Eleanor Roosevelt, Robert Ferguson, and Isabella Selmes Ferguson Greenway King in Strathpeffer, Scotland
"Eleanor Roosevelt [ER] and Isabella Selmes Ferguson Greenway King met when they were teenagers (sixteen and eighteen), before that word entered our language. New York debutantes, connected by an immediate sense of joy in each other’s company as well as labyrinthian family friendships, they both married in 1905. Isabella was one of ER’s bridesmaids, and they spent some part of their European honeymoon travels together. Their remarkable friendship survived long geographic distances, profound political differences, and remained to the end marked vast admiration, trust, and integrity. Their children were friends, and Isabella’s Arizona homes provided them a riding and camping sanctuary, a life-long healing center, during upsets and troubles.”
~excerpt from A Volume of Friendships by Kristy Miller and Robert H. McGinnis. In this book, the authors give a glimpse into the friendship Isabella Greenway shared with her dear friend Eleanor Roosevelt.
“The 1932 Democratic National Convention opened in Chicago on June 27. The Republicans had just departed, after gloomily nominating Herbert Hoover, in this, the second year of the Depression. Democrats, arriving eleven days later, were enthusiastic as they had not been for years; almost any democratic nominee could be sure of election. They descended upon the Windy City in droves, partisans of many eager candidates, fired up to repeal Prohibition. Hotels were packed, Michigan Avenue seethed with humanity, and the air shook with the sound of fifes and drums.
Among this throng of vivid personalities, the New York Times reported, Isabella Greenway of Arizona was ‘the most-talked-of woman at the National Democratic Convention today.’ Twelve years after women had won the right to vote, she was something of a political phenomenon: She had seen to it that her state’s delegates were pledged to Franklin D. Roosevelt, the front-runner but by no means the assured nominee. She was going to second his nomination. And she herself was slated to receive an honorary vice-presidential nomination. By the end of the convention, she had prompted the switch of the California delegation that swept FDR to victory.
‘Who is this Mrs. Greenway?’ the Times wondered?....”
~excerpt from the award winning book Isabella Greenway An Enterprising Woman by Kristie Miller