With brightness in her eyes and slight hand gestures, Aunt Eleanor described her work with the United Nations.  She had helped her husband think through the charter for the organization, and it remained a chief interest for her the rest of her life. 
    My aunt believed that nothing real is gained through force.  You must study your enemy, understand his motivations, make personal contact, and then work problems through.  The United Nations was such a forum for forging lasting peace.
    When President Truman appointed her one of the first five official delegates, it almost goes with out saying that she was the only woman delegate from the United States.  Along with five alternate delegates and a staff of advisors, five months after Uncle Franklin's death, she sailed to London for the gathering of the General Assembly.  Most of the US delegates had arrived at the New York City steamer dock in official limousines.  Aunt Eleanor drew up in a taxicab and, as always, carried her own bag on board.
    She wrote to me while she was gone, describing her stateroom as containing an impressive stack of Department of State briefs that explained the official position of the United States in every conceivable circumstance.  She said she missed her secretary but had left Tommy at home to handle the huge volume of personal mail, which was never less than two or three hundred letters a day.
    During the five-day sail to England, Aunt Eleanor informed herself on every aspect of her new position.  And every day, important, official documents, printed on blue paper, were added to the pile on her table.  Sometimes she found herself falling asleep as she tried to study the verbose reports.  Once, when she asked a gentleman from the State Department to translate a document into a language she could understand, he said, "Mrs. Roosevelt, I don't understand these words.  I don't think anyone is supposed to."
    In London, my aunt was received with acclaim.  She dined with the king and queen, who wanted to talk about the problems of the world's Jewry, and Lady Peasley, president of the World Women's Party for Equal Rights.  When the delegation met to assign their members to specific committees within the United Nations, they assigned my aunt to Committee Three.  Obviously, the men thought an appointment to the committee scheduled to deal with humanitarian, social, and cultural matters would be a safe place to put their controversial female member.  Surely she could do no harm (to any of their political careers) from there.  They, themselves, would deal with important subjects like government, military affairs, finance, and political involvement.
    Back in New York, after the initial meeting in London, it turned out that one of the jobs the Economic and Social Council had assigned to Committee Three was to set up an eighteen-nation commission on human rights.  The commission's first task would be to draft a Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a kind of international bill of rights.  The group was given three weeks to set up an agenda to accomplish the task.  They met in New York City and were paid $15 a day.  After their first meeting, by unanimous acclamation, they chose my aunt to be their chairperson.
    On the second day, she was four minutes late and apologized, saying the New York subway had let her down.  During the second week, she came down with a case of shingles, but no delegate ever knew it.  Tommy and I, back at her apartment, worried about her and wished we could find her some relief.  But she just asked her doctor to cover the affected area with something that wouldn't ooze through her clothes while she went on with the important work of the commission.