Franklin D. Roosevelt: Typed Letter Signed as President.... (Total: 2 Items)

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A personal and typed letter signed "Franklin D. Roosevelt," Washington, D.C., November 27, 1941, just ten days before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, 8vo, on The White House Washington letterhead, with original transmittal envelope, to FDR's former son-in-law, the first husband of his oldest child Anna Eleanor Roosevelt (1906-1975), Curtis B. Dall, regarding the recent death of FDR's mother and the financial accountings following his mother's death. FDR writes: "Dear Curt: –/ Many thanks for sending me a copy of your letter to Uncle Fred. I wrote him in regard to the account of my Mother's Trust that I considered the management to have been amazingly successful in view of the forty years since the Trust was created./ I hope all goes well with you./ Always sincerely,/ Franklin D. Roosevelt." After Sara Delano Roosevelt died on September 7, 1941, Eleanor Roosevelt wrote in her newspaper column "My Day" that Sara's "strongest trait was loyalty to her family. . . . She was not just sweetness and light, for there was a streak of jealously and possessiveness in her when her own were concerned." This is a very personal note to FDR's former son-in-law and father of FDR's two oldest grandchildren, Anna Eleanor ("Sistie") and Curtis ("Buzzie") Dall, although Curtis later legally changed his last name to Roosevelt. Curtis Roosevelt reflected upon his father Curtis B. Dall: "My mother was separated from my father when I was very young; contacts with him were through visitations. Perhaps because I bear his name, Curtis, I was nicknamed Buzz or Buzzie. The open hostility towards my father on the part of my mother and grandmother was no small factor in my growing up. (My grandfather and great grandmother did not share this hostile attitude towards my father.) When my mother remarried it was expected that I would automatically cotton to my stepfather. Although I was under a lot of pressure to ‘belong' to the Boettiger family, this didn't happen...Upon returning to the States for Christmas [in 1948] I was faced with a dilemma. With my mother's pending divorce from John Boettiger I didn't want to continue using his name. And I knew it was not acceptable to resume using my father's name of Dall. My grandmother settled the question by suggesting I use my middle name of Roosevelt as my last name. That was fine with me."