Eleanor Speaks Out!
It all started in 2002, when I was a social studies teacher at a middle school in Eugene, Oregon. I was assigning one of my favorite projects which required students to “choose and become” a hero and give a short speech. At that age, adolescents grow as they ask themselves: “Who am I?” “Who are they?” and “Who are we?” This was the perfect identity formation project.
Over the dozens of years I had given out this assignment, I saw hundreds of “heroes” march through my classroom. And truthfully, I had grown tired of kids making such choices as Marie Antoinette (who spoke headless from her neck) and Abigail Adams (who dressed in his mother’s prom dress). So that year, I switched it up a bit. I assigned the 23 American Nobel Peace Prize winners instead.
I remember saying something like this:
“You will be researching one of the 23 American Nobel Peace Prize winners. I will pick the name for you, but we can negotiate. You will research and take notes from three primary sources, dress as your new hero, and deliver a first-person speech on the American Peace Laureate’s contributions to the world. Be prepared to answer questions from the class at the end.”
So things were different that year, but I didn’t realize how different until I heard an edgy voice speaking up from the back of the classroom.
“And just who will you be, Dr. Pierce?” a student asked.
Not missing a beat after seeing a famous name on an unused book across the room, I retorted, “I’ll be Eleanor Roosevelt.”
And with that unexpected declaration, I realized to my chagrin that my students wouldn’t be the only ones learning about themselves.
I like to say that Eleanor chose me that day. I certainly didn’t know that studying the woman I had disliked as an adolescent would renew my faith and spur me to action. I didn’t know she would become my mentor across time and help me to answer, “Who am I now?”
As I began researching Mrs. Franklin Roosevelt, I was inspired by what I found. I discovered that Mrs. R. was not a Nobel Peace Prize winner, but she was nominated four times. Eleanor was also a person people really liked or really hated. To my delight, I found out that she and Franklin were my distant cousins. Although her childhood had been miserable and her shyness and fears permeated her early life, she survived and thrived. As an adult, she urged people to eliminate discrimination both as the First Lady of the Land for 12 years from 1933 to 1945 and as the First Lady of the World in her pivotal contributions to the United Nations after Franklin’s death. During the last 17 years of her life, she consistently addressed the most urgent issues of our time in an international setting: war and peace, human rights and racial justice, political repression and civil liberties.
Her influence during the beginnings of the United Nations as well as her leadership in the Human Rights Commission brought about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This list of 30 standards was ratified on December 10, 1948 at 3:00 AM in Paris, France, after which she received a standing ovation for bringing about the impossible. International agreement. As the chair, she urged countries’ delegates to work together for long hours so that they could be dismissed in time for Christmas.
Eleanor Roosevelt loved Christmas. During the rest of the year, in the midst of the First Lady’s overloaded schedule of appointments, speaking engagements, travels, and the writing of My Day1 newspaper columns (over 8,000 in her lifetime), she remembered those she loved. Gathering small personalized gifts for her friends and family wherever she went, Eleanor recorded her finds in a large notebook to prevent duplications. At Val Kill, her home on the sprawling Hyde Park acreage, the Christmas closet was stuffed by December when family gathered to celebrate. As Charles Dickens wrote in The Christmas Carol about the reformed Mr. Scrooge, a book the Roosevelts reread out loud each year during the holiday, Eleanor knew how “to keep Christmas.”
Hundreds of books and articles have been written about Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, later known as the most influential woman of the 20th Century. Although Mrs. R. often wrote about her own faith, prayer and convictions, less scholarly emphasis is placed on those topics and are sometimes ignored.
Back in the classroom, however, it was soon time for the second part of the assignment — to re-enact our heroes. The first time I appeared as Mrs. Roosevelt, I was quite nervous. I had hoped my students would forget, but they kept asking when I would give my speech. I delayed. Finally, near the end of the school year, I pretended to be absent. Teacher friends helped to gather the 70 sixth graders together for the “show” that day. They were told that a guest speaker from the community would be talking about volunteering, and they were urged to be respectful. I entered into a small auditorium walking slowly and deliberately to the center of the room clutching my pocketbook and smoothing my dress. Lura, the teacher, was not recognized as I walked through the door wearing a 50’s red dress, mink cape, gray wig, a blue-feathered hat, white gloves, brown shoes and large black-rimmed glasses.
In a high-pitched, aristocratic voice, I began slowly:
“Hello, children. My name is Eleanor Roosevelt. I was born on October 11, 1884 and died on April 7, 1962 of complications from military tuberculosis. I am happy to be here with you today. Of all the jobs I performed in my life, teaching history, drama and literature at a private girls’ school called Todhunter in New York City was my very favorite. I love young people, and I loved teaching. I was sad to have to give it up when Franklin became President of the United States.”
Mrs. Roosevelt had a great time that day as she talked in what seemed like a magical space and time. The students responded with thoughtful questions after entering into the experience as naturally as if she were really there. I believe she was.
After that initial appearance, she and I began speaking in other venues, and I began advertising my small business as “Eleanor Speaks Out.” Talking as Eleanor in varied situations, I put on her persona as I put on the wig and clothing over my own clothes trying to meld two people while allowing for my own personalized quips along the way. I have taught history workshops, sipped tea at symphony fundraisers, stumped for political causes, addressed the League of Women Voters, led peace rallies on International Peace Day, and keynoted for civic groups and schools throughout the United States for the last 13 years.
Recently, I got back from Colorado where I met the executive director of Future Earth after an Eleanor presentation at a church retreat. Our private conversation centered on what Eleanor Roosevelt might do or say today, especially in light of her Christian beliefs.
“Would she bring urgent awareness to global warming and climate change?” he asked.
The question reminded me of the boy’s challenge from the back of my classroom years ago. Would my answer affect where Eleanor and I travel together in the next few years? Would this be too hard?
“Yes, I believe that if Mrs. Franklin Roosevelt were alive today, she would address climate change head on,” I replied without hesitation.
First of all, Eleanor absorbed change and thrived, and she utilized various forms of communication to influence others for causes affecting all citizens (especially the disenfranchised) throughout her lifetime. Eleanor was a blogger through her daily columns before the term was ever coined and a proponent of worldwide interconnectedness before technological connectivity was a reality. After the White House, she made commercials for Good Luck margarine, the airlines and even mattresses, hosted radio and TV shows interviewing prominent people, wrote 27 books ranging from biographies to children’s books, endorsed political candidates, traveled worldwide to meet with controversial world leaders and appeared on the Frank Sinatra show a few years before her death to share one important guiding word with the audience of millions.
“Hope.”
Secondly, Eleanor Roosevelt lived from her faith foundations. Her response to “love your neighbor as yourself” was to perform unceasing actions intended to make the world a better place.
According to her son, Elliott, Eleanor prayed each night. After a packed day’s work, his mother would change into her old blue robe and kneel beside her bed. Insight into Eleanor Roosevelt’s spiritual life is found in the words of that nightly prayer.
“Our Father who has set a restlessness in our hearts and makes us seekers after that which we can never fully find, forbid us to make us satisfied with what we make of life. Draw us from base content and draw us to far-off goals. Keep us at tasks too hard for us so that we may be driven to thee for strength. Deliver us from fretfulness and self-pitying; make us sure of the good we cannot see and of the hidden good in the world. Open our eyes to simple beauty around us and our hearts to the loveliness men hide from us because we do not try to understand them. Save us from ourselves and show us a vision of the world made new.” 2
Eleanor continually sorted out her beliefs and responsive actions over time as she sought her own answers to “Who am I now?” I/we hope to do the same.
In Eleanor’s words: “I was fortunate because I grew up in a family where there was a very deep religious feeling… But as I grew older I questioned a great many of the things that I knew very well my grandmother who brought me up had taken for granted…” She continues, “… perhaps that’s what we all had to do — think for ourselves what we could believe and how we could live by it…”3
I believe Eleanor’s Christian faith was the foundation that fostered her choices, her sense of duty, and her bravery in facing problems. Her timeless influence and connectivity with people all over the globe remained strong until her death. She really did know how to “keep Christmas” and how to visualize a world made new.
On Dec. 25, 1944, in her Christmas My Day column, my cousin, Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, wrote:
“The Life of Christ is the symbol of the perfect kind of love, the love which should rule the world.”
Notes
1. My Day: The Best of Eleanor Roosevelt’s Acclaimed Newspaper Columns, 1936-1962. Edited by David Emblidge. Da Capo Press. March 1, 2001.
2. A World Made New A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by Mary Ann Glendon. Random House, N.Y. 2001.
3. This I Believe, The Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women, Edited by Jay Allison and Dan Gediman, (“Growth That Starts from Thinking” as featured in the 1950s Series.) Holt paperbacks.
