An Incident From My Youth

An Incident From My Youth

WHEN I MENTION THAT THIS LETTER RELATES TO SOMETHING INTERESTING IN REGARD TO ELEANOR ROOSEVELT IT IS BECAUSE I HOPE THE PERSON THAT HELPS YOU WITH YOUR MAIL WILL KNOW THAT IT WILL BE SOMETHING YOU MIGHT TRULY WANT TO SEE!

This is an incident from my youth (I am 86 years old this year- 19 April 2002), The scene is Chautauqua, N.Y. on the day that FDR made his "I HATE WAR" speech. My husband was the gardener at the Atheneum hotel at that time and when he came home from work on that particular day he had so much to tell me it seemed hours in the telling.

First he told me about being called by the management for special assistance. It was to help take someone in a wheelchair up a newly constructed ramp and into the hotel. "You can't guess WHO it was. It was the President! Of course neither of us had been aware of his disability, not many people were.

But the most wonderful thing in his life was that he was given another special duty that day which was to man the elevator in the annex. And into this elevator stepped the most beautiful woman he had ever seen and he gave her a ride to the second floor.

It was Mrs. Roosevelt, he said, the wife of the President. She asked him what he was reading, it was right there for her to see, a western, one of his favorite types of reading, and he held it out to her to see and she said it looked interesting.

My God! Ernie said, "She is not a bit like that stuck up guy last week (or last month or whenever he had been there), one whose best-seller was then on the market, a guy who thought you should spend every waking moment of your life improving yourself, and you did not do this by reading westerns!

He had said something kind of harsh to Ernie on the elevator I guess, at least not pleasant, critical of people wasting their time on crap. Eleanor's attitude so surprised him, he was almost inarticulate when he told me all this.. Mrs Roosevelt apparently had a soft pleasant way or conversing at close quarters, and he loved her and made me love her because of this kindness to him. One of those strange little things that happens in just ordinary little lives.

Of course we heard the speech, Ernie and I. They had rigged up the little park in the center of town with a public address system, we couldn't get into the coliseum it was chuck full and spilling over; we sat on a bench in the park and listened. But we never talked afterwards about that at all. It was always about Eleanor.

I think this little story is known only to those who heard it from me, and I thought that you would appreciate it greatly.

I have wanted to write this to you a very long time, and what decided me to do it and not just think about it was that I read recently that when you were in the White House you had a framed picture of Eleanor Roosevelt above your desk. My feeling about her is little short of idolatry. I have several books about her the one I turn to most often is the one written by Joseph P. Lash.

It is entitled "Eleanor and Franklin", and neither in this or any other book have I found mention that she was in Chautauqua that day.

In Lash's book there is a footnote about FDR's speech there. Page 433, giving the date as sometime in August of 1936. I thought it would have mentioned her if she had been there. So I have wondered about that. In some other part of the book Lash does say I believe that she did try to contrive little hide-a-way times to herself, she might have been able to get an hour or two to herself yet she wanted to hear his speech but not endure all the hoopla that preceded it.

I was so glad you won in New York. I spent my high school days in western New York state (Jamestown, N.Y. not far from Chautauqua). To pass the time I use my computer nowadays to write whatever I think about, and I came across something I wrote quite a while back, on the possible value in therapy of just sitting quietly with someone, not asking them to Talk.

It seems that I was wondering if there might be value not only in the standard treatment, (a therapist listening to people talk), but also the opposite ...that just being read to consistently day after day might benefit many. Because some people find it impossible to talk, there is no way for them to reveal themselves in speech. They just can't relate to that. To such a patient perhaps listening day after day to a pleasant voice reading just about anything would be the most soothing thing in the world. Pushing and prying is too much for them, and remembering is torture.

It was my idea it seems that anyone listening would first pick up the rhythm, and it would not demand a single thing from them, nothing at all, the words would not mean anything but if some expectation in them is satisfied time after time by this listening surely it would lead to some kind of trust again. If a loss of trust has led to a loss of hope and then a firm withdrawal to nothingness? Having even one little thing you can fully “Trust” is a real basis for trying again. This piece was written in despair because I had lost someone that way. It is not the same as losing someone to death.