Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, September 14, 1995 TAG: 9509140095
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TONYA WOODS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
But through the pages of Doris Kearns Goodwin's Pulitzer Prize-winning book, "No Ordinary Time - Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II," Franklin Delano Roosevelt comes to life as a man and not just a leader of a country.
"She's magnificent in making these people real," said Peter Coogan, associate history professor at Hollins College, who has used Goodwin's book in his class.
"The students can relate because they realize a president is not this untouchable person, but that he's real," he said.
During a lecture Wednesday at Hollins, Goodwin shared stories about the Roosevelts that may have surprised many in the audience of 150.
"Back then, a public figure's private life was just that - private," Goodwin said. "The difference between the press then and now was that the press didn't deal with those private issues unless they were relevant to the country's situation."
One of those private issues is how Roosevelt believed he was losing his wife, Eleanor, as she became engrossed in fighting biases against women, blacks and poor people.
"There came a time in their marriage when he asked her to marry him all over again because he felt she was hardly ever there for him as a wife," Goodwin said.
Eleanor Roosevelt went through a bizarre childhood, believing her beautiful mother was disappointed that her only daughter was not graced with a pretty face. That, along with the discovery of her husband's extramarital affair, could explain why Eleanor Roosevelt believed she had to redefine herself by becoming a catalyst for social change in America, Goodwin said.
"No Ordinary Time" is not the first book Goodwin has written detailing the lives of prominent Americans. She's also the author of best sellers "The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys: An American Saga" and "Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream." Each book brought to the surface the theme of the price one pays in exercising power, she said.
"His life had been consumed by power and ambition," she said of LBJ, whose memoirs she helped compile during the last four years of his life. "Watching him during those years made me want to get an even amount of work, play and love in my life."
Goodwin taught government at Harvard University while spending weekends in Texas with Johnson.
The process of turning "No Ordinary Time" into a motion picture has begun.
by CNB