New Deal Notes

Eleanor Roosevelt, Aunt Eileen and Grampa Maguire

Brooklyn, New York

1940

     My dad left home at the age of seventeen to join the Air Force.  By the time he returned home to New York, his family had moved to California . . . without him. He jokes about arriving home to surprise everyone only to have their neighbor, Mrs. Dioga, tell him that the whole family had moved away. Given that, it's not surprising that my father doesn't have a lot in the way of photographs or memorabelia from his childhood.  Among the few photos that he does have is this one of his younger sister, Eileen, and Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt.  It was taken at the dedication of the housing project where his family lived in Brooklyn.

    When I was in the sixth grade he let me take this picture to school as part of a WWII project.  He wrote this note to go along with the photo because for most of my childhood he worked as the evening coordinator at a business college which meant he left for work before I got home from school in the afternoons and he was still sleeping when I left for school each morning. He wrote me lots of notes like this - it was how we communicated in the days before emails and text messages. I'm pretty sure that most of the notes I left for him said things like "Hi Daddy.  I need money.  I love you! - Julie"