On Saturday April 5th, Roosevelt House hosted 160 visitors who toured the building as part of Hunter College’s first Homecoming. Six Roosevelt House guides participated under the supervision of Dr. Deborah Gardner, Historian & Curator of the House.
Tour group with guides Rachel Corbman and Ashley Dennis.
Among the highlights of the day was a visit by Beverly Gutterman Rosenstein, class of 1943, who joined the Army after graduation to serve in World War II. As guide Horst Rosenberg reported, “Lieutenant Gutterman was an absolute treat to have on tour.” Her portrait in uniform is displayed in the Sara Delano Roosevelt Library, along with those of two other Hunter graduates who served in the Navy, Doris Coles ’41 and Mary Louise Chapin ’41. Beverly’s comments about her experiences were applauded enthusiastically. She told the group that after her Army enlistment and following basic training, she was assigned to the AIR CORPS (as this branch was known at the time), and then she was selected for Officer Candidate School and commissioned as an officer. She was based originally at the Brooklyn Army Base and then with the Army Postal Battalion in Manhattan as a Supply Officer. First Lieutenant Gutterman’s office was located in the Breslin Hotel at 29th Street and Broadway, one of several hotels the Army had taken over for military staff work and housing. She noted that she was proud of her service and that her only regret was that during the Battle of the Bulge she couldn’t get enough coats to send over to American troops in Belgium, “I gave them everything I had of course, I only wish I could have found more.” She had harsh words for the Germans, reflecting the fact that her only brother, First Lieutenant Roger L. Gutterman, was killed while on a reconnaissance mission with the 36th Infantry Division during the Italian campaign while it was fighting its way to Rome in May 1944. Lt. Gutterman had graduated in 1939 from City College’s School of Business and Civic Administration (now known as Baruch College).
Beverly said that she was alerted to the opportunity to have her portrait painted by the Dean of Hunter College, Dr. Hannah M. Egan, whom she visited during her leave time, and was thrilled to have been chosen. She added that while she still wears the hat she held in the painting, the uniform “doesn’t button anymore.”
She sat for the portrait in the Chelsea art studio of Joseph Cummings Chase, head of Hunter’s Art Department and a well-known artist who had also portrayed many high ranking military officers in World Wars I and II. More than a hundred of these are in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C. Beverly mentioned too that she will be the Deputy Grand Marshall at the Hillsdale, New Jersey, Memorial Day Parade this year and Grand Marshall in 2015.
Another graduate of the 1940s talked about participating in a “Knit Your Bit” drive with her grandmother while enrolled at Hunter, adding that Franklin Roosevelt was “My saint.”
A few of the tour attendees had met Eleanor Roosevelt and were very impressed with her height. One guest had met Mary McLeod Bethune, the African-American educator and civil rights leader who was a friend of Sara Delano Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt, and adviser to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, noting that while she was only a young girl and didn’t understand who Bethune was at the time, that by observing her mother’s strong emotional reaction to the situation, she knew Bethune was a woman of great importance. A photograph of Bethune and Sara Roosevelt is displayed in the second floor classroom, formerly the Drawing Rooms, where they were visiting together in 1934.
Sara Delano Roosevelt and Mary McLeod Bethune 1934 at Roosevelt House.
