History
Revisited:
An Interview with Eleanor Roosevelt II
by Dorothy Davis
When
your name is Eleanor Roosevelt II, “Getting
a pizza delivered is particularly challenging,” said
the gracious 85-year old niece and namesake of the
famous first lady, in her newly published first book, With
Love, Aunt Eleanor. “After all that information about mushrooms
and meat and cheese they want to know your name and
address, and when I tell them, there is always a
pause before the young man says, “lady, you
better come down here and pick up the pizza yourself!”
Hotel reservations
can be difficult too, she confided as we sipped tea
one morning recently, seated next to her eldest son,
Stewart Elliott, a study in contrasts: she, serene
and elegant, in a pink Chanel-like jacket with black
trim, a white high collared pleated blouse, black
skirt and comfortable black shoes; he, relaxed and
casual, in a green T-shirt and blue jeans. But, she
admitted, “I always wear jeans back
home.” Home is Davis, California where she works
in her studio as an artist, mostly on drawings, many
of which charmingly illustrate her book. But she also
works on paper mosaic tabletops, using a process she
invented, since stone mosaics are too heavy for her
to lift. The finished products are mosaic tables that
you can easily move about. She also enjoys bird watching
with her friends, and lecturing at local schools about
Eleanor Roosevelt. She is dedicated to bringing
the personal side of her aunt to the world.
Her book had
its genesis in “Before
I Forget,” the columns about her aunt that she
wrote for her son Lauren Elliot’s Internet magazine,
who is also the principal of Scrapbook Press, publisher
of her new memoir. Her goal was to “convey a
sense of the person who loved and laughed and clapped
her hands, who stood quietly by a dogwood tree in bloom
in the woods or took up her pen late at night to write
notes to friends while the rest of the household slept.” The
result is a charming, intimate, humorous book that
lovingly, but truthfully, depicts her amazing aunt.
[See the review in this issue, page 29.]
She does not
gloss over difficulties. When asked what problems
Eleanor Roosevelt had to deal with in her life, she
replied, “I could talk
about Lucy Mercer [Franklin D. Roosevelt’s mistress
while he was married to Eleanor]. I used to feel badly
for my aunt. Her own background had inhibited her from
speaking out for herself. I think that she really longed
to be loved and FDR was so charming; he loved the ladies,
and she couldn’t be that way herself. She felt
inadequate, but she loved him. They had a very good
kind of working relationship.”
Education Update
(EU) asked, wasn’t
that similar to Hillary and Bill Clinton? ER II responded
that she had “wondered about it because of the sex angle. I met Hillary Clinton the other day for the
first time. I think Hillary, being a lot younger than
my aunt, probably knew more. My aunt was brought up
in a strait-laced New York family, a society that just
was inflexible. And so what she learned about what
she felt capable of doing she did by herself. She had
this naïve thought that you get married and live
happily ever after; it was a huge blow, and I just
felt a little badly that she never could quite forgive
Franklin. Because I think we all have to work out our
relationships.”
EU: Hillary has said that she greatly
admires Eleanor Roosevelt and that she is her inspiration.
ER II: Oh yes,
I think she does. But I just think that my aunt would
have simply said, ‘Well
Hillary did that herself.’ She wouldn’t
have taken credit for being an inspiration.
ER
II’s father, Hall Roosevelt, named her for
his older sister. Their father, Elliott Roosevelt,
was the younger brother of President Theodore Roosevelt.
Sadly, both Eleanor Roosevelt and ER II’s fathers
died of alcoholism when they were young. Eleanor
Roosevelt was orphaned when she was 9 years old,
her mother having died a year earlier. Eleanor Roosevelt
II lost her father when she was 22, but he had left
her mother and the children when she was 3 and her
mother had remarried.
There were many
benefits in being a Roosevelt. “I
was 13 when Uncle Franklin was elected president the
first time,” she said, “and he kept on
being president. I loved going around Washington with
a police motorcycle escort with Uncle Franklin. Out
in Arlington they kept a couple of horses because my
aunt liked to ride. I used to ride with her along the
river. She never considered having an escort or a guard.
Of course they wanted to watch over her, but she wouldn’t
hear of it!” “Once my Uncle Franklin was
reviewing the fleet, probably in the early 40s. I was
invited to join him and went out from the Boston area
on the presidential destroyer. The school I was attending
said ‘This will be an unexcused absence!’ But
I went out anyway and reviewed the fleet.” The
school ER II attended for 8 years, from 6th grade to
graduation, was the Winsor School for girls in Boston. “It
was fairly expensive. Most girls were from very Republican
Conservative families. I was a Democrat surrounded
by Republicans. [People would say] ‘Your uncle
is taking this country straight to ruin!’” (As
ER II explains in her book, FDR, who lead us out of
the great Depression and through the Second World War,
also “led the United States through a social
revolution. During his tenure, Congress passed legislation
that instituted Social Security, standardized the number
of hours in a workweek, and suggested a minimum wage.
Labor unions were also organized.” All of this
of course made him very unpopular with conservative
Republicans.) “But most teachers [at ER II’s
school] were very liberal Democrats. I was surprised
to find that the teachers were my friends and admired
my uncle and aunt. I got a really wonderful education.
They taught the tools you need: how to research things,
how to do what you want to do, and the courage to do
it. It was assumed that of course you could do it even
if you were a woman.”
ER
II’s mentors were her mother, her aunt, “the
most influential person in my life” and “Mrs.
Stevens, a teacher at the Winsor School. She was
marvelous, just in opening up possibilities to you,
always pulling you, making history come alive, making
you want to do your homework, read your books, get
to know people around the world.”
Instead of going to college she studied
sculpture, woodcarving, design and drawing at art school,
Cranbrook Academy in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where
the instructors included Carl Milles, a Swedish sculptor,
the Finnish architect Eero Saarinen and the American
designer Charles Eames. It was there she met her first
husband, Edward Elliott, a British architectural student,
and the father of their four children
From 1946 on, ER II and her family spent
a month every summer with Aunt Eleanor at her Val-Kill
Cottage in Hyde Park. Her son, Stewart has wonderful
recollections of those summers.
“We
were very active,” he said, “Riding horses,
swimming, playing games. But we, as well as my cousin
John’s children [who lived in Hyde Park] had
to work for two to three hours a day, mowing, baling
hay, splitting wood, filling fireplaces. I loved it. Aunt
Eleanor always had us for tea. I remember sitting at
the tea table. It was reasonably formal.
Manners were important. It was a unique experience.
Wiltwyck was a school nearby for difficult children
from New York City. She wanted them to come see her
every summer and have a picnic by the swimming pool. We
had a big long table set up with hot dogs, hamburgers,
desserts. She would read to them from Kipling’s Just
So Stories.
These kinds of experiences made me really understand
that if you can better a person’s life, you are
improving the world substantially. If out of that picnic
one or two kids got better and thought differently
about the human race, it was worth it. I learned from
my aunt that we should do small gracious acts all the
time. That might mean helping someone, or leading something,
or contributing effort or time. I’m in the housing
business in Michigan. I do quality Green, environmentally
sound, construction. I feel that I can make some family’s
life better by making them a custom home, and I also
work with Habitat for Humanity.”
Eleanor Roosevelt
died on November 7, 1962. Eleanor Roosevelt II wrote
in her book that on the day of her funeral she “understood…that
her life force would never die. She is always with
us, urging us on to carry forward her wise tolerance
and love of mankind.” Her aunt’s proudest
legacy, she told us at this interview, “was the
United Nations. Her greatest hope and what she really
worked her whole life for was peace on earth.”#