President Roosevelt suffered a cerebral hemorrhage early in the afternoon of April 12, 1945. He was in his cottage at Warm Springs, Georgia, posing for what would be an unfinished portrait by artist Elizabeth Shoumatoff. He died within a few hours and the news was announced, shocking the nation and the world. Hundreds of thousands turned out to mourn him as his funeral train traveled from Georgia to Washington DC and then to Hyde Park, NY, where he was buried on April 15^th. He had been inaugurated for his fourth term as president just three months earlier. At the time of his death, he already saw the end of the war in Europe approaching and looked forward to the first meeting of the United Nations, an organization he co-founded to try to prevent future conflicts. 

At the time of Roosevelt’s death, he knew that he had set in motion the research to find a cure for polio. Building upon his work at Warm Springs pro-viding treatment for those crippled by the disease, he had created in 1937 the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (aka The March of Dimes) to raise funds for treatment and research. By 1954 a vaccine developed by Dr. Jonas Salk (1914-1995), Bronx-born graduate of CCNY and NYU Medical School, was ready for field tests. It was administered to 1.8 million children in the US in 1954 and the results were announced on April 12, 1955: the vaccine was “safe, effective, and potent” and it was licensed for use. By the early 1960s, a second vaccine developed by Dr. Albert Sabin (1906-1993) and administered orally, was licensed. The polio epidemics that had traumatized the nation disappeared.

President Roosevelt with a granddaughter and his famous Scotty, Fala, at his Hyde Park retreat, Top Cottage, early 1940s: a rare image of FDR in a wheelchair

Frank Sinatra, shown in 1946, was one of many celebrities who helped raise money for the March of Dimes.

The children known as “Polio Pioneers” were vaccinated in the 1954 field trials.

Pop singer idol Elvis Presley getting vaccinated in 1956 as part of a public  health campaign.  With mass participation, polio was eradicated in the US by 1980.  In 2015, final eradication campaigns are underway in the few countries in Africa and Asia where it remains endemic.