Trustee Anna Eleanor Roosevelt Rededicates
Roosevelt University
University News

At a special ceremony on November 15 commemorating the 60th anniversary of the dedication of Roosevelt College, Trustee Anna Eleanor Roosevelt unveiled a bust of her grandmother, Eleanor Roosevelt, made possible by Trustee Seymour Persky. It will be placed in the University's lobby along with a statute of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Ms. Roosevelt also read a memorable speech given by her grandmother when she officially dedicated Roosevelt College on November 16, 1945, during a gala dinner at the Stevens Hotel. The First Lady was making her first visit to the Midwest following the death of President Roosevelt on April 12, 1945. Roosevelt College had just opened at 231 S. Wells Street in September with 1,500 students from 40 states and 15 countries.

The following are remarks made by Trustee Anna Eleanor Roosevelt at the rededication ceremony:

My grandmother was wrenched from her period of mourning by the call from Chicago to come dedicate Roosevelt College. She did it because of her beliefs in a world of friendship, progress and peace, and in the ability of young people - the "next" generation to accomplish what her own had only begun.

Her appearance in Chicago came only a week after the birth of my eldest brother, James, and I am sure she was thinking of him as she addressed the eager and motivated students, faculty, staff and civic leaders on November 16, 1945.

Let me read some of what she said in her own special, conversational way of speaking:

"I like to think that when you live democracy, as they are living it here, that you are probably setting a pattern and doing the best kind of teaching because you're showing your city and your state and your nation that democracy in education can be a fact. Here it's working; the very things that people tell you won't work do work, and the people who make them work are enjoying it.

Democracy is something which we have always talked a great deal about. But we've always known that we didn't really have a true democracy in all the things that we believed democracy should represent. But we knew that we had an ideal and that when we were ready, we would work to achieve it. Well, nothing made us hurry.

But now, we have to hurry, because the world has changed. The war has changed the whole world; and from now on we who talked about democracy have got to live it, because we know that unless we prove by our example to the world that democracy is not just words, it's something that through education you can achieve, then the world will have proof that democracy is a possibility and that the things which make us live in peace together are possible, not only in the United States but in the world as a whole.

Here in this great city you have many, many races, many religions; and in Roosevelt College those races and those religions will meet. They will work together, and it will be an example of what can be achieved by cooperation.

I'm tempted sometimes to think that though we have been strong in the military way, and we have to be strong in the economic way, we also have to be strong, I think, in a spiritual way; because we have to lead the world. We know that we have today the greatest military power in the world. But sometimes I think we're a little appalled at the fact that we have to have the spiritual strength to lead the world, that we have to prove here that the world can live in peace. We are the proving ground. If we can do it, then perhaps the world can do it.

And that is something which is going to require education in many, many ways. It's not going to be enough in the future to have people who know how to make war. We're going to have to have people, too, who know how to cultivate an atmosphere in the world which leads to peace; because peace, as we all know, is just as hard to attain as military victory.

We had to give the best that was in us to win the war.

Sometimes I wonder if we're going to have the courage and the strength to sustain our effort to win the peace. It takes just as much determination to work for peace as it does to win a war. And now we have before us that long-time struggle of teaching our people and teaching the world how we can live together and exemplify the great democratic principles.

I was asked a question the other day in a forum in Walter Reed Hospital, and I've talked about it several times since because I can't get it out of my mind. A wounded boy looked up at me and said: 'My wounds are hardly healed and yet on every hand I hear it said that we will have to go to war again, that one of our allies is likely to be our next enemy.

And here at home we men who fought for what we hoped to find, a better world to live in, are seeing nothing but dissension, people quarrelling with each other over how they will do this and that. I sometimes wonder, Mrs. Roosevelt, whether it was worth fighting the war.'

That's a pretty tough questions to have a boy ask you (remember her four sons were on active duty). And all that I could think was, "You fought and you won the war, so that we and you together might have the opportunity to work to build the better world that you dreamed of as you fought the war. But I think we have to do more than just talk about it.

Now we have to prove that we can work together with all the peoples of the world where they have good will that we can build for peace, that we can educate our young people and that our old people can face that period unafraid. We can prepare to help the rest of the world and do it without fear, do it with good will; and they will sense that our own strength and our own example can give the rest of the world the hope that will lead us all to peace."

At the end of her speech the student government president who gave the response assured her that Roosevelt students would forever work to make her words a reality.

Are Roosevelt faculty, students and board members committed to that vision today? Only you can assure me that we are - but our gathering today reminds us that we have the opportunity, you and me together, to build an America that leads to a democratic and peaceful world.

Eleanor Roosevelt is everyone's grandmother - and she is watching all of us.

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