Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Thoughts for today

"You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face."

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."

Eleanor Roosevelt

1 comment:

  1. Captain Lambert,

    Eleanor Roosevelt was indeed a woman who was pushed to do her best for her country at a time when our country did not think that women could do much of anything, but bear children and do house work, WWII altered those thoughts and women replaced many men in the workforce of our country, because most of the men were in the Armed Forces and the women of this country stood up to do the men’s jobs.

    After FDR died Eleanor Roosevelt worked in various positions for the US Government and was well respected for the work she did, her opinion was heard often on radio, she had a very distinct voice, and distinct speaking qualities as well. I was fortunate enough to meet her one time, that time was onboard the Burlington Zephyr which I and a Navy buddy of mine boarded at Bond, Colorado, which was my hometown, we were headed to Denver to fly back to California after leave from our ship. After we boarded the train the conductor came around to collect tickets and informed us that Eleanor Roosevelt was on board and would like to talk to any Service Men that might be on the train. Of course, we knew who she was and we said, yes, we would like to talk to her. The conductor gave us instructions on how to get to her rail car, he told us to go up to her car right away. We hardly knew what to expect from this meeting but we went up to her reserved car and were able to speak to her. This was sometime in 1956 and both of us, my buddy and I, had heard Eleanor Roosevelt speak on the radio but what she said to us was just a little surprising, she said nothing about how she may have felt about young men and their service to our country, instead what she said was, young Sailors always have the cleanest bodies and the dirtiest minds of any of our fighting men, and she then started talking to her assistant. We both said nothing but thank you, Mam, and left because we felt she was done with us. It gave us both the feeling that she looked down on us as lower class individuals.

    Very Respectfully,
    Navyman834

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