Growing up in India, as I did, one never hears about female elected officials of United We had our own female leaders to study that not much was taught about female leaders of other countries. But among the exception was Eleanor Roosevelt, the wife of one the greatest American President. Though, she was the wife of Franklin Roosevelt, she was not known for being his wife. She, as I remember, more than any other woman, "typified... the realizaton of the dreams of the female Crusaders of the 19th century who threw off the restrictions of the Victorian age." So when I had the opportuinity to study the life of any female American leader, I choose Eleanor Roosevelt for her achivements, her strugel and her vision of a United world. For someone who never held elective office, Eleanor Roosevelt wielded a great deal of political power. She wrote now laws and appointed no high officials, yet the self-knowledge and profound humility that invested her regard for every human being has made the story of her life a morality play that brightens the American memory. "There is no human being," wrote Eleanor Roosevelt in one of her several columns that she frequently wrote for newspaper, from whom we cannot learn something if we are interested enough to dig deep." This basic sense fo kinship with which she approaced the world dictated her vocation of helpfulness. The honesty with whcihc she told us of hte long path she travelded to free herself of fear and prejudice and become an independent person has placed her in that specaila pantheon reserved for shapers of the human spirit. Eleanor Roosevelt appeared on the American secent, and began being herself, out in the open wehre folks could ...
