But for the Secret Service, it was not a laughing matter. It was its job to assess how serious these threats were, whether by groups or individuals. Any threats to the president or to the first lady were their primary focus. But my sister and I figured in the picture as being especially vulnerable, just as the Obama children have been.
My family’s reaction to the Secret Service’s protection of the president’s family was mixed. My great-grandmother wouldn’t allow any agents into the Big House at Hyde Park. After her death, just a few months before the Pearl Harbor disaster plunged us into World War II, the Secret Service detail began occasionally to use the room next to my grandfather’s study. A desk and telephone were installed, although it was not exclusively for them. FDR’s secretary, Grace Tully, might use it, and so did my mother. For the rest of us it was just the passageway to the only toilet on the first floor of Springwood. And when you were billeted on the third floor, this was convenient.
Eleanor Roosevelt refused any and all Secret Service protection. She was adamant. My mother and uncles speculated about whether the Secret Service secretly and discreetly tailed her. But no one knew—or wanted to know—for sure.
Following their mother’s attitude, my uncles disdained protection, but my mother welcomed it when my sister and I left the White House to move to Seattle. Looking back on those years I see my mother and stepfather using the Secret Service man as a convenient chauffeur to ferry my sister and me around, especially when we began going to different schools or frequently to the dentist.
The Hate Roosevelt phenomenon continued long after FDR’s death. In the mid-1950s, ten years after he had died, I was having lunch with a friend, a prominent Republican named Victor Ridder, at the National Republican Club in New York City. Halfway through our main course a man came marching up to our table and asked me in a very demanding tone of voice—loud enough so that all surrounding tables could hear—“Are you Buzzie, FDR’s grandson?” My host was most astonished, as was I, but I nodded assent. Whereupon this man announced that he would “not eat in the same room as Roosevelt’s grandson!” Then, wheeling about, he left. A perplexed Victor apologized. I smiled, shrugged, and we got on with our lunch.
Yet, like many other things within my extraordinary life as the eldest grandson of President and Mrs. Roosevelt, I took this security protection for granted—from age three to fifteen. It was simply an accepted part of my daily life for most of my childhood and youth.
But I was unaware of its stamp upon me—until my grandfather died. Shortly after that I headed to Chicago and then to New York to be with my grandmother for my boarding school’s Easter vacation. There was no Secret Service buddy meeting me in Chicago and accompanying me on the train to New York. No one looking after me. I was alone—and it did feel very strange.
8
Religion in Our Family
Much of this chapter is conjecture because the subject was never discussed openly among us. Often, as I could observe, going to church depended simply on who in our hierarchy was planning to attend. But the subject of religion itself was out of bounds for conversation. It was a private matter—which gave rise to all sorts of rationalizations.
When I was a child—early in the 1930s—attendance at church may have been declining but it was still the norm of society in order to belong. It was the proper thing to do. A century earlier, however, when America was expanding its frontiers to the West, and new towns sprang up across the plains to accommodate the pioneers, carrying a letter from one’s previous church to verify that you were a churchgoer in good standing was essential when it came to being accepted by your new community.
I always felt that my grandfather was a deeply religious person. And yet his profound sense of God was never ostentatious. In fact I had the impression that my grandfather tried to avoid going to church if he thought he could get away with it. “I don’t like people watching me saying my prayers!” said the president of the United States when pressed by the first lady to attend. A good excuse, I think, but my guess is that, really, the church sermons bored him. He did like to sing, however—singing out, as the Methodists do, you might say.
While in the White House or staying at Hyde Park I joined the entourage at church on Sundays. At Hyde Park I knew—indeed I took for granted—that we had “our” pew. It was marked by a silver plaque inscribed “James Roosevelt.” I also was proud of my grandfather’s being the senior warden at St. James, a lovely church just across from the Vanderbilt estate in the village of Hyde Park.
At St. James we were “low church.” Our rector was not “Father” Wilson but “Mr.” Wilson. Indeed any vestige of papism was to be avoided. That meant that all religious display was frowned on, for example, fancy vestments or, heaven forbid, incense. All that was what my mother might refer to as “folderol.”
My grandmother, as well as my great-grandmother, were more regular churchgoers than Papa. We always accompanied Grandmère to church in Washington. We would be bundled up against the cold if it was winter or dressed in our Sunday best if it was clement weather. Off to church we’d go, Sis and me, with our nurse Beebee, joining the first lady in the large White House limousine. Sometimes, if it was only to St. John’s Church on Lafayette Square just across from the White House, we would walk. But occasionally we went to other churches as both grandparents thought the president’s wife should show her respect for other denominations. (I don’t think I ever went with our grandmother to a fundamentalist church, though I once did this, taken by my nurse—who was later scolded by my mother for her initiative. For my part, I had been impressed by the enthusiasm I saw there, not the usual subdued reverence I was used to.)
Going to church in Washington with my grandfather I found much more fun than accompanying my grandmother. FDR used his big open car, and he liked having Sis and me in the back seat with him. While sirens were prohibited, this being Sunday, we still had the motorcycle outriders to intervene at the intersections we crossed, as well as the bustle of the Secret Service men running alongside. I liked the roar of the engines and the people waving in recognition, not minding at all their “oohing” and “aahing” and pointing to “Sistie and Buzzie.” Riding with our grandmother was much more subdued; she didn’t like recognition, she said. I feel she also worried that it might “puff me up.” She was right, it did. I enjoyed the limelight but knew not to show it too much. My sister exhibited an indifference she felt our mother would approve of.
Normally, as I mentioned earlier, there was no discussion of religion in our household. One’s religious feelings and affiliations were considered private. If occasionally I overheard the labels “atheist” or “agnostic,” I knew they were references that were frowned upon—although intellectually tolerated. (Yes, I instinctively understood the distinction.)
When I listened to one of FDR’s fireside chats—sometimes sitting in the front row of the few chairs facing my grandfather and his battery of microphones—it didn’t seem at all odd to hear him occasionally refer to God. In 1944, when my mother sent me a draft of the D-Day prayer with which FDR would address the nation on June 7, it was indeed nothing less than a prayer to the Almighty. And yet when asked by the press to give forth about his personal beliefs, FDR’s limited response was, accompanied by the usual grin, “I am an Episcopalian and a Democrat.” Seriously, I would never have dreamed of asking my Papa—or my grandmother—about their religious inclinations. I took the formalities of our limited religious practice for granted, and went along with it unquestioningly. Like referring to sex, talking about God or Jesus was not something ever done within my earshot.
During my childhood there were also several other important subjects that polite society felt it best to avoid (except when speaking discreetly, sotto voce). They included how much money you made, and any reference to your politics. All these subjects were to be avoided. Being a polite boy I would never have broached the subject of religion with anyone in the family. But I observed, especially as a teenager, the tensions between my
grandmother’s participation in organized religion and her children’s derisive remarks about religion and its practice. Wanting approval all around, I didn’t know where I stood—and wouldn’t for years.
Being for or against a particular issue—secular ones, of course—was the center of conversation at the dining table. But religion was omitted. Whether a person might be Roman Catholic or Jewish was occasionally mentioned. (That someone could be Jewish but not “observant” might be noted.) Yet I could observe the contrast between my grandparents and their children, meaning my mother and uncles, in their attitudes to religion. And this striking difference between the generations puzzled me.
One thing I understood from my grandmother: our faith was for everyday use, not simply Sunday attendance at a beautiful church. I felt this made sense, and indeed it became nothing less than the foundation of my identity and my values. I sensed that this profound belief also lay deep within my grandfather, even if we never talked about it.
My grandfather had no trouble referring to his religious values in his political speeches. Note the statement below that he made to a Democratic Party convention.
Never since the early days of the New England town meeting have the affairs of Government been so widely discussed and so clearly appreciated. It has been brought home to us that the only effective guide for the safety of this most worldly of worlds, the greatest guide of all, is moral principle.
We do not see faith, hope, and charity as unattainable ideals, but we use them as stout supports of a Nation fighting the fight for freedom in a modern civilization.
Faith in the soundness of democracy in the midst of dictatorships.
Hope renewed because we know so well the progress we have made.
Charity in the true spirit of that grand old word.
For charity literally translated from the original means love, the love that understands, that does not merely share the wealth of the giver, but in true sympathy and wisdom helps men to help themselves.
We seek not merely to make Government a mechanical implement, but to give it the vibrant personal character that is the very embodiment of human charity.
We are poor indeed if this Nation cannot afford to lift from every recess of American life the dread fear of the unemployed that they are not needed in the world. We cannot afford to accumulate a deficit in the books of human fortitude.
Would you find either George Bush or Bill Clinton addressing their fellow Democrats or Republicans in this highly political way, while using faith, hope and charity as the basis for condemning the immorality of their political opposition?
But even though religion was not talked about, I grew up in a family where morality was very much the background to our lives. Even “spirituality” was not referenced—I suspect it would be considered too personal—but what was considered right, and what was wrong, was plainly drawn from a religious sense. There was nothing rigid—politics requires flexibility and compromise (even deviousness)—but the underlying morality based on religious conviction was always there.
9
Hostility of Eleanor Roosevelt toward Her Mother-in-Law
Eleanor Roosevelt is an icon who stands apart among the many celebrities of the twentieth century. More than just a celebrity, she was a political figure both as first lady and, after FDR’s death, when she represented the United States at the United Nations. She continued to write her daily column, My Day. She also wrote regularly for magazines, published her autobiography, and appeared frequently on radio and television. In the last ten years of her life she wrote several books. With her overflowing diary of appointments she was seen as being always in perpetual motion.
During the White House years she had become loved by many Americans across the country—especially by women, because of her concern for them—owing to her compassion and her tireless energy as she worked to ease the pain of people suffering from the Great Depression and its aftermath. At the United Nations, more than any other delegate, she was the principal person behind the General Assembly’s passing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. When she died, three presidents, Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy, as well as Vice President Lyndon Johnson, attended her funeral in the Rose Garden at our family house at Hyde Park, where she was buried next to her husband.
My grandmother was, and is, recognized as one of the most influential people in the politics of her day. It is difficult to imagine anything said or written about her that would detract from her bright image. She is admired and revered all round the world. In his eulogy Adlai Stevenson even referred to her as “First Lady of the World.” Thus, to consider that she might have had a dark side is akin to blasphemy.
Yet she did.
In my memoir of growing up in the White House under the tutelage of both my grandparents, Franklin and Eleanor, I am quite frank about the elements of Eleanor’s personality that were a burden to me, particularly her persistent hostility toward my father. Her rigidity was practically ideological. But any criticisms I make in no way detract from my love and admiration for my grandmother. She was undoubtedly the most significant person shaping my life. But I feel it is important to make sure that those who greatly influence society—prominent figures in our history, such as Eleanor Roosevelt—are portrayed as fully human beings, many sided—just like the rest of us, and not just pictures in history books or statues cast in bronze, for us to look up to and admire. Pursuing that idea, I write this chapter because I have long been puzzled by my grandmother’s having “taking against” her mother-in-law.
The fact is that Eleanor’s hostility was largely responsible for sullying, indeed smearing, the image of Sara Delano Roosevelt, my great-grandmother. (As children, my sister and I her “Granny,” just as our mother and her generation had done. As noted earlier in this book, we called our grandmother Eleanor “Grandmère.”)
Sara Roosevelt indeed was a strong woman, an assured personality, confident of her secure place in society—and she enjoyed being the president’s mother. She was one of the last of the Victorian grandes dames. She was also an excellent manager, working hard with her staff to maintain the family’s estate at Hyde Park, which her son, my grandfather, Franklin Roosevelt, considered his home. Sublimely self-assured, Granny was the much-loved matriarchal figure for our family.
In retrospect it appears to me to be Granny’s confident acceptance of her role in society— and in our family—that really bothered my grandmother. Granny would have smiled, much amused, at hearing herself referred to as a grande dame, but she wouldn’t dream of changing her lifestyle. It was who she was.
But to disapprove of your mother-in-law’s Victorian background and her calm acceptance of the upper-class position in which she was raised is not sufficient grounds for Eleanor’s pointed hostility—what I call “taking against.” Yet that is what Eleanor Roosevelt did, setting the pace in establishing a false image of Sara. And it was backed up by Eleanor’s authorized biographer, Joseph Lash, in all of his books, as I will show later.
It is my grandmother’s stereotyped portrayals that the press routinely echoes when describing Sara Roosevelt as dominating, bossy, and constantly interfering. Sara’s son, Franklin, is frequently described as being “dominated” by his mother. Sara becomes a set piece, an arrogant and spiteful ogre, a mother-in-law who made Eleanor Roosevelt’s life miserable. She is a throwback to an old order. Journalists, probably seeking facile characterizations, use adjectives such as snobbish, overbearing, bullying, and controlling when describing Sara Roosevelt’s treatment of her daughter-in-law. Oh, poor Eleanor! Many times I heard my grandmother, with a rueful smile, regaling the company after supper with stories of her plight. She would describe her mother-in-law as totally out of step with today’s world.
It was indeed she who launched this pattern of exaggerated images. Writing or speaking to family and close friends, the word got around: “Mrs. Roosevelt said . . .” You may read in the archives of the Roosevelt Library what my grandmother wrote to many peop
le, including my mother. I quote some of these remarks in Too Close to the Sun. The widely read McCall’s magazine printed what they said was an unpublished article by my grandmother—though it is now known to be a hoax—in which Eleanor is highly critical of Sara. For many years the U.S. Park Service unwittingly used this article as the background for their “interpretation” of Springwood for visitors. Fortunately, this has now been changed.
So I want to explore as best as I can what is behind all this. Eleanor’s focused hostility toward Sara simply bears no relation to the kindness and toleration for which my grandmother is known. To me, it is more than puzzling. Particularly for those of us who lived with Eleanor Roosevelt and revere her, it is a profound contradiction.
A review of the history helps.
When Eleanor became engaged to marry Franklin Roosevelt she was, as I see it, very much a bundle of inhibitions, likely the reflection of the many conflicts carried forward from her difficult childhood. Women of her background (not very different from Sara’s own) were taught to be self-assured, accustomed to life with servants and governesses, confident in their privileged role in society. Eleanor Roosevelt, however, was not actually like that. She could put on a good front, but underneath there was an abîme (an abyss) of anxiety.
From what my grandmother recalled of her own mother, it does not seem to me that Anna Hall Roosevelt encouraged confidence in her daughter. The child was not allowed to feel she could become like her mother. It is possible Eleanor was more at ease with her father; but how did she interpret his long absences—sent away from home to “recover” from his alcoholic and drug addictions? As an eight- or nine-year-old, did she guess at the truth? While it did not alter the sentimental love Eleanor always carried for her father, her relationship with him as a child certainly could not have encouraged her acquiring a sense of personal confidence. Further, my grandmother never mentioned enjoying a special relationship with either a nurse or a governess, with whom she would have spent a good amount of time.
Upstairs at the Roosevelts' Page 10