Croton-on-Hudson, NY - 'He Hung the Moon'

Is it really Tuesday? Monday seems like a year away. In these two days we have:

        toured the FDR home

        toured the FDR Library and Museum

        walked over the Hudson River

        heard a bridge sing

        toured a Vanderbilt mansion

        ate lunch at the CIA

        got caught for an hour in an elevator at 212’ up above the Hudson River

        had to give our names to the Poughkeepsie Police for the daily blotter

Whoo-eee, no wonder I’m weary. But, we do it to ourselves. Why are we both Type A’s? But, the goal is to see as much as we can and, though we know we’re not going to see it all, we’ve got a good start. Our campground is half-way between New York City and Hyde Park where the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, Library and Home are and also the Eleanor Roosevelt Memorial. I won’t deny that I am an admirer of both and wanted to the homes and museum. It was a nice short drive north along the Hudson River and we got there about 9:30 and took the first tour of the home. Considering the wealth of the Roosevelt's, this was the antithesis of ornate. Quite a contrast with the gilded, ornate Vanderbilt home, our next stop. I suppose it is the difference between old and new money.

These are all original furnishings and thus I could not use the flash on my camera. Pictures of family everywhere. The house has 35 rooms and 9 bathrooms.

There are several wheel chairs in the home, designed for and some designed by Roosevelt. Note the ashtray on the side, for the ever present cigarette in the long holder.

Here’s a picture of Franklin as a young man and soon after he married Eleanor. The picture is really a spoof since he’s actually holding her knitting - but he looks so serious.

Roosevelt had an idyllic childhood, was educated in the finest schools and had a remarkable political career - until 1921 when he was stricken with polio which left him paralyzed below the waist. His political career would seem to be over but he waged a mighty battle to come to terms with his disability. At one time he said he would not return to politics until he could walk to the end of the driveway. It is a long driveway and it took many tries but he succeeded and at the age of 50 was elected President.

Here is one of the 4 photos of Roosevelt in a wheel chair.

Eleanor had her own hardships to overcome. She was the niece of Teddy Roosevelt whose brother was her father. He was often drunk and had bouts of depression. Her mother thought she was not pretty and kept calling her ‘Granny’. Unfortunately both of her parents died before she reached the age of 10 and she went to live with her grandmother. She was educated by private tutors until she was sent to a private girls school in England where she gained a great deal of self-confidence.

Roosevelt was elected President 4 times. In the language of the 30’s ‘he hung the moon’ - although not everyone thought he was a great President. Eleanor herself had a lot of detractors also. During the was, she went to visit the troops in the South Pacific even though the Generals didn’t want to bother with her. However, she was such a morale booster to all the troops both in the field and in hospitals that the Generals wanted her to come back.

When President Roosevelt died she thought it was all over but she found new missions and even became an ambassador to the United Nations. ‘First Lady of the World’ President Truman called her. At first even some in her own delegation thought her unequal to the task, but she gained their heartfelt admiration the way she marshalled through the Human Rights documents.

When the Daughters of the American Revolution who owned Constitution Hall refused to let Marian Anderson sing there because she was African American, Eleanor resigned her membership in that organization and arranged for Anderson to sing at the Lincoln Memorial.

Again, as I said she had many detractors - one of whom was J. Edgar Hoover, the head of the FBI who started to compile a file on her activities because he thought she was a Communist. In the end, the file was 3271 pages. Imagine that. What a waste of time.

My favorite picture of her is when she is returning from one of her many journeys, walking across the tarmac carrying her own suitcase. In fact, the museum had that same suitcase, not fancy, but pretty common.

We really enjoyed the museum and the Roosevelt home. We learned a lot but then we’ve learned a lot from all the other Presidential libraries that we have visited from Nixon to Eisenhower to Johnson to Truman.

At the end of the day, we headed towards the Walkway over the Hudson, the longest walking bridge in the world. We’ve got to get in our daily walk and this way we can do it in style. Originally built as a railroad bridge in 1875, it was not only the longest bridge in the world but it was the first bridge to span the Hudson and it was wide enough for 2 tracks. It served well and was a key transportation link between the eastern markets and the western raw materials - until it burned in 1974.

Now, what to do with it? Demolition would cost $50 million. Aha, transforming it into a linear walking park would cost only $38 million. A bargain. It’s 212’ above the Hudson (a fact which will become much more personally important tomorrow about 5:00) and has great views no matter where you stand on it - even if you merely stand on one end and look. out across it. And off we go. I’m just going to show some pictures that we took as we walked over. I could have wished for a sunny day but, hey, this gives some interesting shading.

At the end, we turned south about 1/2 mile to the Mid-Hudson Bridge, the car and walking bridge from Poughkeepsie to western New York. Here we heard ‘Bridge Music.’ This guy, Joseph Bertolozzi used the bridge as the instrument. He took rubber hammers, regular hammers, whatever he could to make sounds on the bridge and recorded it and released it as an album.

Here he is ‘playing’ the bridge.

Here are others getting the bridge ready for its ‘songs’.

At one point he released hundreds of little metal balls down the hollow towers of the bridge - and they sound like a metal waterfall. You can buy his CD or you can walk the bridge where they have listening posts and headsets to listed to the songs that you wish to. Gary and I enjoyed walking the bridge and also enjoyed the Bridge Music. Not really our kind of music but very interesting. Bertolozzi now wants to use the Eiffel Tower as his instrument to make, maybe, Tower Music.
We crossed and headed back to where we had started. Time to head back to the hotel.