She was full of stories in her final years about her childhood in New York City. She loved telling them when there were grandchildren around. She had run into a contemporary of her aunt Maude’s, she said, who blamed all of Eleanor’s unorthodoxies on the fact that she had been brought up by her young aunts, Maude and Pussie. At the turn of the century those two were regarded as wild: they had even driven in hansom cabs alone, without a maid. When her grandfather, the first Theodore Roosevelt, built his house at Fifty-seventh Street, she said, beginning another story, Freddy Weekes, who lived on Washington Square, was invited to the housewarming. That is an overnight trip, his mother warned him. When he said he planned to be back the same night, she refused to believe him. She remembered Mrs. Weekes as a gentle, charming old lady, who, she added, “once danced with Lafayette.”
When Mrs. Roosevelt regaled the company with these recollections, young eyes gleamed as all American history seemed to materialize in the person of their grandmother.
It was especially pleasurable for her when her own grandchildren gave signs of sharing her interests and values. One of her stories was of how she had been a volunteer for the Consumers League when she was eighteen and, at a rally in Union Square, had heard the labor song “Joe Hill” for the first time. Nothing delighted her more than the lively and intelligent way in which Nina, John’s child, entered into their trip together to Israel and Iran in 1959, or Nina’s brother Haven’s spending a year teaching in the Tanganyika bush, or Anna’s son Curtis’s involvement in the New York reform movement, or Franklin III’s quiet assistance to the freedom movement in the South, or her grandson Johnny Boettiger’s heading up the college clubs for the AAUN.
Her grandchildren paid her the most satisfying compliment of all—wanting to learn from her. Her grandson Frank counted her his most important teacher in trying to find a meaningful purpose in his life. He sent her a review he had written for his own edification of William F. Buckley’s Up from Liberalism. She liked it very much and would try, if he wished, to get it published.
I have only one comment on what you say about Social Security on page four. You seem to think that everyone can save money if they have the character to do it. As a matter of fact, there are innumerable people who have a wide choice between saving and giving their children the best possible opportunities. The decision is usually in favor of the children. Social Security has meant they could obtain insurance for future life at a much lower rate than they could possibly get it in any other way and stand by the employers.16
Advanced in her views about the acceptance of social responsibility, she was curiously strait-laced in her views about social behavior. In Iran, where she and Nina visited Anna and Jim Halsted, the U.S. ambassador arranged some parties for Nina with young people in the diplomatic colony.
“Grand’mère says I have to be in at twelve,” Nina complained to her aunt. “Suppose I can’t get home by twelve?”
“Oh, she will be asleep,” Anna assured her, to which Nina replied that her grandmother had told her to come in and kiss her good night when she got home. The young lady got in at 2:00 a.m. and, of course, her grandmother, who was sleeping, woke up.
“But Nina, it’s two o’clock,” she chided.
The next morning Anna went to her mother. “Mummy, dear. Please realize times have changed. . . .She shouldn’t be under restrictions and have to check in with you. She is with people selected by the Ambassador. Nothing will happen to her.”
Mrs. Roosevelt was visibly annoyed. “Oh very well. If that’s the way it has to be, I’ll tell her.”17
If there was sickness or a family crisis, she was the one the children turned to for counsel and comfort. In their many divorces and marriages, the “moment of truth” with their mother was the one they found hardest to face. By her middle seventies, however, she had survived so many family crises and witnessed so much history that nothing surprised her any longer. Even what appeared to be disaster, she took with philosophical detachment.
At dinner in 1959, David Lilienthal, as he helped her serve the plates that she filled, mentioned how deeply impressed he had been by her article in Harper’s on “Where Do I Get My Energy?,” particularly by the part “about not getting too self-absorbed. She looked at me in the most earnest way and said: ‘And this becomes more important as one gets older. Inevitably there are aches and pains, more and more; and if you pay much attention to them, the first thing you know you’re an invalid.’”18
These “aches and pains” were coming with increasing frequency. On Adlai Stevenson’s recommendation, Kennedy appointed her a member of the U.S. delegation to the Special Session of the General Assembly that convened in March, 1961. She paid a visit to the Human Rights Commission. There was applause as she entered the chamber, accompanying the U.S. delegate Mrs. Ronald Tree, the granddaughter of Endicott Peabody, FDR’s old rector at Groton. The chairman, Chandra S. Jha of India, asked her to say a few words. She hoped to see the day when the principles enunciated in the Declaration would be accepted as law, she said. “Then we will have made real steps forward in human rights.”19
There was nothing to do, Stevenson had assured her, except attend the plenaries. Yet illness kept her from fulfilling even that limited role to her own satisfaction. She was not a good assistant, she apologized.
To all intents and purposes I am marooned at Hyde Park till Wednesday afternoon with the ’flu. Actually, I don’t have the ’flu but phlebitis! I didn’t want to talk about it and thought the ’flu a good excuse.
If there is a delegation meeting Tuesday or Friday, I will try to come but I think I should probably be at home with my two old legs in the air!
To the president she wrote, as the session drew to an end, “I don’t think I have been very useful but I think I accomplished what Adlai wanted in just appearing at the UN.”20
Although her strength had begun to ebb, she took on a variety of assignments for President Kennedy. She served on the “Tractors for Freedom” Committee after the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion (an enterprise to which she euphemistically referred as “this unfortunate raid”). She accepted a place on the Advisory Council of the Peace Corps. Of Kennedy’s first 240 appointments, only nine were women, so in March she called at the White House to turn over to him a three-page list of women she considered eligible for high positions in his administration. At its head was Dr. Leona Baumgartner, whom he subsequently appointed as deputy chief of the AID. Law, custom, and the forgetfulness of men, Mrs. Roosevelt told members of the Lucy Stone League, were keeping women from equal opportunities in government and other jobs. She abandoned her forty-year opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment. “Many of us opposed the amendment because we felt it would do away with protection in the labor field. Now with unionization, there is no reason why you shouldn’t have it if you want it.” Having reminded the president that women, too, were qualified for top government jobs, she agreed to preside over the Commission on the Status of Women that he appointed at the end of 1961 and faithfully chaired its meetings until illness made attendance impossible. “You are very much in our thoughts today,” the members of the commission wrote her as they realized no ordinary illness was keeping her away.21
She followed avidly all the news from Washington brought to her by her sons Franklin and James and by Abba Schwartz, whose efforts to become assistant secretary of state for immigration and refugee affairs she backed. “I have tried not to speak for anyone in connection with positions,” she wrote the president in February, 1961, “but. . .”22
Since Kennedy encouraged her to stay in touch with him, there were letters of advice. He should jog the Veterans Administration, she suggested. He did, and asked her never to hesitate to call such matters to his personal attention. A month later she was writing him that she feared because of his preoccupation with Cuba he might not be paying much attention to legislation affecting the migratory farm worker. Migrants were receiving short shrift from the House Agricultural Committee, he replied, but he wa
s in close touch with the situation.23
She hoped he would forgive her presumption, she began a long letter to him on the subject of the president as educator,
but I am concerned because I feel that there is not as yet established a real feeling among the people that you are consulting them and that they must react and carry on a dialogue with you on such subjects as you choose to bring before them.
I listened during a rather long drive which I took, to your last press conference and decided that it did not take the place of fireside chats. The questions asked were asked by men and women of good background and were much too sophisticated for the average person to understand. I think the people are anxious to have you talk to them on one question at a time and explain it fully and ask for their reactions and understand that their answers will be analyzed and considered.
I wish you could get someone like my old teacher (probably her daughter) to help you deepen and strengthen your voice on radio and TV. It would give you more warmth and personality in your voice. It can be learned, and I think it would make a tremendous difference. . . .
The problem with his voice was an old one, the president answered. He had tried voice instruction during the campaign and would try again. “It is difficult to change nature, but I will attempt to nudge it.”24
She went to the White House as a member of a delegation that also included Benjamin V. Cohen, Norman Cousins, and Clark Eichelberger, to urge that the United States, instead of involving itself in the fighting in Vietnam as the Taylor-Rostow Report had recommended, take the question to the United Nations. The White House referred the delegation to the State Department. There the delegates were told that the department had considered going to the United Nations but, after talking to Dag Hammerskjöld, had concluded that it could not get the action there that it wanted. “They decided they could handle the situation better alone,” Ben Cohen commented. “Had they gone to the United Nations I am sure they would not have gotten what they wanted. But the American people might have had time and opportunity to learn into what a tragic pit they were being asked to leap.”*
In the face of highly provocative actions by Khrushchev—the building of the infamous Berlin Wall and unilateral abrogation of the nuclear test ban moratorium—she urged Kennedy not to abandon the effort to negotiate with the Soviet Union. She had just signed a “Declaration of Conscience and Responsibility” circulated by the American Friends Service Committee, “and one of the things I had to promise to do was the write to you.” She urged him to resist “the usual pressures being put on the government by certain scientists, by the Pentagon,” and by others opposed to a treaty to end nuclear tests.† She pleaded for give and take on Berlin. She understood East Europe’s fear of the revival of German power.
I would think it might well be considered of mutual interest to obtain withdrawal of troops on either side for a demilitarized central Europe. I realize that it would be considered that we were weakening NATO by not having Germany in, and therefore weakening our western defense, but if we get equal concessions on the other side, is this perhaps not a good way to beginning disarmament? Negotiations must go on, and that means give and take, and we had better be preparing our people not to look upon anything which pleases both sides as appeasement on our part.
He was giving the problem of nuclear testing his close personal attention, the president assured her, and, as she could tell from his speeches, he had little use for those who equated negotiation with appeasement.25
Mrs. Roosevelt’s last letter to President Kennedy, written from Campobello, suggested that the Roosevelt home there, which was then owned by Victor Hammer, be acquired by the government in connection with U.S.-Canadian plans to convert the island into an international Franklin D. Roosevelt memorial.
It would be nice to feel that the house might be an F.D.R. Memorial Conference site because he was interested in friendship between Canada and the United States and made considerable efforts to promote it.26
She was in touch, too, with Robert Kennedy, the attorney general, mostly about civil rights in the South. The government was trying to do what it could, he wrote her, after his aides had persuaded local officials in Albany, Georgia, to drop charges against the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and other civil rights protesters, but the federal government’s powers were extremely limited. “You are doing very well and the results are gratifying,” she wrote on the margin of his letter.27
She liked to see the White House inhabited again by a young family that was obviously enjoying itself. Before the Kennedys had moved in, Mrs. Roosevelt wrote a warm and understanding letter to Mrs. Kennedy:
I know that there will be difficulties in store for you in the White House life but perhaps also you will find some compensations. Most things are made easier, though I think on the whole life is rather difficult for both the children and their parents in the “fish bowl” that lies before you.28
A tender correspondence developed between the two. Mrs. Kennedy thanked her for her wise words of advice and enclosed a drawing made by Caroline, to whom she had read a book about Fala. She had begun to learn what Mrs. Roosevelt meant about the difficulty of making new friends while in the White House.
It was wonderful to have “so young, intelligent, and attractive” a First Lady, Mrs. Roosevelt observed, and the changes Mrs. Kennedy was making in the White House showed a sense of art and history, she thought.
Jacqueline Kennedy had served her country well when she accompanied her husband to his meetings with de Gaulle and Khrushchev:
To smile no matter how weary one is, to look well-dressed and interested at all times is a remarkable feat, especially when it is considered that we do not have the long training given to royalty to meet these situations.
Then in a postscript that, as a First Lady who had faced the exacting test and more than met it, she alone could write, she added:
I think back to the days of my husband’s Presidency and realize that the problems of that time—first of the depression and then of the war—required a background and understanding of social justice and social needs. That is still needed by the woman in the White House, but much more is required.
Both the President and his wife can never give way to apprehension even though they are probably more aware than most citizens of the dangers which may surround us. If the country is to be confident, they must be confident. They cannot afford to harbor resentment, or to have enemies where it is possible to turn these enemies into friends. This demands from both the President and his wife a high order of intelligence, of self-discipline and a dedication to the public good. We are extremely fortunate to find these qualifications in the White House at the present time.29
To the world Mrs. Roosevelt still seemed a marvel of energy, but she was slowing down. “I know you think she never tires,” Nina said in London during her trip with her grandmother. “Well, one of the reasons is that she’s got the knack of falling off to sleep wherever she is, even on her feet. It can be awkward if she’s in company. I keep a very close watch. If I can catch her just as her head is nodding, one tap of the ankle is enough. But once her head reaches her chest, it takes a good old-fashioned shake.”30
But it was not only age that was causing her to doze off and reach gratefully for a chair. In early 1960 an anguished David Gurewitsch diagnosed the flare-up of a blood disease as aplastic anemia. “You have to realize,” Jim Halsted told his wife, Anna, when they heard the news on their return from Iran, “this will shorten her life. You will get to broken down veins and transfusions.”31
Mrs. Roosevelt knew. She had called on Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion during his 1960 visit to the United States. A friend mentioned Ben-Gurion’s well-known interest in longevity. She had no such interest, she said firmly. There were a few things she still wanted to do, such as taking some of her grandchildren to her favorite places in Europe. She would take them that summer. Otherwise, it was interesting to do things, saying to yourself, “This is the last
time you will do them.” It was an excuse to do a great many things you might not otherwise feel free to do. She had left a memorandum on her funeral and burial. She wanted a plain wooden coffin, covered with pine boughs from her woods, no embalming, and her veins cut (because she had an irrational fear of waking up with piles of earth on top of her).32
The illness would flicker and subside—infections, fevers, chills, and aches. She dealt with them by ignoring them. Doctor, children, friends told her repeatedly that by any standard she was overdoing things, but she had her own firm ideas on how she wished to live—and die.
In February, 1962, she went to Europe to meet Henry Morgenthau II and to do some recordings for her “Prospects of Mankind” series on “Europe: Rival or Partners?” In London she stayed, as always, at Claridge’s and dined with Lord Elibank one night and the next with Lady Reading, who brought along six ladies in policy-making positions in government. She lunched with Hilda Fitzwilliams, an Allenswood schoolmate, and Louise Morley Cochrane and her children came to tea. In Paris she checked in at the Crillon and took her “crew,” as she called them, to “different good, little French restaurants.” There was a quick trip to Israel (“They are still dreamers, but they make their dreams come true”) and a stay at St. Moritz with the Gurewitsches and Maureen Corr, whom she entertained with reminiscences of her honeymoon stay there in 1905.33
She had a sense that her time on earth was drawing to a close. She sent out checks six months early—to godchildren whose school tuition she was paying, to friends who had come on hard times, to favorite organizations. A Tacoma housewife received a birthday check for $10 after Mrs. Roosevelt died. She was the daughter of Al Kresse, a hitchhiker whom Mrs. Roosevelt had picked up in the depths of the Depression and had sent to her Sixty-fifth Street house with a note that he should be fed and helped to find a job. He named his daughter after her, and Mrs. Roosevelt asked to be her godmother, sending her a $10 check on each birthday. She used a bequest of $25,000 from Mrs. Parish (“Cousin Susie”) to purchase Liberian mining stock, which Lansdell Christie assured her would pay fantastic dividends, and left the stock in her will to Maureen Corr and a few others to whom she felt especially grateful.
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