Franklin D. Roosevelt, the nation’s only four-term president, led America during World War II, and was the driving force behind The New Deal to help the country recover from the Great Depression.
His wife, Eleanor Roosevelt was an influential political figure and a tireless advocate for civil, human and worker rights during her time as First Lady and well beyond Franklin’s death in 1945.
Vail resident Nina Roosevelt Gibson saw them simply as family. Born in 1942, she is the daughter of Franklin and Eleanor’s youngest son, John.
Gibson, who was 3 when her grandfather died, grew up on the Roosevelt compound in Hyde Park, New York. Eleanor lived in the converted furniture factory next door.
“To me, she was stability,” said Gibson, who as a teen often accompanied Eleanor on humanitarian trips to other countries. “She was the one I felt safe with. I loved being in her house. I was in her house more often than my own.”
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Gibson, a resident of Southern Arizona since 1988, will share her stories and experiences in interviews that will air on Friday and Saturday on KUAZ (89.1-FM) and Sunday on “Arizona Illustrated” on PBS.
Her segments will serve as a precursor to the seven-part Ken Burns documentary, “The Roosevelts: An Intimate History,” which will focus on the lives of Franklin, Eleanor and Theodore Roosevelt.
The Burns series begins Sunday.
Did Eleanor have ties to Tucson? “She and Isabella Greenway had been friends for many years. Isabella founded the Arizona Inn. She was a bridesmaid in my grandmother’s wedding. They had kept up correspondence and had visited each other many times.”
How does it feel to have your grandparents get the Ken Burns treatment? “To me, Ken Burns can do no wrong. He is an incredible documentarian. He goes inside of a story and pulls things together like nobody else. I was never really interested in baseball, but I loved watching his baseball documentary. It was fascinating. You learn so much from everything he does, whether you care about the topic or not.”
What was it like growing up in Hyde Park? “It was heaven. I was so fortunate. I was born in California, but when we moved to Hyde Park I never wanted to leave. We had everything. My cousins came in the summer and we worked on the roads. We threw up hay. We picked and canned tomatoes. If there was work to be done, we did it.”
Did you get to spend a lot of time with your grandmother growing up? “She was there on weekends and a lot during the summer. Her home had lots of bedrooms and they were almost always full. It was commonplace for her to have 20-30 people over for meals.”
How old were you when Eleanor died? “I was 20. That was devastating. My sister had died a couple of years before that. It was a really bad time for me. I knew that it was kind of the end of what I had looked at as family. The matriarch had died. Her children wouldn’t gather like they once did. I knew all that was going to change, and it did.”
What were some of the most important values you learned from your grandmother? “I learned to respect everybody. I was taught by example, by watching. My grandmother taught me that you can learn from everybody. Whether she was dealing with reform school children or kings and queens, she treated everybody with the same warmth and respect. We all need to operate that way.”
