THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 30, 1996 TAG: 9606300044
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ELIZABETH SIMPSON
LENGTH: 63 lines
Hello, Eleanor?
Me again. You know. Liz.
Liz Simpson. Oh, come on, Mrs. Roosevelt. You remember. Newspaper reporter. Mother of two. Woman who calls on you occasionally while trying to keep children, job and sanity intact, at least by the end of every week.
I know, I know. You've been busy lately, what with Hillary Clinton, and who knows who else, asking for advice and all.
All that Whitewater business, plus the mess about the seances, and all those reporters' annoying questions. Enough to drive anyone crazy.
But hey, a working-class girl like me has a crisis every now and again, too. Like, what am I going to write for a column this week?
I know that you can help me out here, since you used to write a column called ``My Day.''
Only you wrote your column six times a week. For 26 years. At the same time, you traveled the world, rallied war troops and delivered speeches that inspired and provoked. Not to mention your weekly radio show, the books you penned and the charities you bolstered.
About the only time you took off from column-writing was when FDR died in 1945.
And then you took only four days.
Hillary and I could do a lot worse than imagine ourselves in your sensible shoes.
After all, look at who others are turning to for guidance: Spin doctors. Total Quality Management gurus. Consultants with titles that don't seem to mean anything. We're so busy charting and graphing and polling, we forget to take a gut check for the things that really matter.
Things like integrity, sincerity, compassion.
All qualities you were known for. You stood up for what you believed. You took it on the chin when the press demonized you. You helped the poor, railed against discrimination, supported women's right to have professional careers.
You were a woman before your time. A lot of people hated you for that.
But you turned the other cheek without giving up on the things you believed in. You never backed away. Your sincerity rang true.
``You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face,'' you once wrote. ``You must do the thing you think you cannot do.''
I like Hillary, but I don't think she's following in your exact footsteps. There have been times when she should have spent more time talking to you and less time trying to gauge the popularity polls.
I wish I could be more like you, too. When you first started doing your column, you wrote about national policy issues. Then you realized the people wanted something closer to home: How you spent your day.
How you felt when Pearl Harbor was bombed. What you saw on your tours of New Deal projects in the Appalachian mountains. What you thought about racism and women's rights.
Those were issues of the heart, something I'd do well to tap when the column well runs dry.
If only Hillary and I and everyone else could aspire to Clare Boothe Luce's description of you: ``The best loved woman in the world . . . No woman has ever so comforted the distressed or distressed the comfortable.''
Anyway, thanks for the chat, Eleanor. I think I can take it from here. At least until next week. ILLUSTRATION: Photo by CNB