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Dear Malia and Sasha...
FDR's grandson, Curtis Roosevelt, spent twelve years inside the White House as a child. Now, he emerges with a new book, revelations about his grandparents, and words of advice for the Obama girls.
When Malia and Sasha Obama move into the White House next year, they will be the youngest children to live at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in more than four decades.
Other than Caroline Kennedy and Amy Carter (who famously roller skated through the East Room), Curtis Roosevelt is one of the few living Americans who knows what it’s like to spend your earliest years under the national spotlight in the first family. Known as “Buzzie,” he moved into the White House in 1933 at age 3, and remembers a lonely childhood during which he was regularly satirized in newspapers and magazine cartoons.
Since then, he’s spent much of his life trying to escape his family legacy. Now 78-years-old and living in the South of France, he spends his days visiting the local butcher shop and the organic mushroom purveyor.
I hope the Obama children do not become the duet that emerged from the White House in the early 30s. They need their own lives.
To make peace with his childhood, he’s written Too Close to the Sun, a tell-all memoir about his grandparents and his 12 years inside the White House. In the book, Roosevelt talks about how it took him 60 years to escape the fishbowl of his youth and get over feeling so damn “special all the time.”
In a chat with The Daily Beast, Roosevelt talked about the Roosevelts’ family secrets and offered a few words of wisdom for Malia and Sasha Obama.
Author’s Collection
You lived in the White House from age three to 15, and you were in so many press photos and satires. Now, the Obama girls are already being heralded as fashion icons and mini-celebrities. What would you say to them?
Malia and Sasha are just a bit older than my sister and I were when we moved into the White House in 1933. I was three, my sister was six. I personally had no background other than a kind of cocoon, because FDR was already governor of the state of New York when I was born. I grew up at Hyde Park, and when I went into the White House, it wasn’t that impressive. I’d always lived in big houses with servants and so forth; it was our routine.
But I hope the Obama children are sufficiently prepared to have some grounding and some identity of their own. I do get the idea that Barack and Michelle are good parents. Parenting is something they have focused on and the kids show it. I hope it helps protect them to some degree from the specialness that affected me all my life. I hope they are able to ward off some of that and preserve their own identities, because otherwise, they will be affected by the people putting onto them a personality. When you are three years old, it’s not difficult to have a personality put on you. And by the time I was a teenager—bearing in mind that FDR was in office over 12 years and died in office at the beginning of his fourth term—I was addicted to it. I was totally caught up in it; that’s who I was. I was FDR’s grandson, and that was my identity. I just hope the Obama children do not become the Sisty and Buzzie duet that emerged from the White House in the early 30s. They need their own lives.
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Jacob Bernstein is a senior reporter at The Daily Beast. Previously, he was a features writer at WWD and W Magazine. He has also written for New York magazine, Paper, and The Huffington Post.
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I wonder what he thinks of his relative who chaired the DNC rules committee that disenfranchised 2.3 million Democratic voters this year? By the effort of that Roosevelt progeny the DNC became the second greatest mass disenfranchiser in history, behind only Jim Crow, and for what? Because a political party committee has newly discovered its "power" to dictate to state legislatures when free citizens should vote; because the parties feel they must decide what primary voters will be most important.
More relevantly, thanks for the visit with this living link to an important time in our history. It's nice to remember that it was people back then who were acting on such important issues, not just marble statues.
Excellent advice for the Obama girls, CR. Your Great Depression/current economic crisis comparison (or should I say non-comparison) was spot on, as well. Looking forward to reading your book.
À la prochaine
A la prochaine
Curtis figured prominently in the David Grubin FDR documentary. Urbane and verbally precise in a manner that must be almost painful to him, he seems to be burdened with that aristocratic penchant for selecting le mot juste. May it be of some comfort that a few of us out there appreciate his estimable skills, imparted by the Guy himself. Can't wait to read.
While Curtis may have had a less than ideal experience growing up in the White House, I think some of the more recent examples -- Caroline Kennedy and Chelsea Clinton for example -- show that it is indeed possible to grow up in such an unusual environment and yet emerge perfectly well-adjusted.
Issywise,
What an inane comment.
Everybody has a right to vote for whomever they please.
This is not restricted in any way by the rules that parties set for how they choose their own nominees.
If you join a party, then abide by the rules.
Otherwise, find another party, form your own, or write in your choice in the voting booth.
Interesting article. What was never mentioned is why you lived there. Why couldn't you live in northern Va. or in Georgetown?
Sasha and Malia don't have that option, of course.
izzywise, but there was no disenfranchisement. The Democratic Party is a party, it has nothing to do with suffrage. How they choose to organize it is entirely up to them. If you don't like it, become a Republican, a Libertarian, or start your own party, or agitate to change the rules, but please stop it with the Clinton whining already. She lost. Get over it.
enders, sorry, I didn't hit refresh so missed your point.
Yes, thanks for your input. Back then people really put country first. I was watching Frontline last night. It was about Lee Atwater and how to me he hijacked what was good about america. Now the republican party is the party of idiots. Neither side does well when the best and the brightest on both sides can't come together. Since Bush I came into office they win the presidency on guns, gay, abortion issues that finally in this election people don't want to hear about. I wish you could write a book on how to not see the other party as your enemy. At the end of the day this is one country. You wouldn't know it by the way right wing talk shows are carrying on.
What a silly comparison, Curtis Roosevelt and the Obama girls.
Is this the only way this old man can get some publicity for his book? Have to agree with others, Caroline Kennedy and Chelsa Clinton came out pretty "normal". He lost me at "I'd always lived in big houses with servants". I doubt that Melia and Sasha will be ordering the servants around.
Au contraire, Bettie. Understanding history better helps us to understand the present. Obviously, CR's experience and that of the Obama girls are not exactly similar -- that's not his point. He only offers his perspective.
By the way, your disrespect ("this old man") only helps to expose your own shortcomings as a person.
The hook for this story is silly--comparing this gentleman's childhood in the White House to that of the Obama girls-- but the content is of some interest. I've difficulty thinking he's got enough interesting stories in him for two books, but perhaps so.
The Roosevelts were just batty. Eleanor's mother died when she was 8, her father was alcoholic. She was born a Roosevelt and married a Roosevelt. Though the article fails to mention it, Curtis was living with his grandparents because his mother had divorced his father. In addition to the dysfunction, childhood was just different back then. Aside from the setting and the exposure to some highly placed people, I can't imagine that Malia and Sasha's life in the White House could be much more different from this fellow's.
But he is no doubt right that he witnessed things that no one else has written about. Very well. He has written them down and business mandates that he give interviews to fulfill his obligation to make the publication profitable. Why is that worth whining about?
Edit:
Third paragraph - the hyphens are unneeded on "Now 78-years-old." ARG!!
Your knowledge of Roosevelt family history is impressive. Although, stating that "The Roosevelts were just batty," is not very insightful.
Lastly, I'm a little confused (not the first time). Are you suggesting that I or CR are whining? I didn't get the impression he was, and I do my best not to. Or maybe I'm just batty.
If it's taken you 60 years to come to grips with your childhood, you should have been in therapy along time ago. Good luck.
Interesting article.
Why were they living with their grandparents? Were their parents dead?
Great advice. I disagree that his advice is irrelevent. It will be a challenge for the Obama girls to develop identities of their own given that they will forever be known as the daughters of the first black president, though Michelle seems to be up to the task.
The challenge to be special all the time must be tremendous pressure for a child. He seems to have a particular insight into the damage of a forced personality. I can totally see what he is speaking of and hope that the girls have a chance to just be, instead of having to fulfill the expectations set forth by the media and the world.
"I did a fundraiser in the South of France for Obama!"
Aren't campaign contributions from foreigners illegal?
I thought this was a sensitive and insightful bit of advice for the Obama girls - and a look into a little known world.
imworkingonit -- candidates cannot take money from foreign nationls. But ex-pats are free to raise money and support candidates as they see fit.
American citizens may donate, campaign, and vote in our elections no matter where they happen to reside. Democrats Abroad is the active group for the Democratic Party and they have a few delegates to the Convention. I'm sure the Republicans have a similar set up. Making sure their absentee ballots are the correct ones for their home precinct and getting them sent off in time to be counted is the major hassle.
Enders
Aside for the fact that the votes are cast in publicly conducted elections that cost tens of millions of tax dollars;
Aside from the fact that the issue being voted on is selection of candidates for highest public official in the land;
Aside from the fact that voting is supposed to be a public virtue;
Aside from the fact that that voting is supposed to be a personal affirmation of belief that the individual matters and can make difference in a democracy;
Aside from the fact that the parties voided votes so that they dictate whose votes mattered most by selecting who must vote first;
Aside from the fact that our national creed is equality and the importance of the individual;
Aside from the fact that some of the voided voters had not mattered in a presidential primary for over a third a century and had their legislatures act so they could matter for a change;
Aside from all of that......your mean school librarian values that "rules are rules and must be followed," regardless of what values they serve, might make sense.
But because of all of those things listed above you are expressing the viewpoint of a sheep-like blind partisan who accept diminution of fellow citizens rights so long as it serves temporary political expedience.
Follow rules indeed! Isn't that what Bull Connor told said outside the courthouse as he turned voters away?
Good historical company you good Democrats are keeping.
As for me, I think the "Party of Civil Rights" should be ashamed of millions of voted votes and quickly act to impose one-person one-vote by law on all presidential primaries.
He was in Warm Springs Monday, where FDR died. Wouldn't converse with anyone, told them "Read the book," or "Buy the book." Didn't care to see the Springs, said "Water is water." When a ranger on site tried to ask him which town in France he lives, he said, "You wouldn't know about it anyway." He took his mother's maiden name just to pawn the book and be able to use the name to make a buck while complaining about FDR's legacy and his part in it. He's welcome to go back to France and take his book with him.
Thank you.
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