Transcript: Chapter 03

Card: Part One: The Center of the World

Narrator: "My dear Mama, I am in a great hurry. I found two birds' nests. I took one egg. Your loving Franklin."

Narrator: Franklin Delano Roosevelt spent his childhood among people so unlike ordinary Americans they modeled themselves after the lords and ladies of England.

Bronson Chanler, Hudson Valley Neighbor: The world of wealth and privilege that FDR grew up with was one that was essentially very comfortable for everybody. And the families that lived on those estates were generally friends with one another, related very often to each other, and were the only people that visited one another. I think it's fair to say that even the professional men in the towns, who were the doctors and the lawyers and so on, were not generally invited to the river houses to dinner.

Narrator: Franklin Roosevelt was born in Hyde Park, New York on January 30, 1882 on the big, forested estate his parents called Springwood.

Geoffrey Ward, Biographer: Springwood was a beautiful, isolated place. It was its own world, and it was entirely built around this privileged little boy. And I think he spent most of his life trying to replicate the way his boyhood was arranged.

Narrator: "At the very outset he was plump, pink and nice," his mother said. "I used to love to bathe and dress him. He looked very sweet, his little blonde curls bobbing as he ran as fast as he could whenever he thought I had designs on combing them."

Nearly every detail of Franklin's childhood was recorded with single-minded devotion by his mother, Sarah Delano Roosevelt. She kept his baby clothes, every childish drawing, each golden curl. Franklin was eight and a half years old before he was allowed to bathe himself.

Geoffrey Ward: If it's the job of a mother to make her child feel that he or she can do anything, then Sarah Delano Roosevelt was surely one of the great mothers in American history.

Narrator: Franklin's father was more than 25 years older than Sarah. He was 53 when Franklin was born. Franklin called him "Popsy." Everyone else called him "Mr. James." Mr. James bred trotters and rode to the hounds. He smoked cheroots. He would ride out with his son to survey their estate. The workers tipped their hats to Mr. James and then to Master Franklin. The boy accepted these displays of deference as routine.

Curtis Roosevelt, Grandson: FDR grew up in a very tight little island. He learned how to please adults from probably before he remembered. His activities were related to showing off for them, relating to them, not to other children, and he didn't go off to play games with other children. I don't think he ever swung a baseball bat until he finally went to school. He was tutored at home or abroad, because every year they went abroad for several months. FDR, with all this attention, was undoubtedly a lonely boy.

Narrator: Franklin wandered his family estate, secure, he later said, in the peacefulness and regularity of things. Then, when he was nine, he well-ordered world fractured. His 63-year-old father suffered a heart attack. Any irritation might aggravate him, provoke another heart attack and kill him.

Doris Kearns Goodwin, Biographer: His father's sickness must have reinforced the tendency that was already in him as a small child to be a nice boy, to never make any trouble, never make anybody sad. Now he had to worry, "If I go in there and make trouble, I may weaken his already-weakened heart." So it must have put an enormous pressure on this kid.

Narrator: With an infirm father and a domineering mother, Franklin learned to conceal his true feelings. Throughout his life, he would remain a charming but distant figure even to those who were closest to him.

When he was 14 years old, Franklin left the rarified world of his Hyde Park estate. His path seemed clear: boarding school, Harvard and an uneventful life of luxury and ease among his own kind.

"Dear Mama, I am getting on very well with the fellows. I have not had any black marks or lateness yet, and I'm much better in my studies."

Geoffrey Ward: His letters are always cheerful -- everything's wonderful, he's having a grand time with the other fellows -- and yet he wasn't. He was, I think, quite unhappy.

Narrator: At Groton, the private school for sons of the rich, Franklin, with all his charm and self-assurance, expected to excel. He did please his teachers and took to heart his headmaster's urgings toward public service, but he did not fit in with the boys.

Curtis Roosevelt: Groton was his first exposure to other children on a regular basis. After all, he boarded -- all the children boarded -- so he was with other boys 24 hours a day. And it must have been a rude shock to come out of that nest, that very protective nest where he was the only bird or chick in the nest.

Narrator: Sports meant everything at Groton, but Franklin was too slight for success. His mother worried Franklin might be injured and wrote that he "not have the misfortune of hurting anyone." He was enthusiastic about baseball, but only carried the bats and fetched the water for the ballplayers.

Jeffrey Potter, Groton School Alumnus: He wasn't an athlete. He had never played with other boys' games much, and that was very bad indeed, because it made him an outsider, as if he wasn't -- no, as if he didn't belong and really in a sense where he didn't belong.

Narrator: Plunged into an unforgiving world of adolescent boys, Franklin never fit in. His struggle for acceptance only isolated him further.

Jeffrey Potter: Franklin's tone was not the Groton tone. He seemed so desperate for approval. He was too ambitious and too eager and he was very much, I would say from what I've heard, very close to being a golden retriever. In other words, his tail was always wagging even when it shouldn't be.

Narrator: Jeffrey Potter's father was the star of the baseball team. "I can't understand this thing about Frank," he said when Roosevelt became president. "He never amounted to much at school." At Groton, Franklin confessed years later, something had gone sadly wrong.

At Harvard, he was determined to win popularity and recognition, and he did succeed. He campaigned for class office and won and was elected editor-in-chief of the college newspaper, but what he wanted even more was admission to Porcellian, Harvard's most exclusive club.

Bronson Chanler: You immediately, if you were a member of the Porcellian Club, were recognized, as we say in the club, a brother, by all graduates who had been in the place that were still alive. But it was essentially a network of friendships, not of power but of friendships, but that could lead to power.

Narrator: The election was secret, held behind closed doors in the Porcellian Clubhouse. Each member was given one white and one black ball. A single black ball deposited in the wooden ballot box was all it took to exclude a candidate. His father had been a member. So had other Roosevelts. Franklin had every reason to believe that he would be chosen, too. Franklin was blackballed.

Bronson Chanler: No doubt Franklin Roosevelt failed to be elected to the Porcellian Club for the simple reason that somebody who was in there at the time didn't like him. You didn't have to have done anything particularly significant. The fellow would just say, "I don't like the cut of your jib, so I don't want you in there," and out you went.

Narrator: Years later when he was president and the New Deal at high tide, there were those Porcellian members who would call him a traitor to his class and ascribe his social policies to revenge.

Geoffrey Ward: Certainly, none of Roosevelt's classmates at Harvard imagined that he would ever be president. I think they were the first of many, many people who underestimated Roosevelt.

Narrator: While Franklin was at Harvard, his father, 72 years old and grown frail and weak from heart disease, died. Sarah wrote in her diary, "All is over. He merely slept away." Now her boy was all she had left. She moved to Boston to be near him. A family friend once wrote, "She would not let her son call his soul his own."

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