DEBT TO MOTHERS

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 51, Issue 3151, 31 July 1942, Page 2

DEBT TO MOTHERS

WHAT WAR LEADERS OWE MRS SARAH D. ROOSEVELT (By Allan Powell, in the Melbourne Sun.) Mrs Sarah Delano Roosevelt, mother of President Roosevelt, who died last year, was a woman of strong character and vigorous convictions. A remarkable bond existed between her and the .President, who was her only child and bore a striking resemblance to her.

The second wife of the President’s father, James Roosevelt, she was a handsome, hazel-eyed girl of 26 when she married in I'BBo. Her father was Warren Delano, who had been engaged in the Far Eastern trade for many years, and in 1862 she made a journey to China in the clipper 'Sunrise. This was the beginning of a deep love of ships and the sea that developed in her, and that her son inherited.

She was a most persistent traveller all her life. The year after her son went to live at White House, when she was 79, Mrs Roosevelt made another trip abroad. In London she took tea with Queen Mary at Buckingham Palace. They talked about their sons. Later the present King and Queen visited her at Hyde Park to convey to her a special greeting from the Queen Mother. As a girl, Mrs Roosevelt began to collect model ships and prints of early American sailing vessels, which she later gave to the future President. He continually added to the

1 collection, now housed in the Franklin |D. Roosevelt Library on his estate at Hyde Park. Her family was of Flemish descent and could jbe ' traced back to Phillipe de Lannoys, who came to Plymouth in 1621. Mrs Roosevelt took a deep interest in her son’s education, and, later, in his political activities, and he, himself, has paid tribute to the debt he owed her for her guidance, care, and wisdom in his early years. She was never .surprised by her son’s -success. She was asked hundreds of times whether she was not proud of him, and she invariably replied: “I have always been proud of him.”