Eleanor Roosevelt

 It's the birthday of Eleanor Roosevelt, born in New York City in 1884. She was shy and awkward as a girl; her mother, a beautiful socialite, was disappointed in her daughter. Both Eleanor's parents died by the time she was a teenager. Then she met a distant cousin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and they got married. Eleanor gave birth to six children, and she said, "I suppose I was fitting pretty well into the pattern of a fairly conventional, quiet, young society matron." But as her husband began his political career, she learned about politics too, and she was inspired by women's suffrage and started campaigning for women, for the labor movement, and for minorities. Eleanor became more and more independent, especially after her husband had an affair with her secretary. She held press conferences, traveled all over the country, gave lectures and radio broadcasts, and wrote a daily syndicated newspaper column called "My Day," where she expressed her political and social opinions. She also wrote four books: This is My Story (1937), This I Remember (1949), On My Own (1958), and Tomorrow Is Now, which was published posthumously (1963).

SOURCE: Writer's Almanac 2008