FDR - Jean Edward Smith [23]
Back at Cambridge, FDR threw himself into a round of frenetic activity. After a grueling competition in freshman year, he had been elected to the editorial board of The Harvard Crimson, the undergraduate newspaper. For the next three years, the Crimson would be his central interest, often requiring four to six hours a day to ready the paper for publication. Along with membership on the editorial board went prestige and responsibility. Franklin gloried in both. He represented the paper at the Yale bicentennial celebration, an occasion notable in retrospect for the presence on the platform of President Theodore Roosevelt, Princeton president Woodrow Wilson, and FDR. In his third year, Roosevelt was elected managing editor of the Crimson and worked even harder. Administrative responsibility came naturally. He handled the staff adroitly and was always able to cajole crusty Cambridge printers into opening the forms and remaking a page for last-minute submissions by tardy college journalists. “In his geniality was a kind of frictionless command,” his co-editor, W. Russell Bowie, recalled.53
At the end of his third year, Roosevelt was elected editor-in-chief (president) of the Crimson. He took his degree in June, but remained for a fourth year to discharge his editorial responsibilities. His professors advised him to enter graduate school. “Great fight in my mind between it and Law School, but latter too much with outside duties,” FDR recorded in his diary.54 That fall he enrolled as a graduate student in history but had no intention of pursuing a degree. “The paper takes every moment of time,” he informed his mother in early October.55 As Arthur Schlesinger noted, editing the Crimson crowned FDR’s Harvard career. Both at the time and in retrospect, it was extremely important to him.56 In later years he enjoyed joking with reporters that he was a former newspaperman. Visiting Portland, Oregon, as the assistant secretary of the Navy in 1914, he told a press photographer that he too had been “a reporter in Boston ten or twelve years” before and had often lined folks up for the camera.57
Sara, meanwhile, found life at Springwood oppressive without James. “I try to keep busy, but it is all hard,” she confided to her diary the following spring.58 Sara stepped into James’s role—managing the estate, supervising the workmen, handling business affairs—and for the most part made do. FDR returned to Springwood for Christmas, but in contrast to previous years the celebration was muted. In January the social season accelerated. On the first weekend in the new year, Franklin journeyed to Washington to attend the gala coming-out party given by TR and his wife, Edith, for their daughter, Alice, at the White House. It was the premier social event of the season. FDR spent three crowded days in Washington attending formal dinners, a reception at the Austrian Embassy, and the dance itself, held in the East Room. There was also tea with Cousin Theodore, lunch at Cousin Bamie’s house on N Street, and a second private talk with the president. “One of the most interesting and enjoyable three days I have ever had,” Franklin wrote Sara.59
FDR returned to Cambridge, and soon afterward Sara joined him. The winter at Hyde Park had become too melancholy. She took an apartment in Boston and discreetly joined the social and cultural life of the city. Sara wanted to be “near enough to the University to be on hand should [Franklin] want me and far enough removed not to interfere with his college life.”60 Franklin seemed delighted. He came frequently to dine and sometimes spent the night. The following winter Sara returned to Boston for another three months. She participated vicariously in FDR’s success