April 12, 1945—President Franklin D. Roosevelt, worn out from a dozen years of facing unprecedented challenges from the Great Depression and the Axis Powers, died of a massive cerebral hemorrhage at age 63 in his “Little White House” in Warm Springs, Ga.
Chances are, the only thing many Americans today know about his death is that FDR was in the company of onetime mistress Lucy Mercer Rutherford that early afternoon when he was stricken. That historical amnesia is well and good, if it makes people aware that the President was human like the rest of us.
(While we’re at it, let’s stipulate that FDR was in his element that day, because he was in the company of several women who thought the sun, moon and stars revolved around him. Not only was Lucy there at his cottage, but also devoted cousins Margaret “Daisy” Suckley and Laura Delano, along with Elizabeth Shoumatoff, a rock-ribbed Republican who, like countless others over the years, became absolutely charmed by him as she painted his portrait.)
But what gets forgotten today is that Americans reacted with a shock and grief not experienced again for another generation, on an afternoon in Dallas. James MacGregor Burns subtitled his biography of the President during the war years “The Soldier of Freedom,” and Americans were now suddenly, painfully, aware of how much he had expended of himself in their service. He had served so long--winning an unprecedented four terms--and fought so many political battles that Americans had a difficult time even conceiving of anyone else in the Oval Office. In Preston Sturges' cheeky 1942 romantic comedy, The Palm Beach Story, Mary Astor's character, "Princess Centimillia," observes: "Nothing is permanent in this world - except for Roosevelt.”
Now even that certainty was gone. Here’s just one example of the general shock and sadness, part of a marvelous piece by film critic-novelist James Agee in the April 23, 1945 issue of Time:
“At home, the news came to people in the hot soft light of the afternoon, in taxicabs, along the streets, in offices and bars and factories. In a Cleveland barbershop, 60-year-old Sam Katz was giving a customer a shave when the radio stabbed out the news. Sam Katz walked over to the water cooler, took a long, slow drink, sat down and stared into space for nearly ten minutes. Finally he got up and painted a sign on his window: ‘Roosevelt is Dead.’ Then he finished the shave. In an Omaha poolhall, men racked up their cues without finishing their games, walked out. In a Manhattan taxicab, a fare told the driver, who pulled over to the curb, sat with his head bowed, and after two minutes resumed his driving.”
The mourning was international as well. New Yorker Paris correspondent Janet Flanner quoted an editorial from the French newspaper Le Monde: “Let us weep for this man and hope that his wise and generous conception of the human communities remains like a light to brighten the path for all men of good will.”
(The Agee and Flanner articles are reprinted in the Library of America anthology, Reporting World War II, Part Two—an absolutely indispensable tool for understanding how Americans perceived the tumultuous war years while they were happening.)
Roosevelt certainly had his faults—notably vindictiveness and a tendency to prevaricate in an effort to charm. It’s also true that he could have done far more to aid Holocaust victims and, as Burton Folsom Jr. and Anita Folsom contend in today’s Wall Street Journal, that his economic policies didn’t end the Depression.
And yet the thousands of ordinary Americans like the stunned barber and taxi driver in Agee’s article were right to mourn the passing of the Hyde Park patrician.
No other President so made it the government’s business to safeguard the economic and military security of the nation.
Chances are, the only thing many Americans today know about his death is that FDR was in the company of onetime mistress Lucy Mercer Rutherford that early afternoon when he was stricken. That historical amnesia is well and good, if it makes people aware that the President was human like the rest of us.
(While we’re at it, let’s stipulate that FDR was in his element that day, because he was in the company of several women who thought the sun, moon and stars revolved around him. Not only was Lucy there at his cottage, but also devoted cousins Margaret “Daisy” Suckley and Laura Delano, along with Elizabeth Shoumatoff, a rock-ribbed Republican who, like countless others over the years, became absolutely charmed by him as she painted his portrait.)
But what gets forgotten today is that Americans reacted with a shock and grief not experienced again for another generation, on an afternoon in Dallas. James MacGregor Burns subtitled his biography of the President during the war years “The Soldier of Freedom,” and Americans were now suddenly, painfully, aware of how much he had expended of himself in their service. He had served so long--winning an unprecedented four terms--and fought so many political battles that Americans had a difficult time even conceiving of anyone else in the Oval Office. In Preston Sturges' cheeky 1942 romantic comedy, The Palm Beach Story, Mary Astor's character, "Princess Centimillia," observes: "Nothing is permanent in this world - except for Roosevelt.”
Now even that certainty was gone. Here’s just one example of the general shock and sadness, part of a marvelous piece by film critic-novelist James Agee in the April 23, 1945 issue of Time:
“At home, the news came to people in the hot soft light of the afternoon, in taxicabs, along the streets, in offices and bars and factories. In a Cleveland barbershop, 60-year-old Sam Katz was giving a customer a shave when the radio stabbed out the news. Sam Katz walked over to the water cooler, took a long, slow drink, sat down and stared into space for nearly ten minutes. Finally he got up and painted a sign on his window: ‘Roosevelt is Dead.’ Then he finished the shave. In an Omaha poolhall, men racked up their cues without finishing their games, walked out. In a Manhattan taxicab, a fare told the driver, who pulled over to the curb, sat with his head bowed, and after two minutes resumed his driving.”
The mourning was international as well. New Yorker Paris correspondent Janet Flanner quoted an editorial from the French newspaper Le Monde: “Let us weep for this man and hope that his wise and generous conception of the human communities remains like a light to brighten the path for all men of good will.”
(The Agee and Flanner articles are reprinted in the Library of America anthology, Reporting World War II, Part Two—an absolutely indispensable tool for understanding how Americans perceived the tumultuous war years while they were happening.)
Roosevelt certainly had his faults—notably vindictiveness and a tendency to prevaricate in an effort to charm. It’s also true that he could have done far more to aid Holocaust victims and, as Burton Folsom Jr. and Anita Folsom contend in today’s Wall Street Journal, that his economic policies didn’t end the Depression.
And yet the thousands of ordinary Americans like the stunned barber and taxi driver in Agee’s article were right to mourn the passing of the Hyde Park patrician.
No other President so made it the government’s business to safeguard the economic and military security of the nation.
No other President preserved so much—forests, infrastructures, capitalism itself.
No other President broadened opportunity for so many Americans—not only the largely urban-based African-, Jewish-, and Irish-Americans who formed part of the so-called “New Deal coalition,” but also millions of others who joined the middle class as a result of the Wagner Act and the G.I. Bill of Rights.
FDR died in Warm Springs, but it’s equally correct to say he experienced a second life there after his devastating bout with polio two decades before. Visiting this rural community for its recuperative waters, he came in contact with people from all walks of life brought low by the dreaded disease. He and they taught each other how to hope again, and he eventually transmitted his hard-won optimism to a nation desperately in need of it.
In choosing the image for this post, I thought seriously of using either Ms. Shoumatoff’s “Unfinished Portrait” or another photo from 1945 depicting the careworn face of the President. Ultimately, I decided that this one—the man of charm and cheer that Americans grew to cherish—was preferable.
FDR died in Warm Springs, but it’s equally correct to say he experienced a second life there after his devastating bout with polio two decades before. Visiting this rural community for its recuperative waters, he came in contact with people from all walks of life brought low by the dreaded disease. He and they taught each other how to hope again, and he eventually transmitted his hard-won optimism to a nation desperately in need of it.
In choosing the image for this post, I thought seriously of using either Ms. Shoumatoff’s “Unfinished Portrait” or another photo from 1945 depicting the careworn face of the President. Ultimately, I decided that this one—the man of charm and cheer that Americans grew to cherish—was preferable.
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