Home
Search transcripts:    Advanced Search
Notable New     Yorkers
Select     Notable New Yorker

Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
Photo Gallery
Transcript

Part:         Session:         Page of 912

an apartment here, and I'm going to order dinner. You come and have a bite with me. You need food. You absolutely have to have food, and you can't go in there and have it. You can't stand it if you go in there. Everybody'll speak to you.”

We gratefully said, “Oh, thank you,” and went up to his little study, and he ordered up a nice little supper.

Well now, I can't think whether we want elsewhere. No, this was much later in the evening, because Gertrude and I went right from the office to church. That's right--when I left the office, we went to church. It was a Thursday night. We went to St. James, where I go to church. I knew there was a service at that hour, and I just said, “Let's go to church,” and we went up to church.

The priest apparently had heard it while he was at his supper. This was about 8:00 o'clock, I guess. Soon after we got there, the preliminaries of the service had begun. They had said the preliminary prayers. Then he rose and came down to the steps of the chancel, and announced to the people that he had just learned of the sudden death of President Roosevelt at Warm Springs, and we must now all pray for him. There were plenty of people there who hadn't heard it before. That's a simple little parish up there. People who hadn't had a radio or an evening paper or anything, or a telephone.





© 2006 Columbia University Libraries | Oral History Research Office | Rights and Permissions | Help