Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site

"First Lady of the World"

A few days after Franklin D. Roosevelt died in April 1945 a reporter hailed his widow outside her home and asked for a statement. "The story is over," she replied. True, Eleanor Roosevelt’s many years as the most influential First Lady ended suddenly with the death of her husband, but her own story continued for nearly two more decades. Vigorously promoting the humanitarian causes so close to her heart, this unassuming woman earned the title – in the words of President Harry S. Truman – "First Lady of the World."

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was born October 11, 1884, to Elliott and Anna Hall Roosevelt, wealthy New Yorkers. Her early memories were not all happy ones: "I was a shy, solemn child," she recalled in her first autobiography. Both her parents died by the time she was 10, and Eleanor lived with her mother’s family. Left alone much of the time, she spent long hours reading but acknowledged "my real education did not begin until I went abroad at fifteen." At the Allenswood school in England, headmistress Marie Souvestre saw great potential in the timid but intelligent teenager and cultivated in Eleanor a concern for the oppressed that eventually became her trademark.

Eleanor Roosevelt Humanitarian

Her academic training complete in 1902, Eleanor returned to New York and busied herself working with the city’s poor immigrants. She also began seeing her handsome distant cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt; before long the two were engaged. On St. Patrick’s Day in 1905, with scores of distinguished guests looking on, Eleanor was given in marriage by her "Uncle Ted" – President Theodore Roosevelt. Since her upbringing taught her to act as a proper wife, Eleanor tended to the household and five children while her husband embarked on a political career.

In 1921 their lives were altered irrevocably. While vacationing at their summer home Franklin contracted a near-fatal case of polio. When the worst was over, Franklin fought to regain the use of his legs, but his physical activity thereafter was extremely limited. Franklin’s political mentor Louis Howe prodded Eleanor, always painfully shy in public, to become vocal in the Democratic party so the name Roosevelt would not be forgotten. She dutifully made speeches and official appearances, and discovered that she had a talent – and a liking – for politics. By the mid-1920s, the Victorian matron who once opposed women’s suffrage was working enthusiastically for women’s rights and other progressive causes.

Eleanor was an old hand at politics by the time Franklin was elected president in 1932. She realized that as a president’s wife she was expected to deal exclusively with social activities, but she aimed to be more useful. The "New Deal" program for coping with the disastrous effects of the Great Depression offered opportunities for her at the forefront of the Roosevelt Administration. Franklin depended on Eleanor to gather first-hand knowledge since he could not and soon she became known as Eleanor Roosevelt humanitarian. Besides bringing him vivid descriptions of the country’s plight, she urged swift action to change conditions she considered intolerable. Eleanor toured the country extensively, observing poverty-stricken rural areas, city slums, prisons, and even the inside of coal mines. Then came World War II and Eleanor took off overseas to visit wounded American service-men in England, the Caribbean and the South Pacific, where one amazed observer noted, "She went into every ward, stopped at every bed, spoke to every patient." Her contribution to the Roosevelt era was immeasurable. She believed that "sometimes I acted as a spur, even though the spurring was not always wanted."

Accomplishments of Eleanor Roosevelt

The accomplishments of Eleanor Roosevelt are many. After Franklin’s death, Eleanor looked forward to a quiet retirement at Val-Kill Cottage where she planned to devote time to her large family. In 1946, however, President Truman called her back into public life as a delegate to the United Nations General Assembly. After resigning in 1952, she resumed her career as a world traveler – begun during the war – acting as a "good will ambassador." Considered the elder stateswoman of the Democratic party, she worked in the 1956 and 1960 presidential campaigns. And she still found time to continue her "My Day" column which she started in the 1930s, lecture at Brandeis University, host a television talk show, write books, and participate in numerous human rights organizations. She did not slow down until a bone marrow disease made her too ill to run at her old pace. Her death on November 7, 1962, ended her fight to improve the lot of all mankind. "About the only value the story of my life may have," Eleanor once wrote, "is to show that one can, even without any particular gifts, overcome obstacles that seem insurmountable if one is willing to fact the fact that they must be overcome." Her claim was all too modest. Had she not possessed "particular gifts," Eleanor Roosevelt’s story would not have been the story of a great American.