Franklin Delano Roosevelt

I was born on the Hudson and taught duty early. As Assistant Secretary of the Navy in the Great War, I learned budgets, shipyards, and Congress. In 1921 at Campobello, a fever took my legs. I mastered braces and a cane, and leaned on a son’s arm. In Warm Springs I found water—and resolve—strong enough to begin again.

In March 1933 I took office with banks shut and nerves frayed. I declared a bank holiday, explained it by radio, and reopened only the sound. We put young men to work in forests, brought light to dark valleys, and tried things without shame at failure. Social Security, once ink on a bill, became a monthly check in a widow’s hand.

When the Court struck New Deal laws, I asked for more justices; the country balked, but elections and time changed the Court, and much endured. My craft was coalition—farmers, labor, Southern chairmen, city wards—each with a claim, all needing a steady hand.

Before war reached us, I traded destroyers for bases, sent aid by Lend‑Lease, and set the Atlantic Charter with Churchill. After Pearl Harbor, we fought Germany first, crossed the Channel, and bargained with Stalin at Tehran and Yalta. I signed the order that uprooted Japanese Americans. In April 1945, at Warm Springs, the portrait beside me remained unfinished.