Eleanor Roosevelt

Posted October 14, 2007, 9:52 am
Credit Growing Bolder

Eleanor Roosevelt
Born: Oct. 11, 1884
Died: Nov. 7, 1962

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was the niece of President Theodore Roosevelt and the wife and distant cousin of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. She rivaled her presidential family members in popularity with the American public, and she is remembered as a tireless campaigner for human rights, no matter the person's race, creed or sex.

Her humanitarian efforts on behalf of children, the oppressed and the poor earned her the love of millions throughout the world. She was, as President Truman said, "First Lady of the World."

Born in New York City in 1884, she was orphaned by the age of 10. Her family sent her to a distinguished school in England at the age of 15, and when she returned, she met and fell in love with her cousin, Franklin D. Roosevelt.

As her husband began his political career, she became his most trusted adviser and confidant, especially after the effects of polio damaged his body.

Upon his election to the White House in 1933, the 49-year-old began to redefine the role of First Lady. Over the next 12 years, she held news conferences, traveled across the country, gave lectures and spoke candidly in a daily newspaper column called, "My Day," about her day-to-day experiences.

• At the age of 62 (1946),  despite her proclamation that her "story was over" after her husband's death, she began her service as the American spokesperson in the United Nations.
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  Eleanor Roosevelt
• At the age of 64 (1948), as the first chairperson of the UN Human Rights Commission, she helped draft and gain approval for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
• President Harry S. Truman called Roosevelt the First Lady of the World in honor of her extensive human rights promotions.

After The Age Of Seventy

• President John F. Kennedy's administration tapped the former First Lady to chair the President's Commission on the Status of Women, which sought to find an alternative to the ERA, but Roosevelt died just before the group released its final report.
• Until her death at the age of 78 in 1962, she worked hard to improve the status of working women. She opposed the Equal Rights Amendment because she said it could hurt women.
• "What other single human being has touched and transformed the existence of so many?" close friend Adlai Stevenson said at her memorial service.
• In 1968, six years after her death, she was awarded one of the United Nations Human Rights Prizes.
• There was also an unsuccessful campaign to award her a posthumous Nobel Peace Prize.

Quotes:

• "Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art."
• "I could not at any age be content to take my place in a corner by the fireside and simply look on."
• "Learn from the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough to make them all yourself."
• "Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life."
• "One thing life has taught me: if you are interested, you never have to look for new interests. They come to you. When you are genuinely interested in one thing, it will always lead to something else."
• "The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience."

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