A visit the temple of liberalism, the FDR/ER National Historic Sites, Museum & Library.
Recently I reported in this space that I was going to do something I had wanted to do for a very long time:
Off my bucket list this Christmas Break: A day at the FDR Museum, Library, and National Historic...
Well, I went yesterday. I expected to be moved; I expected to learn something I didn't know; but I did not expect I would be so moved, and learn so much about Franklin and Eleanor.
We did the tour of Springwood, FDR's boyhood and adult home, first. The ranger guide could not have been more excellent. He had lived in China, he told us at the outset, and actually was teaching Chinese and Chinese history in an academic setting. He revealed, as we stood outside the house, the Roosevelt families close connections with China beginning with a business relationship in silks and other products (including at one point, opium, although it was legal then - the guide claimed that the importation helped wounded American soldiers in the Civil War).
I didn't know any of this. I was able to answer a question that he said no one had ever answered correctly in any of his previous tours. The question was, "Does anyone know who Soong Mei-ling was?" I responded, "Madam Chiang Kai-shek," and he graciously acknowledged that the streak was over. (I did not know her Chinese name, but assumed this answer based on context.) He went on to detail her relationship with the American Government, and how Roosevelt made sure she was prominently promoted in order to encourage American sympathy (before Pearl Harbor) for China with respect to the war against the Japanese. He then offered that Roosevelt's support of China, and his insistence on treating it as a major power, which both Stalin (with eyes on Manchuria) and Churchill (holder of the Hong Kong "lease" ) opposed, but Roosevelt won out and China is representing the UN as a "great power" largely from his efforts.
Roosevelt also invited the King and Queen of England, again, before Pearl Harbor, to Springwood. He had a collection of Revolutionary War cartoons displayed on the wall of the foyer, and his mother told him to take them down as they made fun of the British; Roosevelt promised he would do so, but didn't, but the King (George VI) and Queen were suitably amused, and also learned what a hot dog was and how to eat it.
The rest of the tour was equally moving, standing before the room where Roosevelt was born, and of course, Eleanor's room.
After the wonderful and moving tour of Springwood, we headed back to the museum and library. The Ranger who greeted us was very warm and welcoming, and he told us with a big smile, that if we thought we'd be there for an hour, we wouldn't do so, we'd be there for at least three hours. He was right on; we weren't done, but we wanted to be sure to make time to go to Eleanor's Valkill.
The museum was featuring a display on the 1944 campaign, Roosevelt's last. There was a huge focus on the decision to run again while his health deteriorated. Displays included his (disturbing) medical records, and portions private diaries of people who knew how bad his health was, including his daughter Anna. I came away with the impression that he thought he could make it through to the end of the war, but planned to resign after and retire. I was hoping for more insight to the brilliant choice of Harry Truman for VP, but it remained inscrutable, apparently a compromise between the liberal wing of the party, who wanted Henry Wallace but could not endorse James Byrne because of his segregationist views, and the conservatives, who wanted nothing to do with Henry Wallace. Truman seems to have been a compromise, but one made between people who were aware of who Truman was. Regrettably, Roosevelt did not communicate all that much with Truman.
There was a moving display that recorded Eleanor's remarks to Truman on assuming the office. When Truman asked if there was anything he could do for her, she replied, “Is there anything we can do for you? You are the one in trouble now.”
She did her share, serving with great distinction as the first US ambassador to the United Nations, pushing through the oft (regrettably) ignored "Declaration of Human Rights" in 1948.
Valkill was the most moving, as I expected it to be. I did not know that it was planned and built as a factory to help train and employ future skilled crafts people, and was only converted to a home. The modesty of the home was exactly what I expected of the greatest Democrat of the 20th century (in my opinion). The guest list he went over was most impressive, including Nehru, Prime Minister of India, as well as many other luminaries of the 20th century, including Winston Churchill, Danny Kaye, Katherine Hepburn, Harry Belafonte...and of course...as a correspondent in my previous post noted, John F. Kennedy, who came begging her support.
I know I've seen the correspondence between Eleanor and JFK, which bordered on hostility, but I did not remember that she responded to his supplications by addressing her return letters as "My dear boy..." The guide told the story of how, after nominating Adlai Stevenson at the 1960 Democratic Convention, believing "the third time is a charm," and expecting Lyndon Johnson to prevail because "he knew everyone" she accepted Kennedy as the nominee. We were standing in the living small living room, and the guide pointed out the small table at which Eleanor and Kennedy sat for two hours, behind closed doors, where she lectured him on Civil Rights and other issues for which he had little or no passion (but she did), and related how the photographs of him leaving Valkill showed him looking like a schoolboy after being lectured by the Principal on his behavior.
The guide and I swapped Joe Kennedy stories; I related the story of Eleanor being asked by Franklin to throw Joe Kennedy out - to disinvite him from a weekend stay at Springwood, and the guide told a story about how the bad blood between them may have been related to Franklin, when he was under Secretary of the Navy in 1915, having tricked Joe Kennedy, an investor in Bethlehem Steel, into delivering destroyers to Argentina, something Kennedy didn't want to do before being paid.
One thing I didn't know was that Valkill was almost demolished. Franklin and Eleanor's son, John Roosevelt, who inherited, sold off the home's contents and rented the home to tenants, and upon retirement, sold the place to a Long Island dentist, who in turn, sold it to developers who planned to tear the place down until the local Hyde Park Community responded with outrage, whereupon the US Government, during the Carter administration, acquired the property as a historical park. The National Park Service has been working to recover the original furnishings that John Roosevelt sold; they claim to have recovered about 80% of them, including the table at which JFK sat while Eleanor lectured him.
I would say the museum, by the way, showed incredible respect to Eleanor as an equal partner in the greatest Presidency of the 20th century. I knew many of the details of her life, but the feel of her presence was incomparable to me. I did not know that she had a brother who, like her father, drank himself to death, and who also had some episodes of destructive violence at Springwood that helped to break up a friendship between Eleanor and two of her best friends. Marion Dickerman, and Nancy Cook, who motivated the construction of Valkill. (Valkill is not a quaint cottage; it looks like the factory it was designed to be.)
(I did disagree with the Valkill guide's description of her as ever having fully embraced the role of the dutiful wife of a politician. I believe that was never the case with such a magnificent soul, although I am aware of how much she doubted herself in the early years of her marriage. My feel is that she was always a force, albeit one not always cognizant of her own power, after having been educated by Marie Souvestre at the Allenwood academy.)
What the full museum showed was how very bad, how disastrous, the continuing wet dream of the Republican Party, laissez-faire capitalism was, and how Roosevelt, possessed of enormous optimism, set the country on the course of recovery from the Great Depression, and how we all still live in the glow of his legacy.
My wife and I plan to go back. We're not done. If you are in the New York area, and if you believe that the role of Government should be to better the lives of all the citizens of a nation, you should go there. You will be moved.
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I hold Eleanor in the highest regard!
Joe is our modern-day FDR, imo.
I'd recently read a bit about a coup planned against FDR (here on DU, of course).
Dem presidents always have to clean up the messes made by qpukes. How any person who works for a living could vote R is mind boggling. 
Happy New Year to you & yours!