White House Years
In the White House, Ethel often filled in for her mother by placing meal orders and delegating tasks to the staff. She was only 10 years old when her father became President after William McKinley's assassination in 1901.
During her family's years in the White House, Ethel always tried to keep as low a profile possible because she did not seem to enjoy the attention as much as her half-sister Alice Roosevelt did. She was also encouraged to maintain her low-key persona by her mother Edith, who believed that women only made the news to announce her birth, marriage and her death. Ethel attended school at the National Cathedral and had difficulty making friends due to her father's position. Just months before the Roosevelts' departure from the White House, Ethel had her Debut and Coming Out Party in the White House on December 28, 1908. Ethel was just 17 at the time of her debut, one year shy of the typical age of 18 that most women "came out." The reason for this being the fact that the family was due to leave the White House less than three months following Ethel's debut. This would be last opportunity to do so if Ethel was to "come out" from Pennsylvania Avenue.
Read more about this topic: Ethel Roosevelt Derby
Famous quotes containing the words white, house and/or years:
“...you don’t have to be as good as white people, you have to be better or the best. When Negroes are average, they fail, unless they are very, very lucky. Now, if you’re average and white, honey, you can go far. Just look at Dan Quayle. If that boy was colored he’d be washing dishes somewhere.”
—Annie Elizabeth Delany (b. 1891)
“What is the use of a house if you have n’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?—if you cannot tolerate the planet it is on?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There beneath the Roman ruin where the purple flowers grow,
Came that “Ave atque Vale” of the poet’s hopeless woe,
Tenderest of Roman poets nineteen hundred years ago,”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)