J. William T. "Bill" Youngs, Eleanor Roosevelt: A Personal and Public Life, Chapter  Ten
      "Eleanor Roosevelt interviews John F. Kennedy" courtesy of Brandeis University
The thing which counts is the striving of the human soul to achieve spiritually the best that it is capable of and to care unselfishly not only for personal good, but for the good of all those who toil with them upon the earth.  
- Eleanor Roosevelt, The Forum

Chapter 10: On Her Own

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"Eleanor Roosevelt" Courtesy of the Wiki commons

Summary

The chapter follows Eleanor Roosevelt as she learns to live without her husband.  It details her involvement in different organizations and causes during the 1950s and ends with her death in 1962.  

Author reads from the Text

After Eleanor's death the extraordinary character of her life became all the more apparent.  Not only was she once of the most influential people - man or woman - of the twentieth century, she also possessed a remarkable ability to "walk with kings and keep the common touch."  She could be as friendly to a soldier in a hospital as to the Queen in Buckingham Palace; and she could involve herself in important administrative business, such as chairing the UN Commission on Human Rights, yet still spend hours writing letters to strangers who wanted her advice or comfort.  The epitaphs written to her over the years are extraordinary in their consistent veneration.  "Because of her life," wrote William Chafe, "millions of others may have experienced a new sense of possibility."  Adli Stevenson declared, "She would rather light a candle than curse the darkness, and her glow has warmed the world."  A wonderful Herblock cartoon shows a cluster of cherubs in heaven looking shyly from behind their clouds at an approaching stranger.  Awestruck, one of them remarks, "It's her..."


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