November 8, 1962OBITUARY
Mrs. Roosevelt, First Lady 12 Years, Often Called 'World's Most Admired Woman'
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt was more involved in the minds and hearts and aspirations of
people than any other First Lady in history. By the end of her life she was one of the
most esteemed women in the world.
During her 12 years in the White House she was sometimes laughed at and sometimes
bitterly resented. But during her last years she became the object of almost universal
Again and again, she was voted "the world's most admired woman" in international polls.
When she entered the halls of the United Nations, representatives from all countries rose
to honor her. She had become not only the wife and widow of a towering President but a
noble personality in herself.
In the White House and for some time thereafter, no First Lady could touch Mrs.
Roosevelt for causes espoused, opinions expressed, distances spanned, people spoken to,
words printed, precedents shattered, honors conferred, degrees garnered.
She was as indigenous to America as palms to a Florida coastline, and as the nation's
most peripatetic woman, she brought her warmth, sincerity, zeal and patience to every
corner of the land and to much of the world.
Her seemingly ceaseless activity and energy provoked both a kind of dazzled admiration
and numberless "Eleanor" jokes, particularly in the nineteen-thirties and forties. The
derision fell away at the end; the admiration deepened.
Held in High Esteem
After her husband's death and a career as mistress of the White House that shattered
precedents with a regularity never approached by Abigail Adams and Dolley Madison,
President Harry S. Truman appointed Mrs. Roosevelt in 1945 a delegate to the General
The esteem in which Mrs. Roosevelt was held in this country was immense, despite
intense criticism that some observers held stemmed from persons who differed politically
and ideologically with her husband. She was accused of stimulating racial prejudices, of
meddling in politics, talking too much, traveling too much, being too informal and
espousing causes critics felt a mistress of the White House should have been left alone.
She even became what she called a "phony issue" in her husband's campaigns for re-
On the other hand, she was hailed by countless numbers as their personal champion in a
world first depression-ridden, then war-torn and finally maladjusted in the postwar years.
She was a symbol of the new role women were to play in the world. As a result of her
work in the United Nations, particularly in behalf of the little peoples of the world, this
esteem soon transcended national barriers to become virtually worldwide.
Although she was no longer First Lady, her influence had diminished but little.
A typical example of the kind of enthusiasm she could arouse abroad, one among many
examples, occurred during Mrs. Roosevelt's visit to Luxembourg in 1950. Perle Mesta
was then American Minister to that country.
One of Mrs. Roosevelt's first acts was to call upon the Grand Duchess in her palace--a
long call. To catch just a glimpse of her, thousands of Luxembourgers stood outside for
hours in an unrelenting rain, calling again and again: "Mees-ees Roose-velt! Mees-ees
Thousands more turned out later throughout the tiny country in villages gay with banners
and flowers and smiling faces. In her distinctive warbling falsetto, she thanked as many
as she could.
Mrs. Roosevelt was an enthusiastic airplane traveler. She went down to the mines. She
wandered throughout the world with little ostentation. She maintained a prodigious
Her Influence Questioned
The more important chroniclers of Mr. Roosevelt's days in the White House have noted
few instances in which it could be established that her counsels were of first importance
in changing the tide of affairs. Nor did President Roosevelt always confide in his wife
where matters of state were concerned. For example, he did not tell her that he was going
to Newfoundland to confer with Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Britain on matters
concerning the war. He merely told her that he was "going on a trip through the Cape
There were, however, many known incidents in which Mrs. Roosevelt was able to direct
the President's attention to such matters as injustices done to racial or religious minorities
in the armed services or elsewhere in the Government.
With characteristic feminine candor, Mrs. Roosevelt always insisted that she had to do
what she felt was right. As a result, injustice and inequality, whether manifested by such
diverse agencies as the State Department or the Russians, evoked a strong reaction.
Mrs. Roosevelt got along well with the State department until the Palestine issue arose.
In February and March of 1948 she publicly opposed American policy, which maintained
an arms embargo on shipment of arms to Israelis. She also came out in favor of
partitioning Palestine into Jewish and Arab states.
While often critical of Soviet tactics, Mrs. Roosevelt consistently urged the United States
to continue efforts to end the cold war by negotiation. She also advocated the
abandonment of nuclear weapons tests and called for United States recognition of Red
Some of the most serious criticism leveled at Mrs. Roosevelt followed her support and
sponsorship of a number of groups in which Communists and "fellow-travelers" were
active. She often pointed out that she recognized a person's right to be a Communist,
provided he did not deny this affiliation. Later, however, she pointed out that experience
had taught her that it was impossible to work with Communist-dominated groups.
Took Stand in Column
Her break with groups she once staunchly defended came as the war approached and as
she found that several of them were opposed to national defense, lend-lease and the
national draft. In August, 1942, after the United States had become an ally of Russia in
the war, she made her position even clearer by formally repudiating the left wing of the
American Labor party and by supporting the right wing in a primary fight.
In 1949 Mrs. Roosevelt became embroiled in a bitter controversy with Cardinal
Spellman, Roman Catholic Archbishop of New York. It followed some remarks she had
made against use of Federal funds for parochial schools.
In discussing a measure for aid to education then before Congress, Mrs. Roosevelt wrote
in her "My Day" column that "those of us who believe in the right of any human being to
belong to whatever church he sees fit, and to worship God in his own way, cannot be
accused of prejudice when we do not want to see public education connected with
religious control of the schools, which are paid for by taxpayers' money."
The Cardinal accused Mrs. Roosevelt of ignorance and prejudice and called her columns
"documents of discrimination unworthy of an American mother."
The dispute was ultimately resolved amicably, but not before it was waged by leading
members of the clergy and became an issue in the 1949 campaign as political figures
aligned themselves for and against Mrs. Roosevelt. It ended in August of that year when
Cardinal Spellman called on Mrs. Roosevelt at her Hyde Park home and both issued
statements clarifying what they said had been a "misunderstanding."
Her service as a delegate to the United Nations began under President Truman in 1947
and ended, temporarily, in 1952. In 1961, President Kennedy appointed her as one of
five members of the United States delegation to the 15th session of the General
In the intervening years, Mrs. Roosevelt devoted herself to her syndicated newspaper
column and to the American Association for the United Nations. When leading
Democrats formed the National Issues Committee in an effort to restore Democratic
control of the Federal Government, she accepted its national chairmanship.
Mrs. Roosevelt never lost interest in the Democratic party. She addressed its national
convention in 1952 and 1956, and both years campaigned for Adlai E. Stevenson. At the
1960 convention in Los Angeles, she pressed for a Stevenson-Kennedy ticket and
seconded Mr. Stevenson's nomination.
Throughout her years of association with the party, Mrs. Roosevelt had been identified
with its liberal wing. In 1959, speaking at a dinner in honor of her 75th birthday, she
took sharp issue with former President Truman, who also addressed the dinner. Mr.
Truman lashed out at "hot-house liberals" whom he accused of hurting the cause of
liberalism and inviting the way for reaction. Mrs. Roosevelt replied, saying: "I know we
need a united party. But it cannot be a united party that gives up its principles."
The same year she joined with former Senator Herbert H. Lehman in a drive to
consolidate the Democratic reform movement in New York City to oust Carmine G. De
Sapio, leader of Tammany Hall.
The next year she again aligned herself with the reform group and stumped for Senator
John F. Kennedy. Her most recent political activity was as a leader, with Mr. Lehman, of
the reform faction during the 1961 mayorality race in New York and during the 1962
primaries. Her candidate in 1961, Mayor Wagner, won re-election by more than 400,000
Theodore Roosevelt's Niece
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was born to Elliott and Anna Hall Roosevelt in New York on
Oct. 11, 1884. Theodore Roosevelt, the 25th President, was her uncle. The families of
both her parents were prominent socially, the Roosevelts a wealthy family of Dutch
descent and the Halls of the same family as Philip Livingston, the English-descended
signer of the Declaration of Independence.
Mrs. Roosevelt's father was known as a sportsman and big-game hunter, and her mother
was a noted beauty of the day. When Eleanor was 8 her mother died, and the young girl
went to life with her maternal grandmother, Mrs. Valentine G. Hall, at Tivoli, N. Y., not
far from Poughkeepsie. Her father died a year and a half later.
She was taught at home by tutors for the most part, and she recalled later in her
autobiography, "This Is My Story," that her real education did not begin, until she went
abroad at the age of 15.
As a child she worried because her mother and other members of her family were
somewhat disappointed in young Eleanor's appearance. When she was 15 the family
decided that it would be better to supplement her social chances by a finishing trip
abroad. In 1900 she was taken to England and placed in Allenswood, a school conducted
by a Miss Souvestre, whom her grandmother remembered as a stimulating and cultured
lady who had instructed her in her own youth.
She remained abroad for three years, studying languages, literature and history under
Miss Souvestre, perfecting her French and Italian, and spending her vacations traveling
on the Continent and absorbing European culture. She was drilled in the French system
of acquiring and repeating precise judgments on everything.
At the age of 18 she was brought back to New York for her debut. "It was simply awful,"
she said in a public discussion once. "It was a beautiful party, of course, but I was so
unhappy, because a girl who comes out is so utterly miserable if she does not know all
the young people. Of course I had been so long abroad that I had lost touch with all the
girls I used to know in New York. I was miserable through all that."
She was relieved of her misery within two years by meeting Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
who had graduated from Harvard in 1904 and had come to New York to attend the
Columbia Law School. He was serious-minded and intent on a career. He found Miss
Roosevelt good company.
Besides, the two Roosevelts were distant cousins; they had met first when he was 4 years
old and she 2; and they got along easily together. Their relatives approved so highly that
the marriage followed naturally. President Roosevelt came from the White House to
New York on March 17, 1905, to give the bride in marriage.
After the wedding, a brilliant social event in new York, Mrs. Roosevelt passed into
domesticity and maternity for a score of years. The couple's first child, Anna, was born
in 1906. Eighteen months later a son, James was born. A second son, named Franklin D.
Jr., died three months after birth. Three more sons, Elliott, another Franklin D. Jr. and
John Aspinwall, were born during the first 11 years of marriage.
Mrs. Roosevelt had her first brush with politics and government in 1911 after Mr.
Roosevelt had been elected a State Senator and the family moved to Albany. In 1913 the
Roosevelts went to Washington when the future President was appointed Assistant
Secretary of the Navy in the Wilson Administration. In 1920 she saw more of the
political scene when her husband was a candidate for the Vice Presidency on the
democratic ticket with James M. Cox, who ran for President against Warren G. Harding.
The next year poliomyelitis struck her husband, and Mrs. Roosevelt attended him and
encouraged him for three years until it was evident that any further recovery would come
slowly through the remainder of his life.
It was at this point that Mrs. Roosevelt emerged seriously in search of a career. Friends of
the family and Mr. Roosevelt's physicians urged Mrs. Roosevelt to work with her
husband in an effort to rekindle his interests. Some observers felt that shortly thereafter
her determined introduction of activity after activity into her own life and his was a
deliberate maneuver to rescue him from his invalidism, and force him to resume his
former interest in affairs of the outside world.
Began Political Activity
She took part in political discussion with other women after several years of suffrage, and
pointed out in those early years, prophetically perhaps, that "women were not utilizing
their opportunity to elevate politics." She joined the board of the League of Women
Voters, took part in work of the Women's Trade Union League, and beginning in 1924
took an active role in the state and national committees of the Democratic party.
Mrs. Roosevelt continued to increase her activity with lectures, parties and speeches in
the interest of popular political enlightenment, education and welfare. In 1926, with
Marion Dickerman, she founded the Valkill Shop, a nonprofit furniture factory near the
Roosevelt home in Hyde Park, to give employment to disabled men in the manufacture of
early American furniture. A year later, with Miss Dickerman and Nancy Cook, she
bought the Todhunter School, a New York private school for girls, and Mrs. Roosevelt
became director and teacher of classes in modern history and current events.
She withdrew from politics with the election of her husband as Governor of New York in
1928, but despite this withdrawal she enlarged her interests. She was busier than ever
acquiring ideas and spreading them. She became a director of the Foreign Policy
Association and of the City Housing Corporation. In addition, she became a syndicated
newspaper columnist, edited a magazine and judged contests.
On March 4, 1933, her husband was inaugurated as the 32d President, and Eleanor
Roosevelt began her 12 years as the First Lady. At the White House she established a
weekly conference with the press, the first of its kind ever held by a First Lady, and
attended only by women journalists.
The White House became a somewhat different place under the influence of Mrs.
Roosevelt. Except for the formal occasions and official events, there was a gay
informality about it, with grandchildren and an odd assortment of dogs scampering
through its halls. Visitors were frequent and, Mrs. Roosevelt once laughingly remarked,
"We call it a hotel."
Broadened Her Writings
In 1939 the nation noted a change in Mrs. Roosevelt's newspaper writings. Until then she
had devoted the bulk of her space to women. In 1939 her columns began discussing the
Works Progress Administration, United States neutrality and other current topics, with
the result that political observers noted that what she had to say either anticipated or
supplemented the President's statements. Concomitantly, she found herself more and
more in the field of controversy.
The same year Mrs. Roosevelt announced in her column her resignation from the
Daughters of the American Revolution because the society had refused the use of
Constitution Hall in Washington for a concert by Marian Anderson, the Negro contralto.
As the war came she saw her four sons go into the service. She was an active
interventionist even before Pearl Harbor. In 1941 she took her first "government job," as
assistant director of civilian defense, with the late Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia of New
York as director. It was not a happy experience.
In its early stages, the civilian defense effort was chaotic and whether the responsibility
lay with the directors was never established. Mrs. Roosevelt resigned in February, 1942,
after a storm arose over her appointment of Mayris Chaney, a dancer and protegee of
hers, to a post with the Office of Civil Defense.
Flew to Visit England
Mrs. Roosevelt flew to England in October, 1942, becoming the first First Lady who had
ever gone abroad alone and also the first First Lady to fly the Atlantic.
On her English visit she toured training camps of American troops and was greeted with
shouts of "Hi, Eleanor." She saw several of the many orphaned children she adopted for
the duration of the war, was a guest at Buckingham Palace and visited widely.
Mrs. Roosevelt was the author of numerous children's books and records. She also
published "India and the Awakening East," "You Learn by Living" and two volumes of
autobiography, "This I Remember" and "On My Own."
She had just passed her 78th birthday--and had just left the hospital--when her last book
was published. Entitled "Eleanor Roosevelt's Book of Common Sense Etiquette," it held
that true good manners consist of sincere goodwill and of being oneself.
Mrs. Roosevelt held honorary degrees from Russell Sage College, the John Marshall
College of Law and Oxford University. She was an honorary member of Phi Beta
She also received many awards, including the 1939 award from the Humanitarians, the
1939 Churchman's Award, the first annual Nation Award in 1940 and the first annual
Franklin Delano Roosevelt Brotherhood Award in 1946.
Others were the Award of Merit of the New York City Federation of Women's Clubs in
1948, the Four Freedoms Award in 1950, the Prince Carl Medal (Sweden) in 1950 and
the Irving Geist Foundation Award in 1950.
As U.N. Delegate She Inspired Draft of Human Rights Covenant
Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt's work with the United Nations kept her name before the
public for a number of years after the death of her husband in 1945.
President Harry S. Truman, successor to President Roosevelt, named Mrs. Roosevelt a
delegate to the general Assembly when the organization came into being in 1945. The
next year, Mrs. Roosevelt was elected chairman of the Commission on Human Rights of
the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization.
Mrs. Roosevelt brought a rare combination of toughness, practicality and idealism to the
halls of the United Nations. The fact that her lofty objectives were viewed by "realists"
as being impossible of attainment did not deter her from fighting for them.
In her first appearance at the United Nations at the London meeting in 1948, Mrs.
Roosevelt was successful in overcoming a certain reserve that many delegates had toward
the presence of women in the world body's deliberations.
Her energy and ability soon won her the respect and cooperation of the late Senator
Arthur Vandenberg, Michigan Republican, and the late John Foster Dulles, both of whom
were veterans in diplomacy. Also, both were influential members of the United States
representation before the United Nations.
Mrs. Roosevelt played an important part in drafting the Covenant on Human Rights,
designed to establish basic civil rights of peoples throughout the world.
She fought long and hard for the acceptance of this covenant by the United Nations. The
proposed covenant ran into difficulties. Semantics intervened and it was impossible to
reach a community of understanding on basic terms. France and other powers with
colonial or similar problems opposed the agreement. Senator John W. Bricker, Ohio
Republican, organized Senate opposition to it and it never gained complete acceptance.
Mrs. Roosevelt resigned the chairmanship of the Commission on Human Rights in April,
1951. When the Republican Administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower took
office, Mrs. Roosevelt tendered her resignation from the United States delegation.
President Eisenhower accepted it in a letter in which he thanked Mrs. Roosevelt for her
"sincere concern for the less fortunate" as well as her "skill in the discharge of unique and
Mrs. Roosevelt was succeeded at the United Nations post by Mrs. Oswald B. Lord of