Letter: Hillary & Eleanor

I met Eleanor Roosevelt three times in Bayside, NY when I was 9, 10, and 11 years old. I had tea with her and made pencil drawing portraits of her that she took home. Mrs. Roosevelt was there to visit my best friend’s mother, a polio survivor, each year on her birthday. She did this for decades with dozens of people in homes and hospitals across the country. Hillary Rodham Clinton has shown the same kind of remarkable empathy and concern, from her days at the Children’s Defense Fund and her pioneering work for the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Eleanor was mocked — the same kind of thing Hillary has had to endure. Hillary’s history needs to be shouted out loud and clear, even to her supporters.

“Deplorable” men like Trump get an easy ride on what could be considered libelous and even criminal public incitement to violence. Activist women have to be made of steel, just continuing the good fight for social justice regardless of the garbage thrown at us.  In Hillary you’ll see a remarkable intelligence, a perseverance, an empathy and a humanity that we should want in a leader of our Democracy.

I like and admire Hillary Rodham Clinton, and I think Eleanor Roosevelt would have liked her, too, a lot!

Micaela Amateau Amato
Professor Emerita, Penn State University
University Park, PA.