Tune in to the City Council meeting live on Channel 75 at 8pm this Wednesday, January 16th, 2008 on cable for the commercial free action.
The twenty two items on the agenda include various committee appointments, the franchise agreement with Cablevision, the Boston Post Road lane reduction project and a meeting schedule for the rest of the year.
The City Council will also vote on a resolution naming the Rye post office in honor of Caroline O’Day.
Who is this cool lady?
After meeting her husband, oil man Daniel O’Day, in Europe, the two returned to New York to marry in 1901. After her husband’s death in 1916, O’Day busied herself in social causes including the New York Consumer’s League, the Women’s Trade Union League, and the Democratic party. She also served on the Rye School Board.
She worked with Eleanor Roosevelt in various social causes and supported Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidential campaign in 1932. In turn, the Roosevelts supported her run for Congress in 1934. Eleanor Roosevelt served as her finance chairperson, the first time in history a first lady had supported a Congressional candidate. Time Magazine described O’Day during her run for Congress in the fall of 1934:
"In Washington, Mrs. Roosevelt announced that she would head Mrs. O’Day’s finance committee, take the stump for five speeches in her behalf. Never before in White House history had a First Lady stepped into a Congressional election fight. Said Mrs. Roosevelt: "I know it is rather unusual. … I am doing it because I have worked for many years under Mrs. O’Day."
Caroline Goodwin O’Day, 59, is tall, florid, greying, a dozen years a widow. Daughter of a Georgia planter, she went abroad to study art in the 1890s, met & married the son of a Standard Oil vice president. Installed in a fine mansion at Rye, N. Y., she soon found that managing a household and rearing three children by no means exhausted her energies. Down to Manhattan went she to work in famed Henry Street Settlement, interest herself in women factory workers. For 13 payless years she has never missed a meeting of New York’s State Welfare Board."
O’Day went on to win her seat in Congress, becoming one of the most prominent women in that elected body. She served four terms.
More information on Caroline Love Goodwin O’Day: Wikipedia, National Park Service, Congress.
I totally get your point Matt but here I believe it’s more like Lowey coat tailing someone who actually did good things for Rye City over many many years. Lowey and O’Day couldn’t be more different Democrats.
Ted, you’re right. O’Day actually worked to better the lot of her constituents – she was actually very concerned about the individuals she represented. Nita cares about Nita.
I’d be willing to bet that, if she could be heard from the grave, she’d be mortified to find out that a post office was named after her posthumously.
Perhaps Hillary Rodham Clinton could take a break from her S-of-S duties to channel Eleanor Roosevelt and ask her to query her long-time friend O’Day for her views on this odd honor.
Right. And so speaking of Nita – I don’t think I’ll ever forget her million megawatt smile as she literally danced thru the aisles of the house chamber the night ObamaCare was shoved thru on a reconciliation vote. Nita had this electric blue dress on and when she hugged Nancy Pelosi (who was wearing something in the shade of firehouse red) my home TV screen pixels momentarily lost all contrast. I thought – are these women crazy? Don’t they know the nation will never forget or forgive this? A forced reconciliation vote on straight party lines for something as huge as this? What about jobs, what about Fannie and Freddy and the bomb they set off destroying the housing market, what about Iran v Israel and protecting our own cites from terrorism and a host of other national priorities de-prioritized so that after a year of slogging this special spectacle could be broadcast into our living rooms.
Next Tuesday, I think the nation will remind us that they have not forgotten or forgiven.