Passed Presidents - # 32 – Franklin Delano Roosevelt

We’ve visited some mediocrities and downright losers lately.  It seems fitting that after William Henry Harrison, the calendar allows us to remember one of the best.  Franklin Delano Roosevelt is consistently on everyone’s Top Three list, as he should be.  Our only four-term president faced the two biggest challenges of the 20^th century, the Great Depression and World War II. 

Springwood, the Roosevelt Home in Hyde Park, NY (5 June 2006)

The Roosevelt Family settled in the colonies in the 1600’s and to say they were well-to-do is an understatement.  Their Hyde Park estate was a bastion of WASP wealth and propriety.    Franklin was born there in 1882.  He was the only child of his father’s second and much younger wife. 

Sara Delano was a piece of work.  Notoriously possessive and domineering, her son was raised by nurses and governesses and had little contact with other children...especially po’ folk.  It’s a wonder that this patrician became such a champion of the downtrodden.  Mommy Dearest disapproved of his marriage to Eleanor but bought them a townhouse when he began his law career and began his family.  Of course, she also bought the adjoining unit and built doors to connect them.  She lived into Franklin’s third term before dying at the age of 86.

Portrait of Young Franklin (5 June 2006)

Taken as I walked through the Springwood mansion

He followed the upper crust path to adulthood...Groton, Harvard, Columbia Law School and a Wall Street law firm.  He was less interested in lawyering and more drawn to politics.  As a New York State senator, he fought the Tammany Hall political machine.  He was the vice presidential candidate when the Democrats lost to Harding and Coolidge in 1920.  He was governor of New York when the Crash happened.  The Depression and Herbert Hoover’s unpopularity ensured an easy win when he ran for president in 1932. 

A portion of the Roosevelt Living Room,

Hyde Park, NY (5 June 2006)

Franklin was stricken with polio in his late 30’s.  From that point on, he lost the use of his legs.  He found the climate and waters in Warm Springs, Georgia very helpful and often returned to swim and rehabilitate.  It was there he died of a cerebral hemmorage on this date in 1945 at age 63.  He is buried on the grounds of the Hyde Park estate along with Eleanor who died in 1962.

His first 100 days in office were marked by the greatest assertion of federal power in our history.  The New Deal brought on banking reform, the Civilian Conservation Corps and the creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Securities and Exchange Commission and many other initiatives.  The Social Security Act came a year later.

FDR Memorial, Washington, D.C. (10 April 2014)

The new Memorial, set along the Tidal Basin, allows visitors

to walk through his four terms in office and see

representations of the trying times.  Significant quotes

from the president are carved into the massive granite walls.

I try not to editorialize (too much) in these biographical and journalistic essays.  However, this quote from his second inaugural address in 1937 still resonates.  Made during the depths of the Great Depression, it reminds me, 77 years later, that so much of the nation’s wealth is increasingly in the hands of fewer and fewer people.  The disparity continues to increase and it is now approaching what it was before the market crashed in 1929.  Just sayin’... 

 

FDR’s was actually the first president’s grave I ever visited.  We were in the area for Becky’s brother’s wedding and took some time the day before to tour around the magnificent Hudson River valley.  I returned there in the middle of the Quest to make better, digital images.  In addition to the impressive home, the property includes a museum and presidential library.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

32^nd President; Served 1933-1945

Born: January 30, 1882, Hyde Park, NY

Died: April 12, 1945, Warm Springs, GA

Grave Location: Franklin Roosevelt Library and Museum, Hyde Park, NY

Dates Visited: 7/8/1977; 6/6/2006