Her relationship with her son, daughterinlaw, eleanor, and many grandchildren. The New York Historical society hosted this hourlong event. Todays program, grandmother power, the roosevelts is part of the schwartz distinguished series. I always like to thank mr. Swartz for his support which has enabled us to invite so many prominent authors and historians to New York Historical. Lets give mr. Swartz a hand. [applause] the program this morning will last an hour. Leslie will be staying for a book signing and will sign her book right here. This is a great mothers day gift everyone. I am already signed up for three books she is going to sign. Get your books. They will be on sale in our museum store kiosk which will be just near the walters book signing table. I would just hand the book off. Also, Geoffrey Ward will have his book on the roosevelts and another book, so he will be here as well. To begin, we are so glad to welcome Geoffrey Ward back to New York Historical, the author of 18 books, one winner of the National Book critics circle award and the society of american historian. A long time collaborator with ken burns he has won seven emmys and written 52 historical documentaries and he is 33 years old. [laughter] either on his own or in collaboration with others, including the roosevelts, an intimate history which is why he is here today. We are always so thrilled to welcome leslie. She lives close by so we just call her up and say, come on over. She has been a correspondent for cbs and 60 minutes for over 20 seasons and she is 21. [laughter] prior to joining 60 minutes she was the cbs News White House correspondent during the carter, reagan and george h. W. Bush presidency. During much of that time, she also served as moderator on face the nation, cbs broadcast which interviewed Margaret Thatcher as well as virtually every other top u. S. Official. She has a collection of emmy awards for her interviews and reporting including a Lifetime Achievement emmy. Her new book is becoming grandma, the joys and signs of new grandparenting. [laughter] thank you. I gave my book away. Thank you, leslie. Her new book makes a great mothers day gift. And, i do not know if you have been watching tv or listening to the radio, but every time i turn it on leslie is on. She was talking up great stuff. This book is amazing. She has been on charlie rose, pbs news hour, bill maher. Before we begin, i just asked if you have a cell phone, beeper device that you please turn it off. Please help me welcome our wonderful guests. [applause] i havent been asked to speak briefly about the book. The roosevelts are in the book, which is why this pairing made sense. Let me tell you first about this book. I had a friend tell me that writing a book about being a grandmother was nuts. She said, you are going to tell everyone you are that old . She said, dont do it, but i started writing and i did so with great trepidation because of what my friend said. The more i got into it, the more courage i had, especially when i found out that mick jagger is a greatgrandfather. Thank you, sir. [laughter] eventually i became to see if you become a grandparent, you do not become older but younger. Many of you, i can tell from looking around, no what im talking about. When we take care of our grandchildren and studies back this up, we get healthier, have less depression and overall we are happier. Now that the baby boomers are becoming grandparents, we have power in numbers. Listen to this statistic. There are 30,000 new grandparents in the United States every week. I cannot believe that. It is true. Baby boomers, this giant bulge becomes grandparents. Think about how the group, that cohort that has marched through our lives defining and changing our entire culture, our tastes in music, clothes and everything and now they are inventing a brandnew way of grandparenting. We have more energy and certainly look younger, no more tightly turned gray hair. Look, we are all blonde. We have more money. We are spending it on our grandchildren. Listen to this thing i found out. Grandparents today spend seven times more money on their grandchildren than they did just 10 years ago. For example, paying for medical bills, day care, straightening their teeth and we are buying stuff and im not talking about toys, big ticket items, cribs, car seats and i know one grandparent who bought them a piano. As someone said to me, there are three phases in life. In the first phase we believe in santa claus, the second face we do not believe in santa claus and the third phase, we are santa claus. [laughter] the reason i wanted to write this book was the first time i held my first grandchild, i had a thunder jolt of elation that was so powerful it affected my entire body and was so enormous that i felt like one of those big trucks with the giant wheels as the surge of love rumbled through my body. It is unfettered, unconditional. Someone wise told me that if god had turned to abraham and told him to sacrifice his grandson he wouldve said, forget it. It is not going to happen. [laughter] becoming a grandparent, in metamorphosis is us. No matter how strict, how concerned we were with molding our own children into good citizens, and to people that could make it on their own in life, the minute that grandchild is born, boom, we are indulgent. Our ability to say the word no is completely disabled. We are completely changed in every conceivable way. I also found out that a lot of grandparents today walk on egg shells. We are afraid because we understand they hold the key to our access to those children. The most dreaded words to us are no, we do not want you to come over today. That hurts because all we want are those babies. We are the babysitters who beg to come over and we do not charge a dime. We learned quickly that the balance of power in the family shifts because our children now hold the key to the most important thing in life which is those babies. What we do now as grandparents is we bite our tongue. We suck up to the daughterinlaw. [laughter] which is a perfect segue to Geoffrey Ward talking about the roosevelts. Want to show you his new book that he did with ken burns. If you did not see the roosevelts documentary you have to go find it. It is on dvd. It is extraordinary. You learn all kinds of new things. You can see i have gone through a and i have my stickys. Lets talk about the relationship between eleanor. Is it as bad as the impression we have in our heads . Mr. Ward the impression we have, i have a terrible problem with this. I am going to call Eleanor Roosevelt mrs. Roosevelt. Our version of Eleanor Roosevelt is mrs. Roosevelts version. Her upbringing was so awful, so emotionally arid, so devoid of parenting, a drunken father and demented father that was there and not there and seeing visions and telling her that he loved her and that he was going to come and sleep are never going to come live in europe and the disappeared and finally died. Her mother was distracted and disappointed in herself she had no model parent. When she became first a wife and then a parent she relied enormously on franklins mother. There are many people the right about the roosevelts with different views and this is my view. Sarah roosevelt was happy to fill the vacuum. She was the most devoted mother that there ever was. Eleanor was terribly grateful at the time that she took over hiring nannies, that she gave her child raising advice. Later in her life, some of that stuff became distorted. She began to see it as somebody taking over her life. When it was happening, she was grateful for it. She developed and she was, since we are talking about grandmothers, grandparents, let me just go on to that. I knew three of the roosevelt children. All of them believe that their grandmother had really been their mother, that she had provided them, whatever you think of her, had provided them with the unconditional love that you mentioned. She just adored them. They could do no wrong. She spoiled them greatly. They could not wait to get to hyde park and be with her. That was their real home. Part of that was because their father had fallen ill with polio that she had provided them, whatever you think of her, had provided them with the unconditional love that you mentioned. She just adored them. They could do no wrong. She spoiled them greatly. They could not wait to get to hyde park and be with her. That was their real home. Part of that was because their father had fallen ill with polio and when they were at formative ages he was not really home. He was in florida trying to get back on his feet. That left them with their mother who did not believe in unconditional love. The passage, i will not be looked to quote it exactly but she said, i have always believed that one must earn the love of people around you, and that she learned that in her childhood. That was how she had been raised. She carried it on with her own children. She did not sort of do the opposite thing that they hoped she would. She was extremely stern. If you felt ill you were not to tell her so. The roosevelts did not get sick. She was not a comforting mother, and then the rest of her life she spent being haunted by not having been a good mother. Then she reached a point later in life where she considered killing herself because of that. Really . That i had not known. I am going to pull out some anecdotes that i read in your book and some of which i wrote about in mine. To back up what you are saying, curtis roosevelt, one of the grandchildren, greatgrandson, no, grandson wrote a book. This portrait of sarah as a monster, was grossly unfair and suggests that eleanor got to write the history. It is whoever gets the last word when it comes to history, who writes it a new talks about it and that eleanor had the last word and she is the one that painted this portrait, so it is exactly what you are saying. Curtis complained about it in his book and again said that sarah was most loving, most fun, most indulgent, delicious and anna said she just wanted to be with her grandmother. Mr. Ward yes. They all did. You are free to do, i mean, you were not free. We talk about that piano. She gave them everything. Mr. Ward she gave them everything but also had some very strict views. If they had been riding and came to lunch without changing their clothes, she would say, you reek of the stable. If you followed the rules you would have a wonderful time. According to eleanor, sarah could be very cruel to her. You write about an incident at the dinner table about hair. Mr. Ward they also done for dinner and she said something like, you look so much better if you would run a comb through your hair before you ate. That was in front of everyone. Mr. Ward that is true and awful but it is also part of the same thing i was talking about. Eleanor felt she needs help with all of those things initially. Later, of course, she did not and became the first lady of the world and was still being treated that way. You touch a little bit on how eleanors mother had treated her. She made her feel unlovable. This is interesting to me. Her mother called her granny. Mr. Ward because she very rarely laughed and she was very prim and proper. She tried to be the only girl that did all of the right things. The mother was a beautiful socialite. The most prophetic thing for me is mrs. Roosevelt in her autobiography says, her mother often had migraines and would be in a dark room, and this little girl would go in and rub her for head and it made her feel better, and she said, that is when i learned to be loved is to be useful. She was five years old. Think how sad that is. It really is. Alice roosevelt, who famously said, if you have nothing nice to say, come sit by me and she was put off by eleanor because eleanor did not have a sense of humor, and alice was funloving, but here is what i found so ironic in a way because alice had a sort of slight image around the country. While eleanor became a cold and distant grandmother, alice was indulgent like the rest of us. She became kind of sarah to her own grandchildren and eleanor went the other way. Mr. Ward i do not quite think she was cold and distant but i think she was proper and she wanted her grandchildren to do the right thing. We were talking about this before. Fdrs children called their grandmother granny. Eleanor roosevelts grandchildren called her that in french. They were fond of her. I have not talked to any of them that were not fond of her. It was an event to go see her. She was mrs. Roosevelt. We are going to get to fdr as a grandfather in one minute, but first, when you and i spoke on the phone the other day and we were smattering the areas of subject, you said, i want to talk about your book and i said, why . You said because, i am a grandfather. Mr. Ward i am not sure i am supposed to say this, but this is a fascinating book. It is really smart. I like reading it a lot. I am a grandfather, of course. It is a unique role in what it does do is make you think about your own grandparents. Mine, this is a diversion from the roosevelts, but my greatgrandfather was the Bernie Madoff of the 1880s. He was a bigtime swindler. He brought out a crash on wall street and he kidnapped his son. He did not know his father. Are you serious . Mr. Ward no, i am making this up. Yes, i am dead serious. I am sure everyone thinks their grandfather was the best, but mine was the best. When we were there, he was riveting. I remember, i was interested in knights and when i arrived he had made a complete wooden shield and sword all painted beautifully. He was a professor of medieval art so he really knew how to do that. He had german stone bricks, which nobody makes anymore, that they were spectacular. I do not need bricks, blocks, i mean. He would build for christmas every year a different cathedral. It would be this high and as long as a pingpong table with stainedglass windows lit up and that is what i think of when i think of grandfathers. If you have a grandfather like that, it makes you feel terribly inadequate. What i found out in my research is that exactly what youre grandfather did is exactly what grandfathers are supposed to do. They are supposed to talk about the family, the Family History and tell their grandchildren stories that give the kids a sense that they are connected to something wider and important and love them and play with them. That is a good segue to Franklin Roosevelt as a grandfather. Mr. Ward he did not have much time to be a grandfather. He read christmas, the dickens thing every year. The saddest thing was it was a recording and they lost the recording. One of the kids lost it. Can you imagine . No. Mr. Ward that is too good. I have to tell you what i found out that i think is so devastating. I was only looking at him as a grandfather. I discovered that he had two grandchildren that lived in the white house. I was looking for grandchildren a lived in the white house, that was my first line of attack and i found out that went anna got divorced, she moved into the white house with her two little kids. The whole country was in love with these little children running around the white house for a while. Franklin had his morning staff meeting in his bedroom and he would have his breakfast tray brought in, put up on the bed and then his staff would come in and sometimes members of the cabinet would come to this meeting and at some point, invariably, these two kids would burst into the bedroom because they had free range to franklin delaware roosevelt. He cannot get enough of these kids in the white house. They would jump in and he would say, on and get up on the bed. There was the tray in the treasury and he would have one kid on the left and one kid on the right and he would pull up the funnies and in those days, the funnies in the newspaper, we all remember this were everything. He would read the funnies, which im sure it was the way he read dickens and he played every character. He played in the dialect and these children just giggled with laughter and all of these men are standing around, virtually every day and have to put up with this through the crises and whatever else was going on in the world, including the depression. So when he did have his grandchildren around him, like your grandson was attentive and adorable, and everything we thought of as roosevelt in terms of his intelligence and wonderful manner. He was a great grandfather when he had the kids around. Mr. Ward in 1944 after he was elected, he knew he was very ill and for the first time at christmas, he asked that all of the grandchildren, obviously he was saying goodbye, but there is a picture of them all sitting on the floor. She looks awful in the picture but also pleased to be there. He put swings and slides on the white house lawn which i guess it never been done before because he was trying to lure the grandchildren to come and visit. Mr. Ward the whole premise of the show was you would not have franklin without theodore. His children were all over the white house. The fact that the press got so interested in those kids was sort of because that had sold so many newspapers during theodores time. So it was delivery. I see. Mr. Ward no, i did not mean that. You have been to the white house. No, but a lot of times these children are used to foster an image. Mr. Ward no, no, i did not mean it that way. I am going to get back to the book. I want to know your relationship with ken burns because you have done several documentaries and television with him. You were telling me before about the relationship between fdr and the one ken did on baseball. Mr. Ward sure. I may have told this story before. I cannot remember. When ken wanted to do baseball, that is the subject i do not know anything about. I cannot member if it was to our episodes or onehour episodes but i think it was 18 hours of baseball. I knew nothing and could care less. My sort of deal with ken was that at some point we would do the roosevelts. If i did his great enthusiasm, he would do mine and so we did that. Next, you are doing another one with him . Mr. Ward yes, vietnam which will be out in the fall of 2017. You are working on the right now . Mr. Ward yes. The shows are mostly done. Are we going to get a book like this . Mr. Ward yes, i am afraid so. [laughter] but it is fabulous. Mr. Ward we are going to publish it with a suitcase. [laughter] before we take questions, the documentary in the book are really about relationships, the relationships that Theodore Roosevelt had with his family and other people in the same with franklin. I became very interested reading this book in their extracurricular or other relationships. Lets get your take on frankens relationships with other women. Tell us about those two. Mr. Ward he had an affair with lucy mercer. Many things in question about that. Mrs. Roosevelt