Narcissa Vanderlip was born in Quincy, Ilinois, February
9, 1879. Vanderlip went to the University of Chicago,
where she excelled academically and managed the girls'
basketball team. She left school her senior year to
marry Frank Vanderlip. Together they raised six children,
worked for woman suffrage, progressive education,
founded the Scarborough School (1912), and, throughout
World War I, traveled
the country selling bonds to help the war effort.
Vanderlip, who chaired the New York State League
of Women Voters from 1919 to 1923, recruited ER to
join the League of Women Voter's board of directors.
ER, who had worked with Vanderlip on various wartime
relief projects, accepted. Vanderlip's pragmatic politics,
administrative ability, interest in learning, and
passion impressed ER, and ER learned a great deal
from her friend's leadership of the league. With fellow
LWV members, they worked for unemployment insurance,
health insurance, federal and state pensions for the
elderly, an end to child labor, minimum-wage and maximum-
hour legislation, federal aid to education, civil
service reform, full citizenship for women, women's
full political participation, United States membership
in the League of Nations,
pure-milk-and-food legislation, and international
peace. Vanderlip, soon impressed with ER's organizational
skills, urged ER to chair the league's national legislation
committee. Together they lobbied for the Child Labor
Amendment and raised funds for the Sheppard-Towner
Maternity and Infant Protection Act.
Although the two women remained friends, as ER focused
more on the Democratic Party, her friendship with
Vanderlip became more distant. Vanderlip
continued her work and was the president of the New
York Infirmary for Women and Children for thirty-seven
years. She died in Scarborough, New York, in March
1966.
Sources:
Beasley, Maurine H., Holly Schulman and Henry R.
Beasley, eds. The Eleanor Roosevelt Encyclopedia.
Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001, 546-7.
Cook, Blanche Wiesen. Eleanor Roosevelt: Volume
One, 1884-1933. New York: Penguin Books, 1992,
289-92, 296, 339, 362.
Lash, Joseph P. Love, Eleanor: Eleanor Roosevelt
and Her Friends. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday
& Company, Inc., 1982, 79.