Roosevelt, Franklin Delano.

Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, born on 30-01-1882 at Hyde Park, N.Y.,  of Dutch and English ancestry to James Roosevelt, scion of a noted, wealthy family, and his second wife, Sara Delano Roosevelt. Franklin led a sheltered youth, educated by governesses, his life revolving about the Hyde Park family estate, and rural Dutchess County, trips to Europe, athletics (especially swimming and boating), and hobbies such as stamp and bird collecting.   At the exclusive Groton School, Groton Massachusetts, Franklin was imbued with a sense of social responsibility. He was an average student at Harvard University, edited the Harvard Crimson in his senior year, and after graduation (1903) attended (1904-07) the Columbia Law School. He dropped out of law school upon admissions to the New York bar and worked (1907-1910) for a Wall Street law firm. Franklin married a distant cousin, a shy young woman, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, on 17-03-1905. Their children were Anna Eleanor, James, Elliott, Franklin D. Jr. and John; a sixth child died at infancy. Roosevelt gained quick recognition by his leadership of upstate New York Democrats in a fight against Tammany Hall’s nominee for U.S. Senate. The Roosevelt name and his progressive image won him the party’s vice-presidential nomination in 1920 on the ticket with the conservative newspaper publisher Governor. James M. Cox of Ohio. The democrats had little hope of victory. In the summer of 1921, while vacationing at his summer home on Campobello Island, Roosevelt was stricken Poliomyelitis. Recovery was slow and the family’s wealth appeared adequate to allow him a genteel retirement to the Hyde Park estate, a course urged by his mother. He permanently lost the use of his legs. At the Democratic National Convention of 1924, Roosevelt signalled his return to politics with the Happy Warrior Speech that placed Governor Alfred Emmanuel Smith of New York in nomination for the presidency. Roosevelt’s opponents claimed that he was intellectually and physically unfit for the presidency. Anxious to believe such charges, he chartered a Ford trimotor airplane and, as a  dramatic gesture, flew to Chicago; there, at the Democratic National Convention, he pledged to the American people a New Deal. Faced with the prospect of governing the nation in the worst economic crisis in its history, Roosevelt desired and examination of causes and remedies free from the pressures of a political campaign

.     In the Forgotten Man speech drafted by Moley, Roosevelt presented the group’s theory that productivity had out spaced the capacity of farmers and labourers to consume. The Depression helped give Roosevelt an overwhelming victory in November. On the eve of the March 1933 inauguration, the nation’s banking system collapsed as millions of panicky depositors tried to withdraw savings that the banks had tied up in long-term loans. Approximately 12 to 14 million Americans were unemployed, and business nearly ground to a halt. In ringing tones, Roosevelt told the nation that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” and promised effective leadership in the crisis. Roosevelt had hoped to keep the United States out of World War II, which began in September 1939, although he urged preparedness and advocated that the nation should serve as an arsenal for the democracies. During World War II, Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, Great Britain’s prime minister, personally determined Allied military and naval strategy in the West. They gave priority to Germany’s defeat and, in view of Adolf Hitler’s  (did you know) claim that Germany was never defeated, only betrayed, in the first war, insisted on unconditional surrender. Roosevelt allowed Hitler’s half nephew, William Patrick Houston/ Hitler  to join the American Navy.  The Roosevelt presidency proved on of the most eventful in U.S. history. In the face of the potential collapse of the capitalist system, Roosevelt ushered in the interventionist state, which managed the economy in order to achieve publicly determined ends.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was one of the most popular presidents in American history. He is the only president to have been elected four times. In the United States presidential elections in 1932, 1936, 1940 and 1944. The success of Franklin Delano Roosevelt had made Republicans so afraid of the popular Democratic leader that in 1951 they passed a law amendment that stipulated that a president could only be re-elected for one term. But Franklin D. Roosevelt was not only admired by his constituents. He was also extremely popular with women, so his wife Eleanor Roosevelt was definitely not the only one he slept with.

Eleanor Roosevelt discovered the first affair in 1917, when she found a pile of passionate love letters in her husband’s suitcase. The sender was Eleanor Roosevelt’s private secretary, Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd (born Lucy Page Mercer)

Eleanor Roosevelt proposed a divorce to her husband, but Franklin D. Roosevelt’s mother, the millionaire Sara Roosevelt, refused.If Franklin and Eleanor divorced, it would be an embarrassment to the whole family. And so she threatened to remove her son from her will if he left his wife.Franklin D. Roosevelt was known as a “mother’s boy” who never contradicted his mother. In the end, nothing came of a divorce.But if he wanted to stay married, the future president had to meet his wife’s stern demands: he had to break off his relationship with Lucy Mercer and Eleanor and Franklin would each sleep in their own bedroom.Franklin D. Roosevelt complied with that last demand, but he continued to see Lucy Mercer in secret until his death in 1945.Franklin’s love nest in the park: How president took FIVE ‘mistresses’ to country getaway (including his distant cousin, publisher and wife’s social secretary),

In 1947, Rutherfurd’s sister Violetta committed suicide after her husband requested a divorce, and only a month later, on Christmas Day 1947, her mother Minnie died at age 84. Just seven months later, Rutherfurd herself died from leukemia, aged 57, on July 31, 1948, just 3+1⁄4 years after Roosevelt, having destroyed almost all of her correspondence with the president. Rutherfurd is buried, along with her husband, in Green Township, New Jersey.

Franklin D. Roosevelt allegedly carried on affairs with at least five women, Lucy Mercer was Eleanor Roosevelt’s social secretary, Margaret ‘Daisy’ Suckley was Roosevelt’s sixth cousin and close confidant, Princess Martha of Sweden was forced to flee Scandinavia in 1941, Dorothy Schiff was a former publisher of the New York Post and Marguerite ‘Missy’ LaHand was FDR’s secretary for more than 20 years.

However, Anna Eleanor’s private life was also anything but loveless. Shortly after her husband was elected president in 1932, she began dating another woman—the chain-smoking and bourbon-drinking  Associated Press journalist Lorena Hickok, aka Hick. Eleanor Roosevelt (second from left) and Lorena Hickok (far right) in 1933. The two women wrote each other more than 3,000 letters between 1932 and 1962, the year Eleanor died. When they were alone, the women called each other “darling” and “darling” and said “je t’aime” to each other. Franklin D. Roosevelt knew full well that his wife had a lesbian relationship. He even gave Hick her own room in the White House so she could always be near Eleanor.

Roosevelt and Anna Elenore had six children, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt (1906–1975), James Roosevelt II (1907–1991), Franklin Roosevelt (1909–1909),  Elliott Roosevelt (1910–1990), Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr. (1914–1988)  and John Aspinwall Roosevelt (1916–1981) Elliott Roosevelt was an American aviation official and wartime officer in the United States Army Air Forces, reaching the rank of Brigadier General. He died at age 80 of heart and liver failure.

Elenore Roosevelt disliked having sex with her husband. She once told her daughter Anna that it was an “ordeal to be borne”. She also considered herself ill-suited to motherhood, later writing, “It did not come naturally to me to understand little children or to enjoy them”.

Death and burial ground of Roosevelt, Franklin Delano.

.   As the war drew to a close, Roosevelt’s health deteriorated and on 12-04-1945, age 63, while at Warm Springs, Georgia, he died of a cerebral hemorrhage. He is buried with his wife Anna Eleanor, who died age 74, on 07-11-1962, in Hyde Park, New York.