Image: Unfinished portrait of Franklin Delano Roosevelt by Elizabeth Shoumatoff (1888-1980) at the time of his death.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt died during the afternoon of April 12, 1945, while staying at Warm Springs, Georgia, where he had gone for a rest. He was sitting for his portrait when he was overcome by a cerebral hemorrhage. He was only 63 years old but had been in failing health for a year, worn out by the burdens of the presidency and the war, and the burden on his body of the wear and tear of living with the residual effects of polio since 1921. He had brought the nation out of the Great Depression with his New Deal programs, and led Americans into a war where he sought to bring the “Four Freedoms” – freedom of speech and worship, freedom from fear and want – to everyone in the world, and, shortly before his death, he had laid the foundation for the United Nations.
The nation was in mourning, and as the New York Times reported on April 14, “Out of full hearts millions of New Yorkers prepared today to tender their homage of love and reverence to the late President Roosevelt on the day of his funeral services. To them, he was friend and smiling champion, their Governor and their President.”
Businesses, government offices, schools, every kind of institution was closed or closing early, and Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia presided over the city’s official memorial service at City Hall Park at 4:00pm, one of hundreds to be held. At Hunter College, President George Shuster delivered his tribute to FDR to 4,000 students packed into the auditorium in the North Building, and hundreds of others listened over the public address system in what is today the Kaye Playhouse.
In her first “My Day” column published after FDR’s death, Eleanor Roosevelt thanked Americans for their messages and for paying their respects as his funeral train had traveled from Georgia to Washington and then on to Hyde Park for his burial. She also paid tribute to his leadership and her belief that Americans would carry on what he started: “…a leader may chart the way, may point out the road to lasting peace, but that many leaders and many peoples must do the building. It cannot be the work of one man, nor can the responsibility be laid upon his shoulders, and so, when the time comes for peoples to assume the burden more fully, he is given rest. God grant that we may have the wisdom and courage to build a peaceful world with justice and opportunity for all peoples the world over.”
