entrance to avoid meeting up with the crowds one always encountered in the main lobby.
We dropped everything and asked her to sit down on the couch. I sat next to her, and the other two leaned on a desk facing us. Mrs. Roosevelt explained that she was a neighbor of ours and was out for a walk, and she wondered if she could rest awhile and chat with us if we were not too busy. Not too busy! We were overwhelmed and gave her our full attention.
She asked about our magazine, how often it came out (monthly) and what kinds of articles we published. With her soft, rather high-pitched voice and genuine interest in what we were doing, she soon put us at ease. What was amazing was how quickly we accepted as normal the fact that the First Lady of the land was sitting here in our little office with no fanfare or bodyguard.
Even more amazing was her request, on leaving, that she be allowed to visit us again when she had time. She said she enjoyed talking to young people but asked that we not publicize her visits, since she had time to get to know only our small group for the present.
Over the next year, she dropped in once or twice a month. We became quite friendly. She called me Marian, and I called her Mrs. Roosevelt. The war in Europe was in its first year and hovered over us always, but we did not say much about it. We covered other topics, however. She took a special interest in my new cocker spaniel puppy named Rusty, not yet house-broken. I would come home at night and tell my mother what Mrs. Roosevelt recommended based on her experience with Fala. Mother regarded Mrs. R’s visits nonchalantly. “Isn’t that nice,” she remarked, “her being interested in Rusty’s problems. She’s really a very nice lady.”
My father, too, appeared to take the First Lady’s visits in stride. His parents had been immigrants who came here expecting freedom and equality, and the fact that the president’s wife was conversing with his teenage daughter struck him as entirely appropriate.
In later years, I looked back on these events and wondered what was going on in Eleanor Roosevelt’s life at the time. I learned that the townhouse she and the president owned had been a wedding