President Franklin Delano Roosevelt

     Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born in Hyde Park, N.Y., on Jan. 30, 1882. A Harvard graduate, he attended Columbia Law School and was admitted to the New York bar. In 1910, he was elected to the New York State Senate as a Democrat. Reelected in 1912, he was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy by Woodrow Wilson the next year. In 1920, his radiant personality and his war service resulted in his nomination for vice president as James M. Cox's running mate. After his defeat, he returned to law practice in New York.

     In August 1921, Roosevelt was stricken with infantile paralysis (polio) while on vacation at Campobello, New Brunswick. After a long and gallant fight, he recovered partial use of his legs. In 1924 and 1928, he led the fight at the Democratic national conventions for the nomination of Gov. Alfred E. Smith of New York, and in 1928 Roosevelt was himself induced to run for governor of New York. He was elected, and was reelected in 1930.

     In 1932, Roosevelt received the Democratic nomination for president and immediately launched a campaign that brought new spirit to a weary and discouraged nation. He defeated Hoover by a wide margin. His first term was characterized by an unfolding of the New Deal program, with greater benefits for labor, the farmers, and the unemployed, and the progressive estrangement of most of the business community.

     At an early stage, Roosevelt became aware of the menace to world peace posed by totalitarian fascism, and from 1937 on he tried to focus public attention on the trend of events in Europe and Asia. As a result, he was widely denounced as a warmonger. He was re-elected in 1936 over Gov. Alfred M. Landon of Kansas by the overwhelming electoral margin of 523 to 8, and the gathering international crisis prompted him to run for an unprecedented third term in 1940. He defeated Wendell L. Willkie.

     Roosevelt's program to bring maximum aid to Britain and, after June 1941, to Russia was opposed, until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, restored national unity. During the war, Roosevelt shelved the New Deal in the interests of conciliating the business community, both in order to get full production during the war and to prepare the way for a united acceptance of the peace settlements after the war. A series of conferences with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin laid down the bases for the postwar world. In 1944 he was elected to a fourth term, running against Gov. Thomas E. Dewey of New York.

     On April 12, 1945, Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage at Warm Springs, Ga., shortly after his return from the Yalta Conference.

Eleanor Roosevelt, “First Lady of the World”

     Born to Anna and Elliott Roosevelt on October 11, 1884, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt lived a privileged life, complete with servants, governesses, and maids to attend her and her two brothers. Despite the family’s wealth, however, Roosevelt’s childhood was an unhappy one. Her mother, a beauty and a member of New York’s wealthy society, cruelly nicknamed her daughter “granny,” which made Eleanor feel that she was ugly and awkward.

     Before she was ten years old, her parents and a brother died. She lived with her grandmother and, at fifteen, was sent to boarding school in England.  Here she was introduced to new ideas which helped draw her out of her shell. After returning to the U.S. in 1902, she caught the eye of her handsome, distant cousin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and the two married on March 17, 1905.  When her husband became Assistant Secretary of the Navy during World War I, she supported the war effort by volunteering for the Red Cross.  She was also an active member of the women's suffrage movement.

     The young couple quickly became a family. They had four children in their first five years together, and two more children followed. Like other wealthy young wives, Eleanor Roosevelt served on charity boards and attended classes in literature, art, and music. When Roosevelt’s political career took off, she became a politician’s wife, speaking on behalf of her husband, doing volunteer work, and visiting the troops during World War I.  She poured herself into social causes—world peace, civil rights, and women’s issues.

     In the summer of 1921, Franklin Roosevelt contracted polio. Seven years later, with his wife’s support, he reentered politics. His legs were paralyzed but not his mind. She became his eyes and legs, visiting places that he could not.

    Following her husband's election to the office of President of the United States in 1932, Eleanor began changing the way people viewed the job of First Lady.  Unlike other presidents’ wives, she did not stay in the background but began campaigning for a variety of social issues.  Her concern for disadvantaged black Americans, prompted her to work closely with organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and in 1939 she resigned from the Daughters of the American Revolution in protest to their preventing black singer Marian Anderson from performing at Constitution Hall.

     When Franklin D. Roosevelt died in office in 1945, Eleanor Roosevelt's role as first lady was over, but her career was not.  She became a delegate to the United Nations General Assembly, specializing in humanitarian, social, and cultural issues.  In 1948, she drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which affirmed life, liberty, and equality internationally for all people regardless of race, creed or color.  Additionally, she helped in the establishment of the state of Israel.    

     She wrote several books about her experiences: This Is My Story (1937), This I Remember (1950), On My Own (1958), and Tomorrow Is Now (published posthumously, 1963).   She died in New York City on November 7, 1962, at the age of 78 and was buried at Hyde Park beside her husband.