Suzanne’s Personal Quote and Blog for 12/11/2022

Quote

Celebration of Eleanor Roosevelt

I celebrate a mind that could see so very far.

I celebrate a woman whose life was an international bizarre.
She traveled the world sharing the hope of American ideals.

She was constantly seeking truth and was her own … New Deal.

She knew her calling and never wavered in her voice.

She respected the cultures of others and honored their choice.

She knew that being right did not make something manifest.
She would continue to speak out even when others would protest.

She was kind, she was calm.

She was caring and like a healing balm.

For our country that was going through so much.

She understood that sometimes the people need a personal touch.

She understood that the common man and woman needed to be heard.

She knew the value and importance of keeping her word.

She accomplished more in her life than most would ever try to embrace.

She kept going like an engine that knew how to maintain its pace.
Such an incredible mind was inside her soul.

She knew what needed to be done and those things were her only goal.

Serving the people was what she came to do.

And I would be lucky if I managed to meet just a few.

But souls such as hers are a miracle in such critical times.

Without her incarnation at such a terrible moment of war crimes.

We would not have become the major force for freedom and hope.

And our world now would be even less able to cope.

That is why I study history and try to understand.

Because only then can we reclaim the respect and once again command.

A world that will try to tear itself apart.

And call once again for such a soul to impart.

The calm wisdom and knowing that accepts and understands.

A soul such as hers that really knows what is happening while she lovingly shakes hands.

~Suzanne Wagner~

Blog

I have been listening to the autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt and I have loved every minute of this audio book. For those that are interested in such things, I found it extremely interesting.

I had watched the series, “First Ladies” on HBO and she was one of the characters in that first round. All the first women in that first season were all the huge innovators that lived at their times.

Eleanor was very well educated for a woman at the turn of the century. Both her parents died when she was young, so she was raised by her grandmother and went to boarding schools abroad.
Most of the fortunes of her ancestors had been squandered and most of the money from her grandmother went to those opportunities for her to study in London, speak languages, and travel.
It shows how powerful a well-educated woman can become … even one as painfully awkward and shy as Eleanor was as a child.
Those strict boarding schools taught her a lot of structure and mental control. They taught about protocols, how to behave, how to respond, how to carefully consider her words, how to respect others’ views, and how to keep going when others would collapse.
It was also so enlightening as she explained (in detail) the strategies of the Republican Party all the way back then. It made me realize that this crazy making strategy has been their exact same strategy for over a hundred years!

That should shock everyone!
It shocked me!

We think that this hateful and dysfunctional pattern of resistance is something new, but it is not.
I believe that it is just more obvious now because of all the cameras on phones, the video, and the internet.

It shows how those in power use the  uneducated in such a way that they intentional cause them to react. They want the people to cause problems, disrupt, and undermine the good intentions of others. That is how those good people are thwarted and the bad continue to proliferate and maintain control.
Her autobiography shows that the good guys do not always win.

I was constantly amazed at her ability and the abilities of those around her at that time, at how they understood that if an idea did not work, you had to let it go and try something else.

She showed how often she put so much of her own personal money from writing, radio, and speaking engagements into charities. Because it was the right thing to do.

She reminded us how the wealthy at that time were carrying a terrible tax burden to the point that it was breaking the back of many not just the poor during the depression.
She put her own money into projects that would employ others during the depression and most of them failed. But they did manage to give decent work and wages to those so desperate and in need during that terrible time in history.

This woman traveled and probably knew more about each country in the world because clearly, she was a bit manic and restless. She was clearly a highly functioning Manic/Depressive.
She was constantly moving. Whether she was taking ships across oceans, planes to Australia to empower our troops during WWII, visiting Hiroshima after the atom bomb and during the reconstruction of Japan. She visited the countries destroyed by the Nazi’s and saw the terrible conditions of the people struggling to survive in all the European countries. And through it all … every day, she wrote a column for the newspapers and magazines (minus Sunday).

She was the eyes, ears, and feet on the ground for her husband Franklin D. Roosevelt.
After all, his polio did not allow him to travel easily, and walking was tremendously difficult.

She stood in lines and would shake a thousand hands a day and have something kind to say to everyone.

Her feet would be hurting but she would never complain. Even if she was standing for 7 hours!

She would eat with the enlisted men in the morning, the officers at lunch, and the hierarchy in the evening without any bodyguards.

She would take down the names of all the men in the hospitals and make notes on their condition and send personal letters to their families back home. She would also do that for any enlisted man who asked her to contact their family.
She would be up at dawn and out the door to do what was necessary at 8:20 am every morning and often did not get to bed until 1 am.

Clearly, she was one of the most prolific writers and influencers of her time. She was so much more than a political figure. She was an amazing diplomat and worked for our causes that helped shape the rules and regulations of the United Nations we have today. She was a political activist and often knew those she supported very well, personally, and their political positions. She favored those that were educated and understood the needs of the people at that time. Her choices to politically support did not always win.
But she did not mind because she understood that was not how politics worked.
After one loss you just had to keep doing what was right and try again.

She could speak frankly, honestly, and in ways that sometimes stung. Yet, she did it in a way that others did not take offense at her words because she knew how to compliment, condemn, and praise all in one speech.
She was married to Franklin in 1905 till his death in 1945.
He could not have picked a better person to be his life-long partner.

And while it was clear that Franklin had another woman as his lover for much of his life … up to his death, she was of the generation that one did not divorce and somehow, they both managed to have separate lives … but lives that intertwined in the most interesting of ways and that they had a deep mutual respect for each other’s lives and choices.

It seems that she also had a love affair with a woman journalist (that came out in the “First Ladies” series, and it is in Wikipedia but not her autobiography).
President Harry S. Truman called her “The First Lady of the World” because of her achievements on human rights. And was given a standing ovation at the United Nations General Assembly for her Universal Declaration for Human Rights that was adopted by the Assembly in 1948.
She was blatantly outspoken for the rights of African Americans and was greatly publicly disagreed with … because of her progressive ideas around basic human rights.

She is considered in the Top Ten Most Wildly Admired People of the 20^th Century by Gallup.
After being struck by a car in New York City, she was diagnosed with aplastic anemia and given steroids to control the disease. However, that activated a dormant case of Tuberculosis that was (amazingly) in her bone marrow. She died in 1962 from heart failure with her daughter Anna, by her side.

Her funeral was attended by President Kennedy, Vice President Lyndon B Johnson, former presidents Truman and Eisenhower.
In reading this autobiography, I was deeply moved by her self-discipline, and work ethic.
She never wavered in her positions on doing what was right even in the face of great opposition. She was a forward thinker that knew the rights of women needed to be heard and knew that to be heard well, a woman had to have more discipline and self-composure than most men.

I don’t think I have listened to the words of a woman with more respect and admiration than I did listening to her book.
The voice on Audible was someone who clearly learned in careful detail how she spoke, her syntax, and her way of speaking that was clearly a product of her education in London and France as a child and her ability to have an extraordinary mind that could hold vast amounts of information which were readily available to her without any hesitation.
Today, I celebrate this woman who believed in the highest principals of the American ideal and who worked tirelessly for those complex ideas to be understood and respected.

~Suzanne Wagner~

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