During the first summer of FDR’s presidency, the Roosevelts hosted a Fourth of July picnic at their vacation home on Campobello Island, New Brunswick [about a half mile off the coast of Lubec, Maine]. Formality ruled, and men and women dressed in a causal style, the men in light-colored suits and the women in light-colored suits or dresses, Mrs. Roosevelt, in white, hunched near an open fire roasting a hot dog on a stick. She makes it look easy, but two observers, a man, and a woman, look at her as if she’s a little bit nutty, if not undignified for the president’s wife.
The men leaning against the fence are naval officers from the USS “Indianapolis” and two other naval warships, who joined the picnic on the beach. The Indianapolis was newly launched in 1931, and in WWII was sunk four days after delivering the first atomic bomb to Tinian Island.
Featured Image: July 1, 1933. Eleanor Roosevelt Roasting Hot Dogs on Campobello Island, New Brunswick, Canada