***
In Warm Springs Roosevelt stirred and glanced at his watch. It was 1 P.M. To Madame Shoumatoff he said, “We’ve got just fifteen minutes more.”
She wasn’t doing much now. He had become so engrossed in his papers that she hadn’t dared ask him to resume his pose. She was occupying her time filling in colors.
Lizzie McDuffie, an elderly black servant, paused at the door and glanced into the living room. She saw Lucy Rutherfurd facing the President. He had just said something witty; she was smiling. “That is the last picture I have in my mind of Mr. Roosevelt,” she said afterward. “The last I remember he was looking into the smiling face of a beautiful woman.”
FDR slipped a cigarette into his holder and lit it. He had now fallen so far from his pose that the painter despaired of regaining his attention. Watching, she saw him raise his left hand to his temple and press it. He appeared to be squeezing his forehead. The hand fell, the fingers twitched; it was as though he were fumbling for something. Miss Suckley put down her crocheting and stepped over, asking, “Did you drop something?” He pressed his left hand behind his neck, closed his eyes, and said softly—so softly only she heard him—“I have a terrific headache.” His arm fell. His head drooped to the left. His chest slumped. It was 1:15 P.M.
Daisy Suckley phoned for Dr. Bruenn and asked Madame Shoumatoff to find the nearest Secret Service agent. The painter did, and then headed toward her car. Flying after her was Lucy Rutherfurd; Eleanor Roosevelt must never know of her presence here. Of course he would recover. As the word spread through the household, everyone felt that way. The thought of an America without Franklin Roosevelt in the White House was insupportable; the young men fighting overseas could hardly remember a time when he had not been President. This was a passing thing. The doctors would fix it, everyone assured everyone else, and all were convinced of it except the doctors.
On orders from Dr. McIntire, Dr. Bruenn had become virtually a member of the presidential staff; he was always just around the corner. At 9:30, just before the President’s breakfast, Bruenn had examined his patient. There had been nothing wrong with Roosevelt’s heart. His blood pressure was high—180 systolic over 110 to 120 diastolic—but not alarming. It had been running at those levels for some time now. He hadn’t been tense. In conversations with the doctor during the past week he had commented bitterly on Stalin’s behavior since Yalta, but he hadn’t mentioned that this morning. Now Bruenn, racing into the cottage, saw Roosevelt sagging against, and held up by, the arms of his chair. FDR’s cousins sat petrified on the couch.
Momentarily the President stopped breathing. Then his breath became harsh. His tongue was blocking his throat. His neck was rigid, his systolic blood pressure over 300, and his left eye was dilating wildly. What had happened was that an artery in Roosevelt’s brain had developed a tiny puncture, probably because it was old, fragile, and easily ruptured. Blood from this perforation had seeped into cavities around the brain, and the brain, sensitive to the slightest change, was sending frantic distress signals. The victim’s eyes were distorted; he suffered from vertigo; his breathing became more audible; he sounded as though he were snoring. To a physician those signals had but one meaning. The patient was suffering from a massive cerebral hemorrhage. At this point Bruenn could not gauge the severity of the stroke, but he could provide emergency relief. Swiftly scissoring away Roosevelt’s clothes, he injected doses of papaverine and amyl nitrite into the President’s arm, re-dressed him in striped blue pajamas, and, with the help of a male servant and a Navy physiotherapist who had arrived to give FDR his daily rubdown, gently carried him to his maple bed. The only sound those outside the room could hear were the great gasping, anguished snores.
Bruenn called McIntire in Washington, who endorsed Bruenn’s diagnosis and the treatment. Physicians today would hesitate to administer amyl nitrite, which depresses blood pressure and decreases the vital flow of blood to the brain, but the President was beyond help anyway. He had now been unconscious for fifty minutes. Bruenn reported intense narrowing of the blood vessels (vasoconstriction) and partial paralysis. McIntire phoned an eminent Atlanta specialist, Dr. James E. Paullin, and begged him to reach Warm Springs as quickly as possible. Speeding down back roads and shortcuts and expecting, as he later put it, “to be picked up any moment,” Paullin made Warm Springs in less than an hour and a half. As he explained in his report to McIntire, “The President was in extremis when I reached him. He was in a cold sweat, ash gray and breathing with difficulty. Numerous rhonchi in the chest…. Within five minutes of my entrance into the room, all evidence of life passed away. The time was 3:35 o’clock.”
Until that moment Fala had been sitting quietly in the bedroom. Now he seemed to sense the change. Abruptly the dog leaped from his corner, brushed the screen door open, and raced, frantically yelping, to the top of the nearest hill. There he stopped barking and stood immobile, as though on vigil.
Inside the bedroom, the first mourner was Grace Tully: “Without a word or glance toward the others present, I walked into the bedroom, leaned over and kissed the President lightly on the forehead.” Good taste and form required that the First Lady and the Vice President, the new President, be informed before the press learned what had happened. Hassett and Bruenn asked McIntire to put them through to Steve Early, the President’s press secretary. Stifling his own grief, Early told them to say nothing until he could reach Eleanor Roosevelt.
The President’s widow was at that moment preparing to speak at the annual tea of the Sulgrave Club at 1801 Massachusetts Avenue N.W. in Washington. Shortly after 3 P.M., when the President had been unconscious for forty-five minutes, Laura Delano called from Warm Springs and guardedly told her that the President had “fainted.” A few minutes later McIntire phoned the First Lady. He saw no reason for panic, he said, but he had requisitioned a Navy plane to carry her and him to Georgia. She inquired: should she cancel her speech? Not at all, he said; it might lead to rumors. On that advice she spoke on the United Nations. Afterward Evalyn Tyner, a pianist, began to play selections. Again Mrs. Roosevelt was called to the phone; this time it was Steve Early, “very much upset,” in her words, asking her “to come home at once.” She had a sinking feeling “that something dreadful had happened. Nevertheless the amenities had to be observed, so I went back to the party.” She listened to Miss Tyner complete a piece and then excused herself, saying, “Now I’m called back to the White House and I want to excuse myself for leaving before this delightful concert is finished.”
Outside, a presidential limousine awaited her. She “got into the car and sat with clenched hands all the way to the White House. In my heart I knew what had happened, but one does not actually formulate these terrible thoughts until they are spoken.” Back in the sitting room on the second floor of the Executive Mansion, she sent for Early. Afterward he quoted her to the press as saying, “I am more sorry for the people of this country and of the world than I am for ourselves.” It would have been appropriate, but the truth is that she never said it. The thought was Early’s. What Eleanor really did tell him was that she wanted to see Harry Truman at once.
***
Framed dramatically against a background of red Levanto marble pilasters and heavy blue velvet embellished with a gold embroidered border, the sixty-year-old thirty-fourth Vice President was ostensibly presiding over the United States Senate. In reality he was scrawling:
Dear Mama & Mary: I am trying to write you a letter today from the desk of the President of the Senate while a windy Senator… is making a speech on a subject with which he is in no way familiar. The Jr. Sen. from Arizona made a speech on the subject, and knew what he was talking about….
He hoped they were having nice weather, said it was “raining and misty” in Washington, and told them he would be flying to Providence Sunday morning. He added:
Turn on your radio tomorrow night at 9:30 your time, and you’ll hear Harry make a Jefferson Day address to the nation. I think I’ll be on all the
networks, so it ought not to be hard to get me. I will be followed by the President, whom I’ll introduce.
Hope you are both well and stay that way.
Love to you both.
Write when you can.
Senator Alexander Wiley surrendered the floor, Alben Barkley moved for a recess until the following day, and at 4:56, his official day over, the Vice President—ignorant of the fact that he had been America’s thirty-third President for over an hour—dropped in on Speaker Sam Rayburn for a drink. He was there, sipping bourbon and water, when the White House switchboard located him. Early told him, “Please come right over and come in through the main Pennsylvania Avenue entrance.” Puzzled, Truman thought Roosevelt had returned from Warm Springs early and wanted a word with him on some minor matter. Upstairs, one glance at Eleanor Roosevelt’s face told him this was nothing slight. She put her hand on his shoulder gently and said quietly, “Harry, the President is dead.” Dazed, he asked if there was anything he could do for her. She said, “Is there anything we can do for you? You are the one in trouble now.”
***
Seventeen minutes later, at 5:47 P.M., the White House switchboard alerted the Associated Press, the United Press, and the International News Service3 to an imminent conference call. Newspapermen for the three wire services were plugged in. They heard: “This is Steve Early. I have a flash for you. The President died suddenly this afternoon at…”
That was enough for Hearst’s INS; it was first on the wire with:
FLASH
WASHN—FDR DEAD
INS WASHN 4/12/547 PPH36.
UP followed thirty seconds later with:
FLASH. WASHINGTON. PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT DIED THIS AFTERNOON.
Two minutes later, at 5:49 P.M., AP sent:
FLASH—WASHINGTON—PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT DIED SUDDENLY THIS AFTERNOON AT WARM SPRINGS, GA.
At the United Press Washington Bureau a rewrite man was taking down Early’s dictation in reportorial shorthand:
at Warm Springs, Ga. deth resulted from cerebal hemorrhage—V-P Truman has been notified. Called to W hse & informed By Mrs. R. Secy of State has been advised. Cab meeting has been called. 4 boys in service have been sent message by their mother which sed—(no quote) that the president slipped away this afternoon. he did his job to the end as he wud want you to do. Bless you and all our love. Mrs. R. signed the message “mother.”4
Mrs. R, Adm. McIntyre & Steve Early will leave WA by air t aft for warm Springs. We expect (Steve talking) to leave Warm S tmro a.m. by train for Wa. funeral services will be held Sat. aft. east room of W hse. Interment will be at Hyde Park Sunday aft. Detailed No detailed aranns or exact times have been decided on as yet.
for details hv get from man at Warm Springs.
In the office of radio station WRC at New York Avenue and Fourteenth Street N.W., the deskman was twenty-four-year-old David Brinkley. He heard the INS machine ring four bells, ripped off the flash, and took it to his boss. On radio this was the children’s hour; NBC was broadcasting the juvenile serial Front Page Farrell, CBS Wilderness Road, ABC Captain Midnight, and Mutual Tom Mix. By 5:49, however, commentators were beginning to come through on every network and local station. Radio commercials had been canceled for the next four days; there was nothing else to talk about. A Bronx housewife was asked if she had heard the radio bulletins. “For what do I need a radio?” she cried. “It’s on everybody’s face.” People told strangers, who phoned their friends, who put through long distance calls to relatives. The flashes were broadcast in London and Moscow, even in Tokyo and Berlin, before most people in Warm Springs knew what had happened. In Germany, where darkness had fallen, Eisenhower was conferring with Patton and Bradley. They had retired for the night when Patton, realizing that he had forgotten to wind his watch, turned his radio to get the right time. He heard a BBC commentator, his voice breaking with emotion, say, “We regret to announce that the President of the United States has died.” Patton woke Bradley, and together they roused Ike. At almost the same time, on a highway near Macon, Georgia, Lucy Rutherfurd asked Madame Shoumatoff if she might turn on the car radio. The painter nodded. They heard soft music, then the break: “We interrupt this program to bring you a special bulletin….” Lucy gasped and covered her face with her hands.
In telegraphing her sons that their father had done his job to the end as he would “want you to do,” Eleanor Roosevelt had meant just that. The Victorian sense of duty was strong in her. In leaving the Sulgrave Club she had been careful not to interrupt the proceedings or embarrass anyone. She believed in propriety, and her sons understood her. In the waters off Okinawa, Lieutenant John Roosevelt, USNR, was standing watch on the flag bridge of the carrier Hornet when he received a voice contact from the destroyer Ulvert L. Moore, under the command of Lieutenant Commander Franklin D. Roosevelt, USNR. In enemy waters identification was impossible but unnecessary; Groton-Harvard accents were rare. “Are you making it home, old man?” inquired the voice from the destroyer. “No,” said the man on the Hornet’s bridge. “Are you?” Young FDR Jr. said, “Nope. Let’s clean it up out here first. So long, old man—over.” John Roosevelt: “So long—out.”
Americans were incredulous, shocked, and above all, afraid. He had been leading them so long. Who would lead now? Cabell Phillips of the New York Times recalls that when the implications of what had happened sank in, the White House press corps was aghast: “‘Good God,’ we said, ‘Truman will be President!’” But at the moment it was unnecessary, and indeed impossible, to think of Truman. The long shadow of Roosevelt’s passing lay dark across the land. Only then, Eleanor later conceded, did she realize how direct FDR’s dialogue with the American people had been. Anne O’Hare McCormick wrote in the New York Times that he had “occupied a role so fused with his own personality after twelve years that people in other countries spoke of him simply as ‘The President,’ as if he were President of the World. He did not stoop and he did not climb. He was one of those completely poised persons who felt no need to play up or play down to anybody. In his death this is the element of his greatness that comes out most clearly.”
Some responses were surprising. His voice trembling with unexpected emotion, Robert A. Taft said, “He dies a hero of the war, for he literally worked himself to death in the service of the American people.” The author of the New York Times obituary editorial appeared to be almost overwhelmed with grief: “Men will thank God on their knees a hundred years from now that Franklin Roosevelt was in the White House when a powerful and ruthless barbarism threatened to overrun the civilization of the Western World.” For the first time since Abraham Lincoln’s death in 1865, the New York Philharmonic canceled a Carnegie Hall concert. In London, Churchill was told while entering his study at No. 10 Downing Street. He said he “felt as if I had been struck a physical blow.” Buckingham Palace’s Court Circular broke precedent by reporting the death of a head of state who was not a member of the royal family. Black-bordered Moscow flags flew at half-mast, and a Times correspondent cabled that people there said over and over, “We have lost a friend.”
In Washington vast crowds gathered around the White House while Dean Acheson looked down on them from his window next door in the Executive Office Building. “There was nothing to see,” he would write in his memoirs, “and I am sure they did not expect to see anything. They merely stood in a lost sort of way.” In Berlin, where Russian artillery shells were falling outside the Führerbunker, Goebbels babbled, “My Führer! I congratulate you! Roosevelt is dead! It is written in the stars that the second half of April will be the turning point for us. This is Friday 13 April. It is the turning point!” Hitler was impressed. Radio Tokyo, on the other hand, amazed the world by quoting Premier Admiral Kantaro Suzuki as saying, “I must admit that Roosevelt’s leadership has been very effective and has been responsible for the Americans’ advantageous position today. For that reason I can easily understand the great loss his passing means to the American people and my profound sympathy goes to
them.” An announcer added, “We now introduce a few minutes of special music in honor of the passing of the great man.”
Obscure mourners offered special eulogies. In San Diego, Petros Protopapadakis petitioned a court to change his name to Petros FDR Protopapadakis. The alarm system of the New York Fire Department sounded “four fives” to all fire stations—the signal that a fireman had died on duty. A little boy in Chicago picked a bouquet in his backyard and sent it with a note, saying he was sorry he couldn’t come to the funeral. Other boys at Groton were told just before supper that the President, a member of the class of 1900, had just died. Leaving their meal untouched, they followed the headmaster into the chapel for prayer. In the Village of Hyde Park, the bells of St. James Episcopal Church were tolling for its senior warden. And the New York Post, in a gesture which would have moved the President, simply headed its daily casualty list:
Washington, Apr. 16—Following are the latest casualties in the military services, including the next of kin.
ARMY-NAVY DEAD
ROOSEVELT, Franklin D., Commander-in-Chief, wife, Mrs. Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, the White House.
A Yank editor wrote, “We made cracks about Roosevelt and told Roosevelt jokes…. But he was still Roosevelt, the man we had grown up under…. He was the Commander-in-Chief, not only of the Armed Forces, but of our generation.” An elderly black Georgian said, “He made a way for folks when there wasn’t no way.” Again and again, strangers told John Gunther, “I never met him, but I feel as if I had lost my best friend.” Gunther himself could not, at first, comprehend the tragedy: “He was gone, and it seemed impossible to believe it. FDR’s belief in the basic goodness of man, his work to better the lot of humble people everywhere, his idealism and resourcefulness, his faith in human decency, his unrivaled capacity to stir great masses and bring out the best of them—to realize that all this was now a matter of memory was hard to absorb.” On Capitol Hill Congressman Lyndon B. Johnson said brokenly, “He was just like a daddy to me always. He was the one person I ever knew, anywhere, who was never afraid. God, God—how he could take it for us all!”
The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America, 1932-1972 Page 53