Who Was Franklin Roosevelt? Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1 - Growing Up in Hyde Park

  Chapter 2 - Meeting Eleanor

  Chapter 3 - Running for Office

  Chapter 4 - Facing a Crisis

  Chapter 5 - Struggling to Walk

  Chapter 6 - Becoming President

  Chapter 7 - Living in the White House

  Chapter 8 - Going to War

  Chapter 9 - Saying Good-Bye

  TIMELINE OF FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT’S LIFE

  TIMELINE OF THE WORLD

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  For my American Mother—M.F.

  For Terase—J.O.

  GROSSET & DUNLAP

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Frith, Margaret.

  Who was Franklin Roosevelt? / by Margaret Frith ; Illustrated by John O’Brien.

  p. cm.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-18494-3

  1. Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano), 1882-1945--Juvenile literature.

  2. Presidents--United States--Biography--Juvenile literature. I. O’Brien, John, 1953- ill.

  II. Title.

  E807.F78 2010

  973.917092--dc22

  [B]

  2009023143

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  Who Was Franklin Delano Roosevelt?

  When Franklin Delano Roosevelt died in 1945, a young soldier stood in front of the White House remembering his president. “I felt as if I knew him. I felt as if he knew me—and I felt as if he liked me.” He was saying what so many Americans were feeling.

  FDR, as he was called, had been president since 1933. He was elected four times, serving for twelve years. This was longer than any other president before or since.

  When Franklin took office, there were lots of problems waiting for him. Banks were failing. People were out of work. Many had lost their homes. This was the Great Depression.

  Franklin wasn’t a man to sit around and wonder what to do. In the first hundred days, he signed fifteen major laws bringing help. No president had ever gotten so much done so fast.

  Franklin not only dealt with the Depression, he led the country through the dark days of World War II.

  What made him such a strong leader? Perhaps his strength came in part from a personal crisis. It happened when he was thirty-nine years old. He was on summer vacation with his family. Overnight he was struck with a disease called polio. Franklin never walked again. But he fought hard to stay strong and healthy. He never gave up. He ran the country with the same spirit and optimism.

  Not everyone liked Franklin’s ideas. But most of the country loved him. Millions wept as if he were part of their family when they learned of his sudden death. Many could not imagine the United States without FDR as president.

  Chapter 1

  Growing Up in Hyde Park

  In a big house called Springwood, high above the Hudson River in Hyde Park, New York, a baby boy was born on January 30, 1882.

  “At a quarter to nine my Sallie had a splendid large baby boy. He weighs ten pounds without clothes,” his father, James Roosevelt, wrote. The baby’s mother, Sara Delano Roosevelt, said that he was “pink, plump and nice.” She named him Franklin after her favorite uncle.

  When they met, Sara was twenty-five and James was fifty-one, a widower with a grown son. James fell in love with Sara at a dinner party. The hostess remembered that James couldn’t keep his eyes off Sara. They were married in 1880.

  Sara and James came from old, wealthy families in the Hudson Valley. They grew up in lovely homes with lots of help—cooks, butlers, maids, and gardeners. James was a gentleman farmer and hired workers to do the farming.

  Franklin was an only child. He was the apple of his mother’s eye and Franklin loved her very much, even when she was bossy.

  Franklin grew up around adults. He did not go to school. He was taught at home by tutors until he was thirteen. Yet, even with no other children around, Franklin found life at Springwood fun. In the winter, he went on sleigh rides or sledded full speed down snowy hills. He was happy exploring the woods and fields. Franklin loved horseback riding with Popsy. That’s what he called his father.

  From an early age, Franklin began collecting stamps. This was a hobby he enjoyed all his life. His greatest love, however, was the sea. He played with model boats. He sailed in the summer. And when he was older, he went iceboating on the Hudson River in the bitter cold. (An iceboat was like a sled with sails and went very fast.)

  When Franklin was nine, Popsy bought a yacht called the Half Moon.Franklin was excited to go sailing on it at Campobello.

  Campobello is an island off the east coast of Canada. The Roosevelts spent summers there in a cottage they had built. The strong winds and high tides made sailing around the island tricky. But Franklin loved the challenge and became a fine sailor. At sixteen, he had his own sailboat, New Moon.

  Another family on Campobello told the Roosevelts about the Groton School. It was a boarding school north of Boston, Massachusetts. Franklin’s parents decided to send him there.

  Most of the boys started at Groton when they were twelve. But Franklin didn’t go until he was fourteen. His mother couldn’t bear to let him go earlier. Not surprisingly, he was homesick at first.

  Life at Groton was very different from Springwood. It was modeled after an English boarding school with no frills and a harsh lifestyle. Franklin lived in a room with other boys. Once, during the night, snow blew in through an open transom of the dorm. Franklin and the boys woke up nearly freezing. Still, that didn’t excuse them from the cold shower they had to take every morning.

  Sports were important at Groton, and to Franklin. He loved playing football. He was slight and not very fast. Still, he fought hard and had the scrapes and bumps to prove it.

  His parents were more interested in his studies. It pleased them that he was fourth in his class of nineteen boys.

  In the spring of 1900, Franklin graduated from Groton. That fall, h
e entered Harvard. For the past few years, his father’s health had been failing. Soon after Thanksgiving, Franklin got word that Popsy was very ill. He died of heart failure on December 8.

  Now Sara was a widow. Rather than spend the winter in Hyde Park alone, she moved to Boston to be near Franklin. Already close, mother and son grew even closer.

  At Harvard, Franklin became a great success on the Crimson, the college newspaper. He was a natural writer with a knack for good intervie ws. His senior year, he was president of the Crimson. But the most significant thing that happened during his Harvard years was his friendship with his distant cousin Eleanor Roosevelt.

  Chapter 2

  Meeting Eleanor

  Unlike Franklin, Eleanor had an unhappy childhood. Her father was the younger brother of Theodore Roosevelt, who became president in 1901. Elliott was handsome and engaging.

  Eleanor adored him and he adored his little daughter. But he had a bad drinking problem. Her mother, Anna Hall Roosevelt, was a cold and distant mother. She called Eleanor “Granny” because she was such a serious child. Eleanor felt like an awkward ugly duckling next to her beautiful mother.

  Both of Eleanor’s parents and her younger brother had all died by the time she was ten. So she and her six-year-old brother, Hall, were sent to live with their grandparents. The Halls found it a burden to have two young children come to live with them.

  Often lonely, Eleanor would escape into dreams of happy times with her father. One bright spot was Christmastime when she would see her Roosevelt cousins at parties.

  Franklin was at one of these parties. He asked her to dance. She accepted even though she didn’t know how. It didn’t seem to matter to Franklin.

  After that, they didn’t see each other again for several years. Eleanor went off to boarding school in England. (She said later that these were “the happiest years of her life.”) At eighteen, she returned to America. As a young girl from a famous family, it was time for her to take her place in New York society. She said she was in “utter agony.”

  But she saw Franklin again at the parties. When he invited her to his twenty-first birthday party at Springwood, she went. Gradually they began seeing more of each other. He was fun and he made her laugh.

  Franklin’s mother didn’t want her son to get serious about any girl. She wanted him to finish college and start a career. Yet Franklin grew fonder and fonder of Eleanor. She was smart and more interesting than other girls. She had lived and traveled in Europe. She spoke French even better than he did. And with her tall, slim figure, gold hair that fell below her waist, and lovely blue eyes, she was not an “ugly duckling.” Not in his eyes.

  Franklin asked Eleanor to marry him and she said yes. Sara was not at all pleased with the news. But she stayed calm and asked them not to rush into marriage. They were too young. So Franklin and Eleanor agreed to wait. Sara whisked her son off on a six-week cruise to the Caribbean. Secretly she hoped he might forget Eleanor. Instead, the trip made him long to get back to her.

  Finally, in the fall of 1904, Sara gave in and they announced their engagement. Franklin and Eleanor were married in New York City on March 17, 1905. Eleanor’s uncle Ted, the president, gave away the bride.

  After a three-month honeymoon, the couple returned to New York City. Sara had taken care of everything, leaving Eleanor with nothing to do. They moved into a home completely furnished and only three blocks from where Sara lived in New York. (A few years later, Sara would build two buildings next to each other with connecting doors on different floors that were never locked. It was almost like living together.)

  The couple’s first child, Anna Eleanor, was born in 1906. James was born a year later. Sadly, their third child, Franklin, would die of the flu when he was only eight months old. They would have three more children—Elliott, Franklin Jr., and John.

  Franklin studied at Columbia Law School just as Eleanor’s uncle Ted had. Then he joined a well-known law firm on Wall Street. However, the job never really excited him. And, although he loved Hyde Park, Franklin did not want to spend his life as a gentleman farmer like his father.

  What did appeal to him? Politics! So, in 1910, Franklin ran for office. He was twenty-eight years old.

  Chapter 3

  Running for Office

  Important Democrats in the Hyde Park area asked Franklin to run for the New York Senate.

  If he won, he would work in Albany, the state capital. With a famous last name and the money to pay for his own campaign, Franklin seemed like a good candidate, even though most of the voters in the district were Republicans.

  But he knew that the Roosevelt name wasn’t enough. He needed voters to get to know him.

  So he hired a large, flashy, red automobile and asked a popular congressman to travel with him. Off they went in high spirits, flags flying, the wind in their faces.

  People enjoyed meeting this friendly young man who talked about honest government. On election day, he defeated his opponent by 1,440 votes. He spent three years in the state senate and became known for being independent. He was not someone who did what the party bosses told him. It was also during this time that he met a newspaperman named Louis Howe. Howe became a lifelong friend and aide.

  In 1912, Franklin attended the Democratic Convention in Baltimore, Maryland. He was backing Governor Woodrow Wilson from New Jersey for president. Wilson won the nomination and went on to win the election in November.

  Franklin had supported Wilson not only because of his ideas, but also because he hoped to land a job in Washington. That happened almost right way! Franklin was asked if he would like to become Assistant Secretary of the Navy.

  “How would I like it? I’d like it bully well,” he answered.

  With his love of the sea and sailing, the navy was just the right place for Franklin. He wanted to learn all he could about the navy. He talked to everyone from admirals to sailors to builders in the yards. He visited naval stations around the country. It was not unusual to see him climbing up the rigging of a ship as it plowed through the waves. Even top admirals came to respect this young man who had never been in the navy himself.

  In 1914, World War I broke out in Europe. In 1917, the United States joined forces against Germany.

  Franklin urged the navy to build powerful battleships. It was a proud day when he hammered the first bolt into a brand-new battleship in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. It was named the USS Arizona.

  He also had a sharp understanding of warfare. Franklin convinced the navy to lay a belt of underwater mines in the North Sea. German submarines had to pass through this area to get to the Atlantic Ocean in order to attack British and American ships. It was late in the war, but by blowing up German subs, the mines kept the ships safer.

  The war ended on November 11, 1918, with Germany’s defeat. Franklin was sent to Paris to attend the peace treaty conference.

  With the war over, Franklin was ready to return to private life. It was 1920—a presidential election year. To Franklin’s surprise, the Democratic candidate for president—James Cox—asked him to run as vice president.

  Franklin threw himself into the campaign. He visited twenty states by train, traveling eight thousand miles. He spoke to farmers, factory workers, city workers, businessmen, and women who were voting for the first time.

  Franklin and Cox weren’t expected to win and they didn’t. In fact, they lost badly. But Franklin loved the race. All across the country, people got to know this sunny, optimistic man from New York who seemed to have a great future ahead of him.

  Chapter 4

  Facing a Crisis

  In 1921, Franklin was back in New York working as a lawyer. That August, he joined Eleanor and the children at their cottage on Campobello.

  One morning, when the family was out sailing, they saw smoke rising from a small island. They sailed over and found a brushfire out of control. Franklin cut evergreen branches and they beat at the flames for hours. Finally, they got the fire out.

  Back on Campobello
, Franklin and his sons went for a swim. Then Franklin sat around in his wet bathing suit looking at the mail. He felt cold and his back ached, so he went to bed early. The next day, he woke up and could hardly stand.

  Eleanor called a doctor. He thought Franklin had a cold. But as the days went by, Franklin grew worse. He couldn’t get out of bed. His whole body ached. He was in terrible pain.

  Another doctor came. He said the same thing. Franklin had a bad cold. Finally, Eleanor had a doctor from Boston come down and examine Franklin. He knew immediately what was wrong. Franklin had polio. Polio was a virus that caused high fevers and often left people unable to walk.

  Eleanor took Franklin home to New York. If he felt scared or worried, he didn’t let on. Right away, he started exercising at home. He was determined to walk again.

  In February, Franklin got steel braces for his legs. They were attached to leather belts around his hips and chest. When the hinges at his knees were locked, he was able to stand but not walk. (Later, when he was president, he had his braces painted black. He wore them with black shoes and socks so they wouldn’t be noticed.)