Franklin Delano Roosevelt - No. 32 - Hyde Park, NY - August 10, 2019

Franklin Delano Roosevelt - No. 32 - Hyde Park, NY - August 10, 2019

Franklin D. Roosevelt pulled off one of the most audacious political hoaxes in American history: He convinced the American people that he could walk. Struck with polio at age 39, he lost the use of his legs. But he gave the appearance that he could walk. 

He would arrive at most public events in a car wearing leg braces. He would be assisted from the car in a private area and helped to a standing position. He would lock his leg braces into place so that his legs were rigid. Then, with a cane in one hand and the support of a hefty person on his other side, he would advance slowly, swinging his legs from his hips. He would appear to be slowly walking. He mastered doing this with a smile and a ready quip for the people he met along the way. 

During the Democratic Convention of 1936, he was driven to the Franklin Field stadium in Philadelphia. He got out of car in curtained-off area and snapped on his leg braces. But as he ascended the steps assisted by his son James, he slipped and fell into the mud. He angrily demanded that his entourage clean him up. On his second try, he made it to the top. The crowd never saw the fall and loved seeing him walk to the podium to give his speech.

And the press cooperated — something that would never happen today.  For the rare press photographer who tried to sneak a photo, the camera was confiscated and the film exposed.  Cameras were huge at the time and not easy to conceal.

FDR's leg braces

Even in his home library in Hyde Park, NY, where he used to meet guests, the wheelchair ramp would be stowed so nobody could see it. He would greet his guests sitting down. Sometimes his aides would even fold one of his legs over the other.

When we visited the Franklin D. Roosevelt Historic Site in Hyde Park, we learned that of the 130,000 photos in the library, only four showed FDR in a wheelchair.

* * *

Visitors to the FDR National Historic Site should plan to spend at least a half day here, if not more. As the house was his birthplace, lifelong home and burial place, there is plenty to explore — from the house to the visitor center to the museum and library to trails and three gardens.  We visited in late summer, driving from the airport in Albany through rolling forested hills and arriving at the historic site in about two hours.

The estate is huge and the rolling landscape expansive. We drove over a historic bridge spanning a small pond, and then past tree-lined hills as we made our way to the visitor center. It’s no wonder that neighbors walk, with or without dogs, around the grounds (the site even has a port-a-potty for them).

For hungry visitors, the visitor center offers a small cafe. We enjoyed the outdoor patio, while waiting for our tour to begin. The patio is surrounded by a garden as well as a sculpture of FDR and Eleanor sitting on a bench.

The FDR estate was the first presidential home to become a government-owned presidential library. FDR began working on the library during his second term and gave his property to the U.S. in 1943, even though he was still alive.

Our tour started at the visitor center, a modern building with a lot of open space as well as a cafe and movie theater. Tour guide Eric was quite knowledgeable. However, he talked really, really fast — which, coming from Cathy, is saying something.

* * *

FDR arrived in the world big — he was a 10 lb. baby — to James Roosevelt and his second wife Sara on Jan. 30, 1882. He was fortunate to be born into wealth. His grandfather made his fortune as a molasses trader during the Revolutionary War and established the Bank of New York with founding father Alexander Hamilton.  And with that money, the family bought land in the bucolic Hudson River Valley. 

Franklin wanted to go to college at the Naval Academy — he had a lifelong fascination with ships — but his mother, Sara, did not want her son going to war. So, he went to Harvard instead.  While at Harvard, Franklin began seeing Eleanor Roosevelt, who was his fifth cousin Theodore’s niece. So, when they married in 1905, she didn’t have to change her last name!

And it was Theodore who gave her away. But FDR’s mother, Sara, did not approve of the marriage and Eleanor got the brunt of the dissatisfaction. Eleanor found her mother-in-law to be domineering. Unfortunately for Eleanor, Franklin was kind of a mama’s boy and liked living close to her. 

It wasn’t long, though, before FDR began having affairs. He had an acknowledged affair with Lucy Mercer, his wife’s social secretary. He was also linked to his own secretary, Marguerite LeLand, whom he called Missy. He had yet another possible romance with Margarete Suckley. Eleanor, for her part, did not sit still. She was romantically linked to Earl Miller, a state trooper who was her bodyguard.  She was also linked to a female journalist, Lorena Hickok.

Because of his family’s wealth, FDR was never financially independent. He hoped to enter politics, a desire that Eleanor attributed to Theodore, who was a New York state legislator, assistant secretary of the Navy, governor of New York and finally president. FDR even wore the same Pince-Nez glasses as Theodore. 

In 1913, Woodrow Wilson appointed FDR the assistant secretary of the Navy. He was following in Teddy’s footsteps.

* * *

Tour guide Eric continued to talk as we walked the quarter-mile walk to Springwood, FDR's house.  The house from the outside looks like one of the Gilded Age mansions, though it needs work. It is scheduled to close in summer 2020 for major renovations. They’ve already begun preparing. Pictures have been taken off the walls and books have been taken out of the library, among other moves.

Once inside, our group wandered around the first floor on our own, looking into each room from behind the rope barriers — the library, snuggery, dining room (FDR stayed at the dining room table every election night waiting for the results), and sitting room. Eric followed up with more information and answered questions afterward. Ditto on the second floor. 

We didn’t love this setup, but a group of 30 people can’t all jam into the door frames of the roped-off rooms for a room-by-room tour.

Worth noting is FDR’s library. It spans one side of the house, and as we noted, he had a removable ramp built from the hallway into the library, which is a couple steps below the rest of the first floor. Like his cousin Theodore’s, his library is dark paneled with plenty of built-in bookcases. It also has three seating areas for guests. He didn’t actually work in here, however. He had a small office on the other side of the house (not part of the tour) that holds a desk with two phones, and some furniture. Another office/library is in the museum.

FDR's library (note the wheelchair)

Because FDR was scared of fire — he had seen his aunt burned in front of him — he had fire doors installed on the library that could be sealed shut. There were also “fire extinguishers” throughout the house — glass bulbs filled with a fire-retardant chemical.  These could be thrown on the fire to extinguish it. Eric pointed out, however, that FDR used to smoke in bed, a major fire hazard.

Fire estinguisher

Next to the library is the snuggery, a term we had never heard before. It was his mother’s private sitting area and where she ate her breakfast. It also houses an old RCA TV console, which FDR was given at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. FDR thought TV was a flash in the pan, and he never used it.

Upstairs are the bedrooms, which housed the Roosevelts and their children as well as honored guests. Those guests included Winston Churchill, the Queen Mother and Queen Elizabeth II. Imagine Queen Elizabeth sleeping in one of the small twin beds in the appropriately named Chintz Room.

The Chintz Room

The house also has a modified luggage elevator with ropes and pulleys, which is how Roosevelt moved up and down the house. Because FDR didn’t trust electricity, he would actually pull himself up the elevator with his beefy upper body.

Photo of FDR pulling himself
up the elevator.

* * *

FDR contracted polio in 1921 at a family “jamboree.” At first, he thought it was just leg soreness from all of his activities. But within days he was paralyzed from the neck down. He eventually regained the use of his upper body.

Because his family had plenty of money, he was able to go to the best doctors, try different treatments, and travel to those doctors and treatments — including the spa at Warm Springs, Georgia. He could buy braces and crutches, and have custom wheelchairs and cars built for him.

FDR took three years trying regain the use of his legs. He developed a solid torso, but his legs were still paralyzed. When he first visited the Warm Springs spa, it was in bad shape.  So, he bought it. It was there that he met other polio victims from all walks of life and developed his empathy for the plight of the common man. 

Eventually FDR founded the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, which eventually became the March of Dimes. That is why FDR’s profile is on the dime.

By 1924 he was ready to reenter politics.  After being out of view for three years, he was asked by the Democrats to nominate Al Smith at the Democratic convention. In 1928, he did it again in exchange for Smith’s offer to help him win the New York governorship.

Which he did in 1928.  And then it was straight to the White House.

* * *

After the house tour we visited the library-museum. Exploring this building can take hours. It is extensive, with one side devoted to the Great Depression and the other to World War II. It also houses the library he started using in June 1941. The library is where he did government business, met visitors, and worked on books and papers. He also did several Fireside Chats from there.

Downstairs, there is an exhibit about his polio, including his incredibly heavy braces/crutches and his custom car outfitted with hand brakes. Also, downstairs is a glassed-in room full of some of the thousands of his files, and a room full of model ships — a lifelong fascination.

* * *

In the 1932 election, FDR wiped out incumbent Herbert Hoover 472-59. Further, the Democrats picked up 90 seats in the House and 12 in the Senate. The Democrats now had a solid majority. At the library museum we saw a draft and final copy of his first inauguration speech, which includes the line: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” 

Once in office, FDR pounced on a 100-day legislative agenda, with he and Congress pushing through 16 major initiatives in his first 100 days in office. He wanted to experiment with different initiatives and see which ones worked. The government created the Public Works Administration (PWA) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (the first commissioner was Joseph Kennedy), introduced bank deposit insurance, and passed the National Industrial Recovery Act. 

And, the “New Deal” was born. Stuart Chase, one of FDR’s advisers, came up with the term New Deal, which played off cousin Theodore’s Square Deal. The New Deal would eventually cost $5 billion and provide 6 million new jobs.

In 1933, the government began an enormous water project in the Southeast under another new agency called the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). The scale of the project was vast (153,000 acres) and the social costs were not insignificant — and it displaced 3,000 families. But the project provided cheap power and new jobs for 9,000 people. It also put the government in competition with the private sector. In fact, the Tennessee Electric Power Company was forced to sell its holdings to the TVA.

In 1935, FDR created the Works Progress Administration (WPA) by executive order. The WPA built infrastructure, created public art works (500,000 total), and produced public theater. At its peak it employed 3.3 million people.

Olin Down's 1941 mural of FDR working out
of his car was part of the WPA.

FDR signed the Social Security Act into law on Aug. 14, 1935. Its goal was to protect older Americans from falling into poverty. It was radical. It was socialist. And it is still exists today.

In the West, poor land use practices and drought were causing large swaths of land to become uncultivatable. It eventually became known as the Dust Bowl. The newly created Farm Security Administration operated clean residential camps for workers. And the Shelterbelt Program was created to plant 200 million trees to break the wind.

In May 1933, Congress passed and FDR signed the Agricultural Adjustment Act, which created the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, to help farmers, who were suffering from overproduction and cheap prices. The new agency curtailed production — hence, raising prices — by paying farmers not to plant. This was the beginning of our farm subsidy program that still exists today. 

The National Recovery Administration (NRA), another new agency, had the authority to dictate minimum wages, maximum work hours and production quotas. There were eventually more than 500 codes that the public had to understand. The actual law was 2,735 pages. According to Shlaes (2007), the law “generated more paper than the entire legislative output of the federal government since 1789.” Some of the public and many business owners found the regulations onerous and found ways to skirt it.  To make a point, the federal government went after one of the businesses, a small chicken farm in New York.  Two chicken farming brothers named Schechter were accused of under-charging mandated NRA prices for chickens. They were sentenced to jail and fined $7,425, which was many years of salary, and were effectively put out of business. The Supreme Court accepted the case in 1935 and rejected the government’s argument. Justice Louis Brandeis said, “This is the end of this business of centralization ... we’re not going to let this government centralize everything.” (Shlaes, 2007) And that was the end of the NRA and 500 cases against businesses were dropped.

By 1935-1936, FDR was seeing Supreme Court decisions going against many of his initiatives. The high court invalidated the Agricultural Adjustment Act as well as the National Recovery Administration. In response, FDR advocated adding six new justices to the Supreme Court — who he would nominate. The Senate, even though it was controlled by his party, did not support this. So, FDR went after some of the more conservative senators in his party, trying to “primary” them, but that didn’t work either. 

By 1936, the unemployment rate was down to 13.9 percent. FDR remained hugely popular and his 1936 Republican opponent never had a chance.  FDR won 46 of 48 states. It was the greatest win in electoral history — 523 to 8. Roosevelt won all states except Maine and Vermont and received 60.8 percent of the vote. The Democrats picked up six more seats in the Senate for a total of 75.  And they added 11 more in the House for a total of 331. FDR got the traditional support of Southerners, Catholics and Jews but also added trade unions, ethnic groups, blacks, and professionals.

But the economy took another dip. In 1937 the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped again from 190 to 114.

Meanwhile, trouble was brewing in Europe. Adolph Hitler became chancellor of Germany in 1932. In 1935, Congress passed the Neutrality Act to stay out of any war. The United States also officially recognized the Soviet Union to balance Germany. But by late 1939, FDR loosened the Neutrality Act to allow the U.S. to provide arms to Great Britain and in September 1940, the U.S. leased 50 badly needed destroyers to Great Britain.

Because of the possibility of war, FDR decided to seek a third term in 1940. Wendell Willkie, the Republican candidate, supported free trade although his party didn’t agree. He also supported intervention in Europe, again against GOP wishes. Willkie won 22 million votes, more than any other Republican ever. But he still lost.

At his 1941 inauguration, FDR gave what became known as the Four Freedoms speech. He cited the freedom of speech and expression, the freedom of every person to worship God in his own way, the freedom from want and the freedom from fear.

The war came to the United States in the Pacific, where the Japanese — already an Axis power linked to Germany and Italy — launched a surprise attack on the Navy base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on Dec. 7, 1941.  One day later, FDR gave a speech to Congress and called December 7 “a date which will live in infamy.” The original text was “A date that will live in world history.” He excoriated the Japanese for launching a “dastardly attack” and asked Congress to declare a “state of war” with Japan. 

After Hitler declared war on the U.S. on Dec. 11, Congress declared war on Germany as well. FDR sold the strategy of focusing on defeating Germany first so as not to lose Europe, which was rapidly being occupied by Germany.

The war gave a tremendous boost to the economy as factories rolled out 299,000 planes, 88,000 tanks and 7,000 ships. As the government’s spending grew, unemployment fell. It didn’t hurt that the Armed forces grew from 334,000 men in 1939 to 12.1 million by the last year of the war. Between 1939 and 1942, the unemployment rate fell from 17.2% to 4.7% as annual spending rose from $9 billion to $34 billion.  

Massive wartime spending helped
push down the unemployment rate.

FDR created two important agencies during the war, the Office of Strategic Services which later became the CIA; and the Office of Scientific Research & Development, which included the Manhattan project to develop the atomic bomb.

One of FDR’s infamous wartime acts was to sign Executive Order 9066, which authorized the government to throw120,000 Japanese Americans living on the West Coast into internment camps. Many of these American citizens lost all their possessions and their businesses. Eleanor opposed this action and told FDR privately that “these people are not convicted of any crime.”

Another problem was the sanctioned racism in the Armed Forces.  Black troops were segregated from white troops. Eleanor questioned this as well.  She said, “Why curse Hitler and support Jim Crow?”

FDR became the first president to travel by plane when he attended the Casablanca conference in January 1943. The conference included Britain’s leader, Winston Churchill, and Free French leader, Charles de Gaulle. During the conference, FDR sketched out his idea for a United Nations.  It was at the Yalta Conference held in February 1945 that FDR and Churchill conceded Eastern Europe to Russian dictator Joseph Stalin. Stalin’s promise of free elections was never honored. 

But FDR didn’t see the end of the war, nor the beginning of the Cold War. 

In April 1945, he traveled to Warm Springs to rest. While sitting for a portrait, he complained of a powerful headache and lost consciousness. He never awoke from what was a cerebral hemorrhage. At his side was not Eleanor, but Lucy Mercer Rutherford, his old lover.  

FDR was buried in his mother’s rose garden at Hyde Park. Eleanor and their two dogs, Chief and Fala, are also buried there.

FDR gravesite

In 1951, the 22nd amendment was ratified, limiting all future president to two terms.

Directions

The Franklin D. Roosevelt Historic Site Is located 80 miles south of the Albany International Airport.  Admission is $20 and is valid for two consecutive days.  Children under 15 are free.

References

Current, R., Williams, T.H., Freidel, F.  1975.  American History:  A Survey, Fourth Edition, Volume II:  Since 1865.  Alfred A. Knopf, New York.

Ernsberger, Jr., Richard.  2016.  The ‘Man of Force’ Who Saved Belgium.  American History.  August 2016.  Pp. 24-30.

McElvanie, Rober S.  1984.  The Great Depression: America 1929-1941.  Times Books.  New York, New York.

Moore, Kathryn.  2007.  The American President.  Fall River Press.  New York, New York.

Riccards, Michael, P.  1995.  The Ferocious Engine of Democracy:  A History of the American Presidency.  Volume Two.  Madison Books.  New York, New York.  1995

Shlaes, Amity.  2007.  The Forgotten Man:  A New History of the Great Depression.  Harper Perennial.  New York, NY.

Smith, C.  2005.  Presidents:  Every Question Answered.  Metro Books.  New York, NY.