Anna Eleanor Roosevelt Halsted was the eldest of five children and the only daughter of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt. She had a career as a newspaper editor, worked in public relations, and would go on to become a prominent figure in publishing, social work, and human rights. She also authored two best-selling children’s books, “Scamper” and “Scamper’s Christmas.”
Roosevelt was born in 1906 in New York City and named after her mother and grandmother. She attended Cornell University and later married a man named Curtis Dall. When the marriage ended, she moved into the White House, where her father had been president for two years. She got married again, this time to Clarence John Boettiger, a journalist she met on her father's campaign train, in March 1935.
The couple moved to Seattle, where William Randolph Hearst hired Clarence to be the editor of the Seattle Post Intelligencer. They ran the newspaper from December 1936 to September 1943, with Anna as editor of the women's page and a columnist for the newspaper.
When Boettiger left to contribute to the war effort, Anna moved back into the White House at the request of her father to serve as his private assistant. She performed many of the First Lady’s duties, including writing presidential speeches, and attended the World War II Yalta Conference with her father as his aide-de-camp.
After President Roosevelt died in 1945, Anna and her husband moved to Phoenix, Arizona and bought a newspaper they named the Arizona Times, which they turned into a daily left-leaning publication. The failure of the paper led to their divorce and the eventual suicide of Boettiger.
In 1948, Anna and her mother worked on a radio show called the “Eleanor and Anna Roosevelt Program.” Anna was also editor of a magazine called The Woman, for which she wrote a series of articles called “My Life with F.D.R.” She got married a third and final time in 1952, to Dr. James Halstead, who was a doctor for the Veterans Administration. She then embarked on a career in medical public relations and immersed herself in humanitarian work while contributing to the legacies of her parents.
In February 1963, Anna was appointed Vice Chairman of the President’s Commission for the Observance of Human Rights, and in October was appointed by President John F. Kennedy to the Citizen's Advisory Council on the Status of Women. The Halsteads retired in 1971 and Anna passed away from throat cancer in 1975.