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Franklin D. Roosevelt

Personal Profile

Franklin D. Roosevelt
  • Birth Name:
    Franklin Delano Roosevelt
  • Date of Birth:
    August 30, 1882
  • Zodiac Sign:
    Virgo
  • Place of Birth:
    Hyde Park, New York
  • Place of Death:
    Warm Springs, Georgia
  • Date of Death:
    April 12, 1945
  • Sex:
    Male
  • Nationality:
    American
  • Education:

    Harvard University

    Columbia Law School

Family

Franklin D. Roosevelt
  • Father:
    James Roosevelt
  • Mother:
    Sara "Sallie" Delano
  • Brother:
    James
  • Spouse:
    Eleanor Roosevelt
  • Son:
    James Roosevelt
    Elliott Roosevelt
    Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jr.
    John Aspinwall Roosevelt
  • Daughter:
    Anna Roosevelt Halsted

Career

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Favourites

Franklin D. Roosevelt
  • Food:
    Fried cornmeal mush
  • Actor:

Trivia

Franklin D. Roosevelt
  • As a boy, Roosevelt visited president Grover Cleveland and Cleveland told him never to become the president.
  • Roosevelt was the first president to appear on television.
  • There was an assassination attempt on Roosevelt in February, 1933. Roosevelt was unharmed, but Anton Cermak, mayor of Chicago, was killed.
  • Franklin D. Roosevelt was in office longer than any other president. He served three consecutive terms and died during his fourth.
  • His Secretary of State, Cordell Hull won a Nobel Peace Prize.
  • Roosevelt's mother, Sara Delano Roosevelt, never entrusted her son with managing the family's money because she didn't think he was up to the task. Even though Roosevelt had presided over at least eight annual budgets of the largest fiscal entity on earth.
  • He was the first president to have a presidential aircraft.
  • All five of his children have been divorced.
  • Franklin D. Roosevelt was a fifth cousin once removed of his wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, and a seventh cousin once removed of Winston Churchill.
  • He was the first president whose mother was eligible to vote for him.

Quotes

Franklin D. Roosevelt
  • “Today we are faced with the preeminent fact that, if civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships - the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together, in the same world, at peace.”
  • “We can gain no lasting peace if we approach it with suspicion and mistrust or with fear. We can gain it only if we proceed with the understanding, the confidence, and the courage which flow from conviction.”
  • “We have always held to the hope, the belief, the conviction that there is a better life, a better world, beyond the horizon.”
  • “Self-interest is the enemy of all true affection.”
  • “We defend and we build a way of life, not for America alone, but for all of mankind.”
  • “This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.”
  • “Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.”
  • “Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.”
  • “Whoever seeks to set one race against another seeks to enslave all races.”
  • “A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward.”
View all Quotes: Franklin D. Roosevelt

Biography

Franklin D. Roosevelt
Last Updated: Monday, October 05, 2009

Franklin D. RooseveltAssuming the Presidency at the depth of the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt helped the American people regain faith in themselves. He brought hope as he promised prompt, vigorous action, and asserted in his Inaugural Address, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Born in 1882 at Hyde Park, New York--now a national historic site--he attended Harvard University and Columbia Law School. On St. Patrick's Day, 1905, he married Eleanor Roosevelt.

Following the example of his fifth cousin, President Theodore Roosevelt, whom he greatly admired, Franklin D. Roosevelt entered public service through politics, but as a Democrat. He won election to the New York Senate in 1910. President Wilson appointed him Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and he was the Democratic nominee for Vice President in 1920.

In the summer of 1921, when he was 39, disaster hit-he was stricken with poliomyelitis. Demonstrating indomitable courage, he fought to regain the use of his legs, particularly through swimming. At the 1924 Democratic Convention he dramatically appeared on crutches to nominate Alfred E. Smith as "the Happy Warrior." In 1928 Roosevelt became Governor of New York.

Franklin D. RooseveltHe was elected President in November 1932, to the first of four terms. By March there were 13,000,000 unemployed, and almost every bank was closed. In his first "hundred days," he proposed, and Congress enacted, a sweeping program to bring recovery to business and agriculture, relief to the unemployed and to those in danger of losing farms and homes, and reform, especially through the establishment of the Tennessee Valley Authority.

By 1935 the Nation had achieved some measure of recovery, but businessmen and bankers were turning more and more against Roosevelt's New Deal program. They feared his experiments, were appalled because he had taken the Nation off the gold standard and allowed deficits in the budget, and disliked the concessions to labor. Roosevelt responded with a new program of reform: Social Security, heavier taxes on the wealthy, new controls over banks and public utilities, and an enormous work relief program for the unemployed.

Franklin D. RooseveltIn 1936 he was re-elected by a top-heavy margin. Feeling he was armed with a popular mandate, he sought legislation to enlarge the Supreme Court, which had been invalidating key New Deal measures. Roosevelt lost the Supreme Court battle, but a revolution in constitutional law took place. Thereafter the Government could legally regulate the economy.

Roosevelt had pledged the United States to the "good neighbor" policy, transforming the Monroe Doctrine from a unilateral American manifesto into arrangements for mutual action against aggressors. He also sought through neutrality legislation to keep the United States out of the war in Europe, yet at the same time to strengthen nations threatened or attacked. When France fell and England came under siege in 1940, he began to send Great Britain all possible aid short of actual military involvement.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Roosevelt directed organization of the Nation's manpower and resources for global war. Feeling that the future peace of the world would depend upon relations between the United States and Russia, he devoted much thought to the planning of a United Nations, in which, he hoped, international difficulties could be settled. As the war drew to a close, Roosevelt's health deteriorated, and on April 12, 1945, while at Warm Springs, Georgia, he died of a cerebral hemorrhage.

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