How it Began…

Eleanor Roosevelt

I can precisely trace the beginning of my love of history to a specific book that my grandmother gave me. It was a biography of Eleanor Roosevelt (pictured above). I was nine years old and had strep throat. The book was old. it had a faded blue linen-textured cover.

I related to Eleanor Roosevelt right away. She was a shy, awkward girl with a pronounced overbite. I was a shy, awkward girl with a terrible overbite and my classmates called me “Bucky Beaver.”

I related to Eleanor Roosevelt because of my relationship with my grandma. I spent a lot of time with her when I was little. She was the major influence in my young life. When we cleaned the house, we sang Franklin D. Roosevelt’s campaign theme song, “Happy Days Are Here Again.” I knew all the lyrics when I entered kindergarten. My grandma told me a story about Roosevelt visiting Portland during his campaign in 1936, grandma and her high school friends ran along Powell Boulevard to see the President waving to the crowds in his open car. She said Roosevelt was the best president since Lincoln, and she was a devout Christian and Roosevelt ranked only slightly lower than Jesus.

The biography was the first adult length book I read. I felt pretty grown-up for reading this “big book.” Once I started, I realized that Eleanor was more than just the president’s wife. She had to fight pretty hard to have the life that she led and to take risks to be a fighter for marginalized people. I discovered Eleanor Roosevelt didn’t have the right to vote until she was 36 years old, and she got to vote for her husband as Vice President. Here’s a bit of trivia, Franklin Roosevelt was the Democratic nominee for Vice President in 1920, sharing the ticket James Cox. They lost, and everyone thought the career of Roosevelt was over when he was stricken with polio in 1921 (spoiler alert - polio did not end his political career) and Eleanor was a big reason that his career resumed.

I was fascinated by Eleanor Roosevelt. That biography led to my love of history and I devoured everything about 20th century American history. One thing I noticed is that history was primarily stories about important men with women, like Eleanor, playing supporting roles. Maybe in a history book there would be a little sidebar box about Susan B. Anthony. I made a point of trying to dig a bit to find women’s stories. No easy task, as through most of the 20th century, women just weren’t encouraged to participate in public life, but they did anyway.