Eleanor Roosevelt spoke to the Groton boys (and some girls, presumably from Concord Academy) in 1949. We believe the boys at right are Thatcher Adams, Tom Bingham, Bob Burnett, John Jackson, and Paul Gardner, all from the Form of 1955, but we have confirmed only Thatcher and Bob. If you can identify the other young men, please email quarterly@groton.org.
When Eleanor Roosevelt Spoke at Groton
OF THE ROLE models represented in the four new Schoolroom busts, Eleanor
Roosevelt has the most direct ties to Groton. She frequently had reason to visit the Circle—first to see her brother Hall, for whom she was a mother figure after their parents’ death, and her cousins Theodore Roosevelt Jr. and Kermit Roosevelt. She sent her sons John, James, and Franklin Jr. to Groton, and of course her husband, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, is Groton’s most well known graduate. Grotonians may not be aware that Mrs. Roosevelt delivered a speech on December 3, 1949, in the Hall (now the library), a year after the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which Mrs. Roosevelt had spearheaded as chair of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights.
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