Time Machine: Eleanor Roosevelt helped celebrate United Nations Week in Cedar Rapids

CEDAR RAPIDS - The United Nations' 10th anniversary was cause for celebration in 1955. Cedar Rapids Mayor Milo Sedlacek appointed a citizens committee to make plans for a weeklong observance that would feature an appearance by former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt.

The Council on World Questions and the Cedar Rapids Association for the United Nations sponsored Roosevelt's lecture at Coe College's auditorium.

Roosevelt had been appointed the original U.S. delegate to the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1946, but resigned to travel the United States to promote a greater understanding of the organization.

The Council on World Questions served as a public forum for discussion of foreign policy.

'The council is a non-partisan group devoted to focusing attention on different aspects of world questions,” said Dr. Richard Spencer, council president.

Tickets to Roosevelt's free lecture were limited to council members, but membership was open to anyone who applied.

'We are limiting tickets to Mrs. Roosevelt's lecture to members of the council but will issue the remaining tickets to new members as long as the supply lasts,” Spencer said.

The first distribution of tickets was at a Sept. 11 meeting of the council. A preview of United Nations Week featured a presentation by James Green, deputy director of the Office of the United Nations' economic and social affairs for the State Department.

Soon the CWQ was getting requests for tickets from outside Cedar Rapids. Membership cards and tickets were sent to Tipton, Wyoming, Mount Vernon and other nearby communities.

As the local organizations busily were making preparations and distributing tickets, Roosevelt observed her 71st birthday Oct. 11, 1955, just 10 days before she arrived in Cedar Rapids.

'I'm not celebrating any more birthdays until I'm 75,” the former first lady told an International News Service reporter. 'I'm not even going to think about my birthdays.”

She arrived in Cedar Rapids by car from Burlington.

Roosevelt wrote in her 'My Day” column, 'After an early morning breakfast ... we drove to Cedar Rapids - a two-and-a-half-hour drive that was a joy over rolling country, with trees turning yellow and red, and neat and prosperous-looking farms.

'The last part of the drive was through countryside made familiar by Grant Wood, and one kept seeing scenes that might have walked out of one of his canvasses.

'We arrived in Cedar Rapids about 11:30 and I had a press conference and a recorded radio interview. Then we went at once to a buffet luncheon delightfully arranged and with a great variety of food to choose from. This luncheon was actually a meeting of the State Committee of the Iowa United Nations Association ...”

As chairman of the board of governors of the U.N. American Association, her topic at the noon luncheon at the Montrose was the organization's growth.

When she joined in 1953, there were 12 state chairmen and 20 to 30 chapters. By 1955, there were 40 chairmen and 164 chapters.

'The spirit of Geneva will strengthen the U.N.,” she said, 'because it has brought about more unity among its members.”

Two women waited for Roosevelt at the Montrose. Mrs. Clarence White had been asked to be there because she and the former first lady had corresponded for many years. Mrs. H.C. Nash wanted Roosevelt to add her signature to a $10 bill that already had the autographs of Harry Truman, Herbert Hoover, Dwight Eisenhower and Mamie Eisenhower.

Denying that she kept a busy schedule, Roosevelt kept an itinerary that included finishing her preparations for the luncheon at the Montrose, addressing the group's board meeting, and retiring to her hotel suite to work on her daily column, 'My Day,” that she had been writing since 1936.

After that, she was scheduled to attend a dinner at the Cedar Rapids Country Club before her 8 p.m. address in Coe's auditorium on 'United Nations Today.”

While people were interested in what she had to say, they were even more interested in just getting a glimpse of the former president's widow.

An article in that afternoon's Gazette said, 'There's an aura of greatness about the former First Lady that makes her still the 'first lady” in the minds of many ... like the little girl who peered around the corner in the hotel lobby to get a peek at Mrs. Roosevelt.”

In her Cedar Rapids interviews, Roosevelt advocated for 1956 Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson.

When someone asked who her second choice for president would be, she replied, 'You don't think about what would happen if your candidate doesn't win. You work for him to win. I think Democrats can win in the next election whoever runs.”

She also referred to the prediction of scientists that the devastation of an atomic war would preclude the possibility of another world war, saying, 'I only hope that this will not make the people of the United States believe that they don't have to fight the battle of the Free World against the Communist.”

She said Russians' propaganda was better than ours because they had been doing it for years.

The 1,100-seat Coe auditorium was packed for her appearance that night.

At the end of the day, she caught a 9:40 p.m. flight to New York.