Professor Hamilton's Diary: Jan. 30, 1935

Gwennie breaks her glasses again; Reading joins in national President's Birthday Balls

Poor Gwennie and her glasses. This afternoon she went with a Mrs. Albright and her two sons to a children’s music lesson. Margaret met them and while walking home Gwennie ran into a iron railing and broke a lens of her glasses. This time some glass got in her eye, which meant a trip to Dr. Boff. “She had a slight scratch on the cornea of the eye,” her father wrote. “We had to put drops in it. Margaret is much disturbed over it.”

Needless to say, the Hamiltons didn’t join in the nation-wide revelry of the second annual President’s Birthday Ball, which raised money for victims of polio. To learn about this tremendous fund-raising event and how it was celebrated in Reading, you’ll need to be a paid subscriber. In the photo above, taken at the 1936 ball, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt cuts a birthday cake at a Washington hotel, surrounded by guests dressed to the nines.