ROOSEVELT, 32nd, 1933-45

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson proclaimed, "was the handsomest young giant I have ever seen." FDR¹s doctor said, "He has such courage, such ambition, and yet ... such an extraordinarily sensitive emotional mechanism." The famed Roosevelt smile drove some men to fury. Others found it irresistible. To his critics it characterized his insincerity and deviousness — traits even his friends admitted he had.

FDR's side of the family pronounced Roosevelt as in "rose."

In the fall of 1900, FDR entered Harvard and went all out to make the football team. He was turned down when he weighed in at a brittle 146 pounds. He became, instead, a cheerleader.

Eleanor Roosevelt thought FDR's polio, contracted in 1921, "a turning point that proved a blessing in disguise for it gave him strength and courage he had not had before." He would be forced to crawl from room to room, to pull the dead weight of his lower limbs up flights of stairs, to submit to being carried about like a child, and to carry papers and books in his teeth.

Few Americans were ever aware of FDR's disability. This was due in large part to the cooperation of members of the press, who almost always photographed him from the waist up.

FDR's main health problem, starting around November 1944, was anorexia.

Until the end of his days, he was always fresh, youthful in mind and receptive to experiment. "Remember," Eleanor once told a friend, "the nicest men in the world are those who always keep something of the little boy in them."

FDR had an affair with Eleanor's secretary, Lucy Mercer, from 1918 to his death in 1945, while Eleanor for many years carried on a loving relationship with a woman named Lorena Hickok.

FDR appointed "Madame" Frances Perkins, the first woman to hold a Cabinet post.

He had the longest administration of any president — 12 years, 1 month and 8 days. FDR learned more about stamp collecting than any other president.

FDR was the first president to fly a plane.

In 1945, Americans did not realize that they had re-elected a dying President. FDR's arteries were so atherosclerotic that embalmers could not get a needle into them. After sitting for his portrait in his small cottage Roosevelt complained of a terrific headache, lost consciousness, and died. All over the world people said the President had died, and nobody asked which President, or President of what, because to them FDR had been The President.

d. April 12, 1945 (Warm Springs, Georgia) at 63 of a cerebral hemorrhage less than six months after being elected to a fourth term in office.