Gentlemen, the first is paul sparrow who is director of the franklin de roosevelt president ial museum and library in new york, following a career as a documentary filmmaker and a Senior Executive at the museum. Paul has been directing the Roosevelt Library museum since 2015. He will be talking obviously about fdr and the Manhattan Project. Our second guest is Clifton Truman daniel who is the eldest grandson of president harry truman. He is also a truman scholar. He has spent quite a bit of time studying the life and career of his grandfather. And he currently serves as honorary chairman of the board of trustees at the harry truman president ial library and museum in independence, missouri. Today, we will give a great opportunity for questionandanswer. Please weigh in with lots of questions. We have already been talking quite a bit offcamera about our topic today. And i guarantee there will be a lot of interesting ideas and discussion. So i will begin and introduce paul to the program.
Times, is the part of our Irene Schwartz Speaker Series and is always i like to thank mr. Schwartz for his great generosity which is enabled us to bring so many fine speakers to this stage. [applause]. I would like to recognize the chair of our executive committee id like to thank you rick, for all of the very many things you do. On behalf of this great institution. Thank you. [applause]. And want to thank all of the chairman counselor to who are with us this evening as well for their great support of New York Historical. Tonight news program is about is lasting about an hour there will be a questionandanswer session. You should have received no card with a pencil on your way into the auditorium this evening and if not, my colleagues are going up and down the aisles with no cards and pencils. No cards with your questions will be collected later on in the program. The program there will be a book signing tonight. This will be in our ny history start and copies of ambassadors who are the
Purchased in 1911 to do forestry experiments on. He offered to build his wife eleanor a Little Cottage here because the early 1920s, she was getting very active in political life, and she really needed her own space to bring friends and associates, to have a place for she could talk politics and plan political strategy. Fdr realized the big house really didnt serve Eleanor Roosevelts purposes well, because that was her motherinlaws house and choose she used to say that for years, she was just a visitor 40 there. It was important for her to have her own space where she could really do things that she was interested in and not have to worry about whether or not her motherinlaw had to give her permission to do this or that in her motherinlaws home. So this was her little space. Now the building we are in right now, which later became Eleanor Roosevelts home, was really initially built to be a furniture factory that she started because she was very concerned about young people in her commu
Seeing the president , two exr president s, all sorts of ambassadors and other diplomatic people, very important people, that really dawned on me, my gosh, she really was important. We never thought of her in that way. We never viewed my grandmother. She was only a grandmother to us, and that is all she ever wanted to be to us. 3, 1942. N in january my father was elliott, and elliott was the second oldest of the sons and third oldest of the children, so my dad kind of fell right in the middle. I think he always felt that he was the middle child, but you claimmy uncles used to that he was my grandmothers favorite. I am not sure that was true, but that is what they claimed anyway. My mother and father were divorced when i was only two, and my time with my father was really quite limited and as a consequence, you know the rememberg that i can was howim talking about he almost felt somewhat estranged from my grandmother because i mean, he loved her she was so busy that it was almost he fel
Certainly this became the very First National Historic Site to be dedicated to a first lady. And the only Historic Site dedicated to one first lady. Well, valkill encompasses two major buildings. The first building, the stone cottage, was built in 1925 to initially serve as a retreat for Eleanor Roosevelt and her two political mentors nancy dook and marianne dickerman. It was build on the eastern most part of the roosevelt property at the time. It was land fdr purchased in 1911 to do forestry experiments on. He offered to build eleanor a Little Cottage here because by the early 1920s she was getting very active in political life and really needed her own space to bring friends and associates and kind of have a place where she could talk politics and plan political strategy. Fdr realized that the big house really didnt serve Eleanor Roosevelts purposes well because that was her motherinlaws house and she used to say for 40 years she was just a visitor there. It was important for her to