Eleanor Roosevelt's My Day Column and Her Visit to North Carolina, 1942

From Eleanor Roosevelt’s “My Day” column, published in various newspapers on February 2, 1942. She wrote about her visit to North Carolina in this column.

MONTGOMERY, Ala., Sunday—It was very pleasant yesterday morning to see Ambassador Daniels' smiling face greeting us at the station in Raleigh, North Carolina. He seems to have inexhaustible energy, for he had been to a Birthday Ball in his own birthplace, Washington, N. C., the night before until two in the morning. We found Mrs. Daniels much improved since her return home, and had a pleasant family breakfast with two of their boys, whose wives and children dropped in to see us.

At 11:00 o'clock, we started to Chapel Hill, but stopped on the way at the NYA center near Durham, where State Administrator, Mr. John Lang Jr., is doing a really excellent piece of work with the North Carolina draftees, who were rejected for physical reasons. The medical setup is an example to rural areas, for here is a very unpretentious but extremely efficient small hospital, which could be duplicated in many places.

It is the type of setup which could easily become a county clinic, where rural doctors could pool their resources and send their patients, when they need medical attention for eyes, teeth and surgical care. For the yearly check-up, which doctors are emphasizing more and more for every individual, this kind of county clinic in rural areas will be invaluable.

We had a delightful luncheon at Chapel Hill with President and Mrs. Frank Graham and their guests, heard Miss Harriet Elliott, Dean of the Woman's College at Greensboro, make an excellent talk before the delegates of the 32 colleges, who had gathered at Chapel Hill under the auspices of the Carolina Political Union and the International Student Service. for a two day conference. It was nice to find that both Miss Louise Morley, Conference Secretary of the I.S.S., and Miss Jane Seaver of OCD, had made real friends among so many students from various colleges, who spoke to me about them with real appreciation.

Jane Seaver and I attended one of the forum discussion groups in the afternoon. I saw an excellent civilian defense information service setup in the college library, a very good local defense council control center in the town, had tea at the Presbyterian Church parlor with a number of the delegates, dined in the college cafeteria and spoke and answered questions in the auditorium in the evening, at a meeting which Governor and Mrs. Broughton also attended.

We ended the day by a short visit at the Birthday Ball, which seemed very well attended. Then two of the boys drove us to Greensboro to take our train.

E.R.

(COPYRIGHT, 1942, BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC.)

Eleanor Roosevelt, "My Day, February 2, 1942," The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Digital Edition (2017), accessed 10/21/2017, https://www2.gwu.edu/~erpapers/myday/displaydoc.cfm?_y=1942&_f=md056098.

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