Gracie Hall Roosevelt was one Roosevelt who was seldom if ever in the public eye. But he had the Roosevelt zest for living.
Big (6 ft. 3 in., 240 lb.), blond, husky Gracie Hall Roosevelt always enjoyed himself hugely. He was an Army airman in World War I, at various times an electrical engineer, banker, municipal administrator, financial adviser. Twice married (once when he was a Harvard undergraduate), twice divorced, he fathered seven children.
Last week, in Washington, Gracie Hall Roosevelt died at 50, from a chronic liver ailment. From his big sister, who had tried to look after him ever since they were orphaned, he received the kind of tribute which might make any man glad that he had lived. Anna Eleanor Roosevelt Roosevelt loved her brother dearly. At dawn one morning she left his bedside, rode back to the White House, wrote this moving obituary for her syndicated column, My Day:
"I became more or less responsible for my brother when I was 18 and he was 12.
But I remember him very vividly as a very small boy with curls and a round roly face; whom my young aunts made much of and called the 'cherub,' thereby creating much jealousy in me because I could not aspire to any such name.
"By the time my brother was 18 he was an entirely independent person, and from that time on the only way that anyone could hold him was to let him go. He loved life, he could enjoy things more than almost anyone I have ever known. He had fine qualities, generosity, a warmth of heart which brought him an endless number of friends, courage which amounted almost to foolhardiness, a brilliant mind and a capacity for work which, in his younger days, made him able to perform prodigious tasks, both physically and mentally.
"He was impatient of the kind of weakness which he would describe as being a 'sissy,' and yet he was gentle. He was capable of great loyalty to the people for whom he really cared deeply.
"Like most of us, he had weaknesses which brought him unhappiness. Most of his friends, however, will remember that with him life was usually gay, and he would not want gloom to surround his memory.
"I think there are many people who will remember him because of a kind word, or a kind gesture. . . . There is much for his children to be proud of in their inheritance and I hope they will remember the good times they had together."