Frank Roosevelt at Harvard, November-December 1996

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The War years brought out FDR's greatness as a national leader. His fighting spirit fitted him for the role of commander-in-chief. His eloquence gave heart to Americans and their allies in Europe and Asia. He led in forging a global alliance of nations against the Axis. In spite of his disability he became the first president to leave the country in wartime, traveling to meetings in Canada, North Africa, Iran, Hawaii, Malta, Egypt, and Russia with heads of state and military commanders. And he labored to plan a durable peace.

In 1944, with the end of the fighting in Europe in sight, he ran for a fourth term against New York governor Thomas E. Dewey and was resoundingly reelected. Though his personal physician had officially judged him fit, FDR was ill. He was being treated for hypertension and congestive heart disease, exacerbated by forty years of smoking. Frank Lahey, M.D. '04, a consulting physician, may also have detected an inoperable stomach tumor that had metastasized from a facial melanoma. FDR's color was poor; he looked gaunt, haggard, and much older than 62. But he could still reach back for a burst of energy when he needed it. In a New York City motorcade in October he rode for hours in an open car as cold rain fell. A speech to the Teamsters Union in Washington-his "Fala speech"-had virtually clinched his election:

These Republican leaders have not been content with attacks on me, or my wife, or my sons. No, not content with that, they now include my little dog, Fala. Well, of course, I don't resent attacks, and my family doesn't resent attacks, but Fala does resent them. You know, Fala is Scotch, and being a Scottie, as soon as he learned that the Republican fiction writers in Congress and out had concocted a story that I had left him behind on the Aleutian Islands and had sent a destroyer back to find him-at a cost to the taxpayers of two or three, or eight or twenty million dollars-his Scottish soul was furious. He has not been the same dog since. I am accustomed to hearing malicious falsehoods about myselfbut I think I have a right to resent, to object to libelous statements about my dog.

  His participation in the Yalta conference, held at a Black Sea port in February 1945, left him physically depleted. His hands now shook alarmingly. In April he went to his winter home in Warm Springs, Georgia, to rest before going to San Francisco for a conference inaugurating the United Nations. Before lunch on April 12 he was reading the day's mail while having his portrait painted. He had dressed for the portrait in a double-breasted suit and Harvard tie. The artist, Elizabeth Shoumatoff, recalled that he looked "surprisingly well." Suddenly FDR collapsed, putting his hand to his head and saying he had "a terrific pain."

  After two hours of tortured breathing he died of a massive cerebral hemorrhage. The news went out on national radio just before six. It crackled around the world almost instantaneously, arousing shock and consternation everywhere. In London the hour was midnight; the British Broadcasting Company's bulletin called it "the darkest night of the war."

  FDR had just finished drafting a Jefferson Day address to be given the next day. The last words he had written were, "The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith."

  Anticipating the end, Walter Lippmann had devoted his column of April 7 to FDR. "His estimate of the vital interests of the United States has been accurate and far-sighted," Lippmann wrote. "He has served these interests with audacity and patience, shrewdly and with calculation, and he has led this country out of the greatest peril in which it has ever been to the highest point of security, influence, and respect which it has ever attained."

  At the Harvard memorial service, Dean Willard Sperry spoke of the tragic timing of the president's death: "He died too soon. He had earned the right to see victory on land and sea and in the air. He should have seen it for himself; his eyes should have beheld it, and not another." An Alumni Bulletin editorial noted that "Mr. Roosevelt, as he grew older, grew into younger hearts. He was a symbol, a cause, a reason, and an anvil of strength to youth. He was the only President this fighting generation had ever consciously known. It knew him well. He foresaw; and he acted as none but the prescient can act. That is something which youth is supremely fitted to understand. 'He belonged to this day,' as Dr. Sperry so wisely said. 'He spoke the language of the hour and needed no interpreter.'"

As a loyal member of his class, FDR always complied when the class report office requested personal information and opinions. His handwritten answers were conspicuous for their brevity. "I have traveled in almost every state in the Union," he wrote in 1934, "and written several tons of speeches, articles, and radio addresses. Convictions? Yes, lots."

This is how he answered a 1939 questionnaire:

Your business or professional associations: Same.
What traveling have you done? About 1,000,000 miles.
What classmates do youfrequently hear from or see? Flocks.
What have you written, edited, compiled, translated, or
composed? Altogether too much.
What public service have you performed? President, U.S.

In his class's fiftieth reunion report, in 1954, Lathrop Brown devoted his entry to the qualities that sustained his former roommate in the earliest days of his presidency and beyond:

In a few weeks the nation was lifted from the pit of despair to the high ground of confidence. It was no small thing that within one man could be contained enough of faith to restore the lost morale of a great nation. All over the world were the stirrings of the lesser people of the world. England, France, Italy, Germany, and Spain fell prey to totalitarianism, socialism, fascism, or chaos. Under Franklin there was no revolution. The value of the dollar fell, but the value of the "forgotten man" rose to its full measure of dignity and decency.Franklin's ethics, learned at home, at school, at college, and in his church at Hyde Park, gave him a sure sense of direction; and gave him enough of faith to lead the nation.

John T. Bethell is senior editor of Harvard Magazine. He is working on a pictorial history of twentieth-century Harvard, to be published in connection with the magazine's centennial in 1998.

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