Curtis Roosevelt

Curtis Roosevelt was an American writer. He was the son of Anna Roosevelt and her first husband, Curtis Bean Dall. He was the eldest grandson of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.

When he was three, Curtis, his sister Eleanor, and his mother moved into the White House, where they lived for many years until his mother remarried. Curtis was often referred to as "Buzzie" in 1930s newspapers.

When his mother was divorced from Boettiger in 1949, Eleanor Roosevelt and Anna did not want Curtis to reassume the surname Dall, so Mrs. Roosevelt suggested he use his middle name as his last name.

Roosevelt graduated from Northwestern Military and Naval Academy in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. He later attended Loyola University in Los Angeles.

In the mid-1950s, Roosevelt served as a private in the United States Army.

Between 1956 and 1964, he worked for several years in advertising and then primarily for nonprofit institutions, including as regional director for the National Citizens Council for Better Schools and then as vice president in charge of public affairs for the New School for Social Research. From 1963 to 1964, he served as executive director of the United States Committee for the United Nations.

In 1964, he was recruited by the Secretariat of the United Nations to join the Public Information Department and in the following years, until 1983, held various positions in the international civil service. Roosevelt obtained his master's degree from the School of Government and Public Law at Columbia University.

From 1983 to 1986, Roosevelt served as principal at the Dartington College of Arts in Devon, England. Since then he has served as a visiting professor at the Geneva School of Diplomacy and International Relations, receiving an honorary doctorate in 2010. In 1987, he and his wife Marina moved to Deia, Mallorca, where Roosevelt devoted himself to pottery, some of his work being exhibited in a Palma gallery. He also occasionally wrote on American politics for El Mundo in Spain.

Roosevelt's book Too Close to the Sun: Growing up in the Shadow of my Grandparents Franklin and Eleanor was published in 2008 and led to a series of radio and television appearances by the author. In 2012, the book was translated and published in France.

The Roosevelts now live in a small village in the south of France, where Marina has served on the conseil municipal. He has lectured at Lille University and regularly appears on French television. He also writes occasionally for Le Figaro, the International Herald Tribune and has had articles in La Tribune, France-Amerique, Marianne, and the Commune de la Commune. Because of his connection to his famous family, Roosevelt is often consulted by the Roosevelt Library at Hyde Park and the National Park Service for comments on library exhibits and historic homes Springwood and Val-Kill.

In 2013, Roosevelt published an essay in e-book form, "Eyewitness in Israel: 1948", detailing his journey, at age 18, to the then new nation at the behest of his grandmother Eleanor, with whom he was traveling in Paris and who sent him in her stead to report back.