Upstairs at the Roosevelts' by Curtis Roosevelt

Author:Curtis Roosevelt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO026000 Biography & Autobiography / Personal Memoirs
ISBN: 9781612349404
Publisher: Potomac Books
Published: 2017-05-08T04:00:00+00:00

This background regarding the tense relationship between Eleanor Roosevelt and her mother-in-law, Sara Delano Roosevelt, is useful; it needs to be absorbed, seen in the context of a long-past culture. The kind of pointed hostility that developed between them is not common, however. And my grandmother was largely responsible for it.

The critical question remains: What made Eleanor’s attitude so strikingly different from the usual expressions of family tensions? What was behind her taking against Sara, often so vindictively? It makes no sense, especially since the younger woman was known for her sincerity and warmth toward other people.

One piece of the puzzle may include the range of Eleanor’s activity. She reached out to the whole of America. As we have seen, “Mrs. Roosevelt” became a household name. On the other hand, Sara’s scope was more restrained. She sought nothing more than to do her duty, as she saw it.

As first lady, Eleanor focused intensely on the events, and the people, with whom she was brought into contact through her engagements, her speeches and interviews, her writing, and her visits around the country. Each activity was connected with the social issues of the day. She did not purposely gather information for her husband, disliking the press dubbing her the eyes and ears of the president. But she shared with him her observations and assessments of how people were coping with the Great Depression and how much they understood of what he was trying to do through the New Deal programs. He greatly valued her opinions and read the notes and letters she regularly sent him.

It would never have occurred to Sara to assume this role. Although she supported FDR’s New Deal, and said so when asked, she did have her own way of seeing at least one of his programs. When the new Social Security Act had become law, an embarrassed Treasury Department official had to advise the president that his mother had not paid her social security taxes, and refused to do so, saying, “I can take care of my own!” FDR quietly paid it, and ordered the official not to let his mother know of his intercession.

Sara regularly worked with a number of voluntary organizations, and not only those of traditional concern to WASPs (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants). She consistently supported the Africa-America Institute and more than once hosted social events at her New York City house, including a fund raiser, in honor of Mary McLeod Bethune, the prominent African American leader. In 1938 the Jewish Forum awarded her the Albert Einstein Medal for Humanitarianism, noting Sara’s “broad sympathy and activities in alleviating the conditions of all people throughout the world who suffer from poverty, oppression and hatred.” In support of Eleanor, Sara invited to Hyde Park members of the Women’s Trade Union League, including Eleanor’s friend Rose Schneiderman.

I mention these engagements as representative of Sara’s attitude, one not actually like what is usually reported. Eleanor’s later comments about her mother-in-law would sometimes lead you to believe that Sara’s interests were limited to sewing circles and traditional (safe) charities.

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