A year for celebrations at ‘Eleanor’s place’

Thirty, 10, 20.

It might read like the combination to a safe, but actually the numbers signify anniversaries being marked this year at the Eleanor Roosevelt Center at Val-Kill in Hyde Park.

The center itself is 30 years old and is marking the occasion on June 3 with a public picnic and a ceremony honoring the local residents who saved the 179 acres from development in the early 1970s, said Cathy Collins, executive director of Val-Kill. Eleanor Roosevelt maintained her home at Stone Cottage until her death in 1962. The home was built by Franklin Delano Roosevelt as a gift to his wife, Collins said, affording her the freedom to discuss issues with visiting dignitaries and friends.

“It was a place she could be herself; to come to revive herself. It was not just a retreat; it was a place for work.” Collins said Roosevelt would say Val-Kill is where she would “find herself.”

After her death, Roosevelt”™s heirs sold the property off Route 9G after failing to convince the government that it should be added as a historic site to the main home and library just a few miles away on Route 9.

When word that a developer would turn the historic home and other buildings on the property into senior housing, Joyce Ghee of the Hyde Park Visual Environment Society spearheaded a movement to protect the site.

By the spring of 1977, a bill was introduced in Congress to establish the property as a National Historic Site. In April of that year, congressional hearings were held in Hyde Park and a month later a law was signed establishing the Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site. A cooperative agreement was subsequently signed between the U.S. National Park Service and the Eleanor Roosevelt Center in which the park service would manage the property and the nonprofit center would create programs to foster her ideals and preserve her memory.

One program that has prospered in continuing her ideals is the Girls”™ Leadership Workshop, which is celebrating its 10^th anniversary with an alumnae reunion at the end of June. More than 400 young women have attended the workshops.

The workshop, which Collins says is “our hallmark program,” is available to girls entering their sophomore or junior year in high school. It draws on principles in Roosevelt”™s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which the United Nations adopted in 1948.

“She was a practical, pragmatic person,” Collins said. “She really listened to individual circumstances and translated it into policy.”

 

In October, the center will mark the 20th anniversary of the Eleanor Roosevelt Val-Kill Medals Ceremony. A medal is awarded each year to four individuals who have made significant contributions in several areas ranging from the arts to community service, reflective of Roosevelt”™s ideals.

Since 1987, winners have included actor Harry Belafonte, author Norman Vincent Peale, Fred Rogers of “Mister Rogers”™ Neighborhood,” folksinger/activist Pete Seeger, Queen Noor of Jordan and opera singer Jessye Norman.