Chapter:
Part one of a biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the 32nd president.
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Transcript: Chapter 02
Narrator: "All that is within me," Franklin Roosevelt once wrote, "cries out to go back to my home on the Hudson River." Hyde Park was the center of the world.
Radio Newscaster (archival): We interrupt this program to bring you a special news bulletin from CBS World News. A press association has just announced that President Roosevelt is dead. The president died of a cerebral hemorrhage. All we know so far is that the president died at Warm Springs in Georgia.
Narrator: On April 13, 1945, the funeral train headed north. In the last car lay the body of the president of the United States. Franklin Delano Roosevelt had led Americans through the great Depression and the greatest war in history. Now, along railroad tracks from Georgia to New York, they gathered to say goodbye.
Geoffrey Ward, Biographer: A whole generation of Americans had grown up knowing no other president. He was a presence in their living rooms. He'd called them "my friends." He'd been at the helm through the two worst crises of this century. And to have him suddenly gone was an overwhelming shock.
Robert Fulton Copeland, Warm Springs Resident: The boss man come into the field and he throwed up his hand. I was flying a tractor. He said, "Mr. Roosevelt died today." I said, "What?" He said, "Mr. Roosevelt died today." I just set there. I just set there astonished. I felt like I had one of the closest brothers I ever had.
Eli Ginzberg, FDR Administrator: It was the single greatest feeling of loss, disorientation, uncertainty and the sense that the whole world was now without the one man that it needed.
David Ginsburg, FDR Administration: This was a man of great ebullience. He was a man of constant cheer. He was a man of laughter. He had the feeling of life. There was vitality. This was a country in despair, and he brought us all together.
Narrator: He was the man with the big, easy smile, the infectious sense of humor.
Reporter (archival): Mr. President, how soon are you coming back?
President Franklin Roosevelt (archival): Just as soon as Congress will let me.
Narrator: He loved conversation, company and good times.
President Franklin Roosevelt (archival): Last year I nearly killed a photographer. All ready?
Narrator: This was how Americans saw Franklin Roosevelt. This was the man they trusted so much they elected him president four times.
Alistair Cooke, Journalist: People just idolized him. The most astounding thing was the pictures of Roosevelt you saw everywhere. Bus stations, libraries, barbershops, homes -- there were pictures of Roosevelt. And the entire country decided he was the savior.
President Franklin Roosevelt (archival): We face the future with confidence and with courage. We are Americans.
Narrator: Never before Roosevelt had Americans felt that government would take care of them, protect their homes and their farms, guarantee their savings accounts, promise them security in sickness and old age. But the president who championed the common man was not like most Americans.
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