my life with F. D. R.

(Continued from page 54)

Mother. We were told that, as Father
needed quiet, it had been decided to
send us children to Hyde Park to
stay until school started in New York.

Soon after school started, Father
was brought to New York from.
Campobello and spent several weeks
in Presbyterian Hospital. During
those weeks at the hospital, followed
by the many months when he was
bedridden in New York, Father was
going through that awful period of
readjustment and was, at the same
time, suffering severe and continual
pain.

My grandmother was determined
that Father should give up all
thought of a job or career and settle
down at Hyde Park as a “gentleman
farmer.” But she found herself up
against what amounted to a stone
wall—a close-working triumvirate
consisting of Father, Mother and
Louis Howe. She found that these
three were devoting all their time to
seeing that Father’s life should con-
tinue on the level of usefulness on
which it had traveled up to then.

But Granny was not one to give up
because of a stone wall. She knew
that Jimmy and I were seeing little
or nothing of our parents and that
our lives were suddenly quite cut
off from them and decided to use us
to get Louis Howe to live away from
our house.

Her remarks about Louis fell on

pretty fertile ground with us because,
as I’ve said, we didn’t find Louis
much of a companion for our pranks.
Granny, with a good insight into
my adolescent nature, started telling
me that it was inexcusable that I, the
only daughter of the family, should
have a tiny bedroom in the back of
the house while Louis enjoyed a
large, sunny front bedroom with his
own private bath.

Granny’s needling finally took
root; at her instigation, I went to
Mother one evening and demanded
a switch in rooms. A sorely tried and
harassed mother was naturally any-
thing but sympathetic; in fact, she
was very stern with her recalcitrant
daughter. I kept my small room.

This was the beginning of a pe-
riod of adjustment to an entirely new
life for the whole family. Mother be-
came more and more busy in poli-
tics and other activities in which she
grew interested. She learned that the
busier you are, the more you are ex-
pected to undertake. I gradually grew
accustomed to a new relationship
with Father—a relationship where I
had to go to his room and sit on a
chair or at the foot of his bed when I
wanted to talk to him. For some
months my knowledge that he was
suffering made me shy with him.
But gradually his gayety, his ability
to poke fun at himself as he learned
to move himself around through the

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