Memorial Also Sets Eleanor Roosevelt's Legacy In Bronze

Longest-serving first lady is the first to be included in husband's memorial

By Claire Shipman/CNN

WASHINGTON (AllPolitics, May 1) -- Few would argue with the choice of Eleanor Roosevelt as the first First Lady to be memorialized alongside her husband.

The longest-serving presidential spouse was probably best described by Clare Boothe Luce, who observed, "No woman has ever so comforted the distressed, or distressed the comfortable."

She spent her 12-year tenure in the White House championing human rights and better conditions for the poor. She inspired those broken by the Depression, and encouraged those attempting to break racial barriers.

She also tweaked the nation's conscience -- not to mention her husband's.

Former Washington Post reporter Chalmers Roberts says, "She brought to him a great wealth of firsthand information that he could understand. On the other hand, she was so relentless about this, so conscience-stricken about these problems, that she didn't give him much space."

And she was legendarily tireless in her campaign to reach out to Americans.

"She had a weekly Sunday radio show, she had a daily newspaper column, she had a monthly question-and-answer column in various women's magazines and then was doing a lecture tour," says Roosevelt biographer Carl Sferrazza Anthony.

But all that activism more than 50 years ago did not make her universally popular. In fact, until Hillary Rodham Clinton, she may have been the most controversial First Lady -- especially among conservatives.

"This town when Roosevelt came in was a Republican town and the cave-dwellers couldn't stand the thought of Democrats," says journalist Hope Miller.

After her husband's death, Eleanor assumed the role of a true power broker -- in the high-profile position of U.N. delegate, forging an international profile campaigning for human rights.

"Look at what she did," said Mollie Somerville, who served as Eleanor Roosevelt's assistant. "Raised that signal to stop the Russian ambassador and tell him he was out of order. That was power, power for a woman to have."

And she did not hesitate to give her husband's successors, presidents Truman and Kennedy, a hard time when she felt it necessary.

The architect of the new Roosevelt memorial in fact chose to portray Eleanor in her later years.

"Eleanor here in a sense represents him in a sense, his message for peace after he died," says Lawrence Halperin. "And that's why she's here at the end, as our first representative in the United Nations, symbolizing peace."

A fitting tribute to the Roosevelt who came to embody not only her husband's vision, but the legacy of an era.