- [Franklin] I've always loved coming to this state.

This is such a beautiful spot.

I love the people here.

My visits have been so good for my body and my spirit.

I have time to think about the future of our country and our world.

I can reflect on my life, and I am inspired by the people of this region.

I intend to keep coming back.

- [Narrator] On April 12th, 1945 at 3:35 PM, as World War II was slowly wound down, life stopped in the United States.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had died at his Little White House in Warm Springs, Georgia, of a cerebral hemorrhage.

Word soon got out via radio, newspaper, telegrams, and neighbor telling neighbor.

The president for the last 12 years, and the only man ever elected to the office for four terms, had died.

Farmers stopped plowing in their fields.

Housewives cried as they listened to the news over the radio, but to the people of Georgia, the death hit even closer.

The most famous resident of the state, either permanent or part-time, had died.

Between 1924 and 1945, Franklin Delano Roosevelt had become one of our own, a friend, a trusted leader, a president in our midst.

(soft music) Chief Petty Officer Graham Jackson, a popular accordion and piano player from Atlanta, had expected to play for Roosevelt during a community picnic that night.

Instead, he played that evening at the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for those who gathered in shock.

The next morning, service men from nearby Fort Benning came to escort the casket to the Warm Springs Depot, where the president left his beloved home for the final time.

Jackson again played his accordion.

- [Graham] The next morning, the sun was shining brightly, and I stood with patients under the portico of Georgia Hall waiting for the funeral procession.

I heard the sighing of the pines and the singing of the mockingbird.

Regiments with soldiers had come in during the night.

I heard the scraping of their leather boots and the noise of thousands of shifting rifles.

The hearse came around the small flower bed in front of Georgia Hall and stopped there for a minute, just like he used to pause and wave to the patients as he drove along.

It was like his last goodbye.

I lifted my accordion and sounded the opening chorus.

All anyone could think was that he had just lost his best friend.

For two hours, I played everything beautiful that came into my head.

In the end, I did not seem to feel so terribly sad, and the others look as if their hearts were not so heavy.

- 21 years earlier in October, 1924, 42-year-old Franklin Roosevelt first visited Warm Springs.

He'd been fighting the debilitating effects of polio for three years while he went from place to place seeking a cure.

His mother wanted him to stay home and be the squire at Springwood, the family estate in New York.

Not surprisingly, his illness had caused him to become depressed.

Even worse, his love of evening happy hours was becoming a major focus of his days.

This photo from that time shows Roosevelt with his beloved assistant, Missy LeHand, and Maunsell Crosby, a Hyde Park neighbor.

George Foster Peabody, a native New Englander who grew up in Columbus, Georgia, suggested that he come to Warm Springs because a young man from there had felt significant improvements after swimming in the warm waters.

Quite unexpectedly, the New York attorney and politician almost instantly fell in love with the people of Warm Springs and Meriwether County and with the pools at Warm Springs.

He wrote his mother after just one day.

- [Franklin] We are here safely.

I spent over an hour in the pool this AM, and it is really wonderful.

You can be sure I am really taking all the precautions of a cure and getting every minute's worth out of it.

- [Kaye] Articles soon appeared in newspapers across the country about Roosevelt and his activities at Warm Springs.

He came back again seven months later.

Polio patients showed up at the Meriwether Inn in Warm Springs and turned to him for care and assistance.

And they called him Doc Roosevelt.

He developed muscle charts and an exercise table for use in the water.

For the first time in his life, he began to actively care for others.

Over a three-year period, Franklin Roosevelt suffered during two different pandemics.

He barely survived the Spanish flu in 1918, and then polio hit him hard in 1921.

Life changed dramatically for the New Yorker.

In Georgia and the South, he found people suffering from a recession.

While many others in the nation thrived during the Roaring Twenties, Roosevelt needed help overcoming the effects of his illnesses, while Southerners needed assistance dealing with harsh economic realities.

- Nothing in Roosevelt's early life indicated that he would one day choose rural West Georgia as a second home.

But that's exactly what he did.

Here's a man born in 1882 in the state of New York's historic town of Hyde Park.

The windows of the family's impressive estate, and he was born in their mansion, gazed out across the scenic Hudson River Valley.

It was a perfect scene.

Clearly, Franklin was born to American privilege as the son of James and Sarah Roosevelt.

Ah, that name, that Roosevelt name.

His fifth cousin, yes, was Theodore Roosevelt who would become the 26th President of the United States in 1901.

And like Theodore, Franklin would also attend Harvard and Columbia Universities.

He would marry Eleanor Roosevelt, who he had actually known for years through Roosevelt family gatherings.

Eleanor was Theodore Roosevelt's niece.

Together, Franklin and Eleanor would have five children, four of whom would reach adulthood.

In 1910, young Franklin, just 29 years of age, won election to the New York State Legislature, just as TR had done in his own day.

In 1913, FDR was appointed as Assistant Secretary of the Navy in the new administration of President Woodrow Wilson.

This was a big job for such a young man, with a lot of visibility in the nation's capitol.

Here he is in Washington, DC with a president who memorably spent his early childhood years in Augusta, Georgia, and who practiced law later in Atlanta and who also had met and married a native of Rome, Georgia, Ellen Louise Axson.

On May 2nd, 1925, Franklin remembered his Navy Department trips to Georgia in his, "Roosevelt Says" column that appeared in the "Macon Telegraph."

- [Franklin] Speaking of the Navy, I am reminded of a trip which I made to Georgia and Mississippi soon after I went to the Navy Department in 1913.

The good people of Brunswick, Georgia and of Biloxi, Mississippi were anxious to have the federal government establish Naval stations in their harbors.

The harbor entrances in both cases proved too shallow, but I had delightful visits in both cities.

Brunswick I remember chiefly for the possum banquet they gave me, every known variety of possum cooked in every known variety of style.

I ate them all.

- As Eleanor unpacked his luggage, she found a packet of what she recognized as love letters in handwriting that she distinctly remembered.

It was the pen of Lucy Mercer, who once served as Eleanor's personal secretary.

That Franklin and she were in a romantic relationship was obvious.

She was devastated.

At the right time, she brought the matter up with Franklin and immediately offered him a divorce.

Franklin's mother, Sara, would intervene at this point, and she would play a strong role.

For her, a divorce would dash any hope of a national elective office for her son.

With more time to think, FDR committed to saving his marriage.

And he promised Eleanor he would forever break off ties and communications with Lucy Mercer, a difficult promise, if also one that he sincerely made.

For now, he and the family would move forward as a team, and just in time.

At the 1920 Democratic Party Convention, James M. Cox, the governor of Ohio, was chosen as the party's presidential candidate.

And FDR himself was the convention's choice as his running mate.

At the age of 35, he was the youngest vice presidential pick in American history.

He threw himself into the campaign, but it was not the year for the Democrats.

Republicans would win the presidency, calling for a return to normalcy.

But as for that tall, lanky young man with a great smile, a famous name, and a pedigree of national public service in a time of war and peace, everybody who had seen him or heard him recognized that a new political star was being born in the firmament.

(light upbeat music) - Roosevelt had a busy 1921.

He worked as an attorney in New York City.

During the summer, he joined his family at their vacation home at Campobello Island, located off the coast of Maine.

One day, he helped put out a brush fire and then cooled off in the cold waters of the Bay of Fundy.

He soon fell sick.

A doctor vacationing nearby diagnosed him with polio, and he and Eleanor nursed Franklin.

Polio had been in the world for over 400 years.

The last bad epidemic had been five years earlier.

The "New York Times" carried a small story in the fall of 1921 about Roosevelt having polio.

So the public knew he had the disease, but did not know the severity since polio affected different people in different ways.

Franklin and Eleanor went to Warm Springs in 1924.

Eleanor left a few days later.

He soon wrote her.

- [Franklin] "Dearest E, it is just a week since you left.

The legs are really improving a great deal.

This is really a discovery of a place, and there is no doubt that I've got to do it some more."

- Warm Springs had been a popular resort a few decades earlier.

The land stood in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.

Franklin started buying land at what became Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute.

And patients soon talked about the spirit of Warm Springs with its gaiety and fun whenever they weren't in treatment.

Roosevelt was active in finding doctors and nurses.

He also cultivated an image as an active man.

By 1925, Georgia newspapers carried stories mentioning Roosevelt as a future candidate for president.

Reporters and local residents knew that he had trouble walking, but urged him to seek higher office, all at a time when people with handicaps generally stayed out of the public view.

A patient, Paul Hasbrouk from Hudson Valley, wrote letters to his mother about life there.

He talked about how physiotherapists and doctors worked with patients.

- [Paul] Part of the daily program is walking, which takes place from three o'clock to four o'clock in the afternoon under the supervision of Ms Mahoney and Dr. Hubbard.

The walking is for quality more than quantity, that is patients are corrected in the way they walk.

The rails are for those like Mr. Roosevelt, who needs something to take hold of on both sides.

But the aim is to become independent of the rails.

- [Narrator] Miss Mahoney served as the head of the physiotherapists at the institute.

Roosevelt got her a buggy whip for her birthday that year to jokingly point out how hard she worked patients during exercise time.

Roosevelt worked with Ms. Mahoney to perfect walking with his arm through the arm of his son or an aide and using a cane with his other hand.

Roosevelt also got to know people in Georgia.

He realized that rural areas lacked electricity, and older people had no funds for retirement.

He spoke to Sunday school classes and high school groups.

He gave talks at the Springer Opera House in Columbus and at the Windsor Hotel in Americus.

He spoke at the 1929 graduation of what is now the University of West Georgia.

He worried about the harsh economic realities facing farmers and others in rural areas.

- [Franklin] The state of Georgia has a definite problem in improving the conditions surrounding rural life.

The first is the problem of bettering home living conditions, and that is being met on its educational side by the splendid growth of the studies of home economics.

The second problem is that of improving the methods of agriculture itself.

Here, in rural Georgia as in rural New York, it is safe to say that at least 75% of farming is unscientific.

Relief must come through education and through cooperation between individuals and communities.

The third great problem is that of local government inefficiency.

This younger generation has educational advantages undreamed of by their fathers and mothers.

And in that lies the hope of the future.

(light upbeat music) - [Narrator] A minister, the Reverend W.G.

Harry, visited Warm Springs in the mid-1920s.

He later recalled his visit with Franklin D. Roosevelt, which might've taken place at McCarthy Cottage.

- [W.G.]

I just walked up and went to the door, and he was sitting at his typewriter facing the door.

He said, "Come right in."

I went in and introduced myself and I told him that I came by to shake his hand and to tell him how much I was interested in what he was doing here at the foundation, and that I didn't want to bother him or take up his time.

But he insisted that I sit right down, and he started from that.

And he talked to me for one solid hour, enthusiastically, about the countryside.

- Well, life outside of Warm Springs, FDR did a wide variety of things while he was here, just leisure kind of things.

And one of the neat things he did was build a model ship with one of his bodyguard.

One of the main things that he liked to do a lot was picnic.

And they would drive out to Dowdell's Knob.

It's up on Pine Mountain and it's about three or four miles from here.

And they would picnic.

And that was an activity that he loved.

And when they would drive out there, he had have many guests with him.

At different occasions, it'd be different people.

And they would dress up more than what we would do today, as far as picnicking, we would go in our shorts today, and T-shirts.

And they would be in suits and ties.

And they could see the pine valley there.

And it was just a beautiful spot and one of the places he would like to go.

- [Narrator] FDR was at Warm Springs in the autumn of 1928.

He was tracked down in the nearby town of Manchester one evening.

There, he finally agreed to run for governor of New York as a Democrat.

He won that election, and brought some of his New York cabinet to Georgia soon afterwards.

He worried about long-term funding for the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute.

His supporters helped create an insurance policy for the institute.

The following year, the stock market crashed on November 29th, 1929, as the nation entered the Great Depression.

Eleanor once discussed her thoughts about Franklin running for governor.

She told her son: - I thought it would be good for him.

I thought it would help him break away from Warm Springs before he became too deeply entrenched in running that resort.

- [Kaye] Soon after Roosevelt was elected governor, Democrats from Meriwether County and throughout Georgia started pushing even harder for him to run for the presidency.

They held a possum hunt that received national attention in 1930.

Martha Tigner recalled the occasion years later.

she said they wanted: - To show that he could do whatever he needs to do, even though he was paralyzed.

We'll have a possum dinner, something nobody else will probably have.

(chuckles) It was a wonderful party.

Many of Atlanta's most prominent citizens were there.

They were showing that FDR was an active person.

And that was the thing to show, that he could do whatever he needed to do, even go to a possum hunt event.

He charmed everybody, absolutely.

- During this time, Roosevelt continued to meet with groups in the area, including executives from Callaway Mills, based in nearby LaGrange.

Democrats in Meriwether County also held a large barbecue.

Roosevelt spoke to the crowd.

- [Franklin] I have come to love this land of yours as a home, a place where I can come and rest and feel natural.

You people of Georgia have something that I am not at all sure you realize: a great country, a fine land, and a place that every American should be proud of.

- This is the Roosevelt's Little White House here in Warm Springs, Georgia.

And the Little White House was built in May of 1932.

And Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eleanor hosted a house warming party for all the local people in the community.

And to let everyone know about the house warming party, they had the local telephone operator to call everybody and to invite them here.

And the guests were served lemonade, cookies and cake, and it was a big success.

And this was one of many ways that Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eleanor were able to connect with the local community and in the surrounding areas.

Did have a cook, her name was Daisy Bonner.

And Daisy was his cook for over 20 years, even before he was elected President of the United States.

- Franklin Roosevelt had longstanding connections to Atlanta, particularly when he was going through Atlanta to Warm Springs.

So he was through here often.

In 1932, he came here to the Fox theater.

He'd been invited the year before to be the commencement speaker at Oglethorpe College.

And at that time, his mother was ill so he couldn't make it.

So it was rescheduled for the following year, this time in the middle of a presidential election.

So they moved the graduation ceremony from Oglethorpe to the Fox Theater, which would hold all 4,000 people.

At that time, he had given a speech just six weeks before called the "Forgotten Man" speech, talking about the forgotten man, the bottom of the economic pyramid.

And he'd be catching a lot of flack from the press for not being more specific and in his comments after that.

It had been a very important speech in his career.

So with the help of some of the press, he wrote a new speech and this was the one he delivered here at Oglethorpe.

- [Franklin] For the honor conferred upon me, I am deeply grateful.

I believe that we are at the threshold of a fundamental change in our popular economic thought, that in the future, we are going to think less about the producer and more about the consumer.

The country needs, and unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation.

It is common sense to take a method and try it: if it fails, admit it frankly and try another.

But above all, try something.

- [Sheffield] In the speech, Roosevelt doubled down on his attack on economical elites, calling for social and economic reordering of the economy, to increase the wages of the ordinary man at the expense of the capitalists.

He claimed Georgia as a second home, and Georgians claimed him.

To that end, in October, it was Roosevelt Day in Atlanta.

Roosevelt toured Atlanta in an open car, waving to the crowd of 120 to 150,000 people.

- [Franklin] The finest thing I know of was the reception all the way down from Atlanta, especially this reception here from my neighbors and my friends.

Let me say this, this old hat a lot of you people have seen before.

It's the same hat, but I don't think it's going to last much longer after the 8th of November.

I have a superstition about hats and campaigns, and I am going to wear it until midnight of the 8th of November.

- [Narrator] Franklin Roosevelt won the 1932 presidential election by a large margin by defeating incumbent, Herbert Hoover.

He won Georgia with 91.6% of the vote.

- To the patient here, he was their hero, their superhero.

With his example, they believed that everything was possible.

So when they realized that he was going to be running for president, they were so excited.

We had him come and speak.

He wouldn't wheel up to the door and let them watch, something the public would never see.

And struggle, and it was a struggle to get to his feet.

And then he would turn to them with that smile.

"Okay, now I want to shake hands with every one of you before you go home tonight.

And he said, "That's gonna do my heart good too."

The message that he was trying to convey to us was, "You see me struggle just like you struggle.

I have polio just like you are dealing with polio.

But I'm President of the United States with polio.

And if I can do that, then you can do anything you set your mind to with polio."

- [Narrator] - Roosevelt loved music, and often invited groups to play during dinners and special events at Warm Springs.

- What would you like to hear?

- I'd like to have you play "Soldier's Joy."

(lively bluegrass music) - [Narrator] Some of the groups who played included the Morehouse Male Quartet, and these men who lived in the area around the Cove, a community on the Flint River.

They gathered in 1933 to entertain the president-elect.

After they played, they passed a gourd filled with moonshine and Roosevelt joined them in imbibing.

Robert Carpenter, who grew up in Warm Springs, remembered.

(lively bluegrass music) - [Robert] Roosevelt was such a good sport.

He ate their possum.

He would go and drink their corn liquor.

- Roosevelt became president on March 4th, 1933.

The administration promptly closed banks during the national banking holiday.

And he started the process to end Prohibition and began to establish New Deal programs.

He also gave Fireside Chats, as the voice of the President of the United States began to be heard in people's homes for the first time ever.

The president and his mother, Sara, visited Savannah that November to celebrate the bicentennial of the founding of Georgia.

This was one of his mother's rare trips to the state.

And he spoke to a large gathering of people in Savannah.

- [Franklin] I am glad to come back to my own state, but I come here also because of all that Georgia means to me personally, through my long association with this state and also through the kinship which my wife and my children have to the early settlers who participated with Oglethorpe and the founding of this portion of the Atlantic seaboard.

On this Thanksgiving, I like to think that many more fathers and mothers will partake of turkey than they have in recent years.

What a splendid thing it would be if in every community in every state of the land, in celebration of this Thanksgiving, would set as its Thanksgiving day objective the providing of a Thanksgiving dinner for those who have not yet been blessed by the returning prosperity sufficiently to provide their own.

- Many of the FDRs programs aimed at restoring economic health to the US had close connections to Georgia, including the Works Progress Administration, Social Security, and Civilian Conservation Corps that built structures that form the basis of many of our state parks.

Roosevelt addressed a gathering of CCC workers in Warm Springs.

- [Franklin] I have seen the work that this camp and the Chipley camp has performed in the last couple of years.

You are rendering a real service, not only to this community, but to the whole state.

It is permanent work.

It is work that is going to be useful for a good many generations to come.

(soft music) - Well, President Franklin Roosevelt drove up from Warm Springs on November the 29th, 1935 to come to campus and speak, right here in this football stadium to a crowd of 50,000 people.

He was coming to dedicate Techwood Homes, The first public housing project in America.

It was a project that was much needed, because just south of Georgia's campus was a pretty much abysmal housing development where Atlantans and Georgia Tech students lived in very poor housing, sometimes tents and squalid conditions.

So it was very, very much needed.

He was coming at a time that was tough for the country, because we were still in the middle of the Great Depression.

But it wasn't all warm and fuzzy, because he wanted to remind the people who were opposing the New Deal that he was here to fight.

And he didn't mention him by name, but he was speaking to the Governor of Georgia, Eugene Talmadge, because Eugene Talmadge was an ardent foe of the New Deal, so much as to say to Georgians who were willing to take those much needed jobs and get paid on those jobs, that taking a job from the federal government will make you lazy.

And of course, Franklin Roosevelt was adamantly about proving that to be false.

And of course the New Deal, as he pointed out in his remarks, was much broader than just the jobs program, it was about banks and other issues as well.

And here at Georgia Tech, we knew something about that, because New Deal monies helped build seven buildings on this campus, one of which was a dormitory named Harrison Dormitory that I stayed in when I was a freshman here at Georgia Tech.

Another was a civil engineering building, and as a civil engineering student, it was a building that I studied in.

So these were important features, but in addition, it provided over 600 tech students with wages from work to pay their way through school.

And they probably wouldn't have been able to stay in school otherwise.

And he sorta concluded with this, he said, "I have confidence.

I have faith.

I have everlasting faith in the American people."

That's why we know, November the 29th, 1935, was a historic day for the people who were in this stadium, for Georgia Tech students, for Atlantans, and all of Georgians.

- [Franklin] My friends and neighbors, (crowd cheering) (crowd applauding) I do not need to tell you that I am happy to be in Georgia.

Nor do I need to tell you that I am proud of Georgia.

(crowd cheering) (crowd applauding) Happy, especially today, because of this moving reception, which my friends, the senators, and all of the representatives in the Congress from this state have tendered me and which you, the good people of this state, have responded to.

Proud to because I see clear signs of a revival of material prosperity in country and in city, and especially because I sense a swelling prosperity of the spirit that spells a greater help and a deeper happiness for our fellowmen.

- President Roosevelt's visit to Atlanta University and to the city of Atlanta was very impactful, a watershed moment, noting that the Great Depression, beginning in 1929, had full impact upon our nation.

African-Americans were facing homelessness, job losses with millions, estimated at 13 million Americans without housing.

So when the Public Works Administration undertook to build public housing, two public housing projects, of course, in Atlanta, Techwood homes for whites, and University Homes for African-Americans.

It was quite significant.

- [Kaye] The following day Roosevelt attended his only football game in Georgia.

He sat with Tech President Marion Brittain, and watched Georgia Tech beat Georgia 19-7.

A few months later, in April, 1936, Roosevelt arrived in Gainesville to look at the site of one of the nation's worst natural disasters.

- [Franklin] My friends, it is a sad occasion that brings this stop of mine in Gainesville.

I have been in touch very closely with this great disaster that has come to your city ever since the tornado.

All agencies of all kinds have cooperated, not only sincerely, but with very practical results.

I hope to come back someday at a less tragic time, and when I come back, to be able to see a greater and better Gainesville.

- It was not customary for the President of the United States to visit disaster sites.

But President Franklin Delano Roosevelt came by train three days later.

And he gave hope to the city of Gainesville, much as he'd given hope to the country during the Depression, and to the world during World War II.

And thanks to his leadership and federal assistance, Gainesville was rebuilt.

(soft music) - [Narrator] Roosevelt won re-election on November 3rd, 1936.

He received 60.8% of the vote, versus 36.5% for Republican Alf Landon.

In Georgia, he received 87.1% of the vote.

- Both Franklin and Eleanor worried about the education that Georgians received in the 1930s.

Too many people ended their schooling with the sixth or seventh grades.

The Roosevelts especially worried about education of African-Americans.

Eleanor, who never spent as much time in Georgia as her husband did, always wanted Franklin to do more for African-Americans.

He seemed reluctant to upset Southern politicians in those days when the so-called separate, but equal appeared to be the norm for facilities.

Roosevelt secured monies from the Rosenwald Fund for their last school, one of over 5,300 mostly rural schools built in the South between 1917 and 1937.

Roosevelt contributed funds, as did members of the local community.

Over eight decades ago, on March 18th, 1937, Franklin helped to dedicate the school named to honor Eleanor Roosevelt.

The choir from Fort Valley State College performed that day.

Most recently, the building has been used to store carpet tiles, and is now a nonprofit agricultural center.

- [Franklin] I'm also sorry that my better half cannot be here today.

She asked me to tell you that she is tremendously grateful and very happy in having this fine building named in her honor.

And I hope that the next time we will, both of us, be able to get down here so that she may come here and see this school and see the children in it and see the tablet with her name over there on the front wall.

I know that this school is going to help you to be good citizens.

- It was an exciting day here in Athens, only the third time that a president had visited the city.

Hundreds lined his route from the train station to campus to greet the president, and about 22,000 pack the north stands here at the football stadium for the graduation ceremony.

University of Georgia benefactor, George Foster Peabody, had been the one who initially introduced Roosevelt to Warm Springs.

And it was Peabody's idea to award the honorary degree here at the university.

Chancellor Steadman V. Sanford presented the honorary Doctorate of Laws to President Roosevelt, with Governor Rivers looking on.

For Sanford, it was an important opportunity to strengthen the ties between the University of Georgia and the president.

- [Franklin] It is with particular pride in and increased devotion to this state that I find myself about to become an alumnus of the university.

I wonder if you, who live here in the state all the time, can realize as well as I, who have been coming here once or twice a year, whether you can realize amazing progress that has been made in this state in a short decade and a half.

- Though the president acknowledged progress had been made in the state in his brief speech, he lamented economic and educational conditions in rural Georgia.

He pointed to low land values and low levels of income as impairing the state's ability to adequately support its public schools.

It was a problem, he argued, that the national and state governments would need to partner on in order to tackle.

Roosevelt headed to Barnesville to officially launch the Rural Electrification Administration.

The real controversy of the day happened there.

People in the area had been concerned about a public fight between Roosevelt and Georgia Senator Walter F. George for weeks.

Roosevelt started his talk at the stadium at Gordon Military College by looking back at his early days in the state.

- [Franklin] There was only one discordant note in that first stay of mine at Warm Springs.

When the first of the month bill came for electric lights in my little cottage, I found that the charge was about four times as much as I was paying in another community, Hyde Park, New York.

And so, my friends, it can be said with a good deal of truth that a little cottage in Warm Springs, Georgia was the birthplace of the Rural Electrification Administration.

Yes, electricity is a modern necessity, not a luxury.

- [Narrator] Roosevelt then changed his focus to politics and complained about his fellow Democrat, Walter F. George, and the way he voted in the Senate.

- You, the people of Georgia, in the coming senatorial primary have a perfect right to choose any candidate you wish, but because Georgia has been good enough to call me her adopted son, I feel no hesitation in telling you what I would do if I could vote here next month.

I most assuredly would cast my ballot for Lawrence Camp.

- The impact of President Roosevelt coming to this area was something that even President Jimmy Carter called it, "More important than the day he married Rosalynn Carter, and more important than the day he became President of the United States."

We're talking about a time where people, in anticipation of having electricity in your house, actually wired their homes in anticipation.

We're talking about people, like local farmers and Senator Richard Russell, who happened to be a graduate of Gordon, asked the president to come down and visit and induct, if you wanna call it, the Lamar REA.

It was symbolic that he would now push the button that would provide electricity to over 50,000 people in this area.

Prior to then, people would have to read by candlelight or kerosene.

But now, this was a life-changing opportunity for people to have electricity that was already available in towns and cities, but not in a rural part of America.

So this was a game changer.

- And also, I think it's important, because I grew up in South Georgia, rural South Georgia, that Roosevelt created the Rural Electrification Program.

And that brought electrification to people in rural areas that they didn't have it before.

I had relatives who lived on farms, in my day, who didn't have electricity.

They didn't have lighting, they didn't have heat, and they didn't have telephones.

And so the Electrification Program changed their lives dramatically for the better.

So as Roosevelt was coming to closure, he wanted to say, this was not just about trying to fix a problem today, but it was about progress.

It was about progress.

(soft music) - Well, of course, once the president assumed the duties of the national office, you know, he didn't have quite as much time to be here, but he always maintained his interest.

And whenever anything special was going on, they timed it for his visits to come back.

So he was able to be here, you know, when this chapel was dedicated.

He was able to be here when the medical hospital was completed, or as under construction.

He also dedicated the school house here.

He was involved in various community events.

The president attended the opening of the community building in Warm Springs.

There was a fire tower that he was influential in getting constructed here.

He was present for the opening of the fire tower.

So he showed his interest in many different ways even after he became president.

- [Kaye] Pine Mountain Valley, a cooperative farming community in Harris County, started during the 1930s.

Franklin visited there often and frequently mentioned Pine Mountain Valley as an example for other communities across the country.

Students at the school fondly remembered his visits, including Mrs. Pearl Raleigh, who later recalled: - [Pearl] President Roosevelt, to us, was just ordinary, sofar as seeing him was concerned.

We saw him a number of times.

- I have been tremendously impressed with the small corner of Pine Mountain Valley that I have seen in the last 20 minutes.

And there have been tremendous improvements over the time that I was here nearly a year and a half ago.

- [Pearl] He'd come up to the school, and the children would all go around him and crawl on his car and sing.

And they just had the best time of their lives down there.

To me, he was the most wonderful man I'd ever known in my whole life.

(soft uplifting music) - [Narrator] In the late 1930s, members of the military who contracted polio started coming to Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for treatment.

On November 5th, 1940, Roosevelt was elected to a third term.

He received 54.7% of the vote, while Republican Wendell Willkie received 44.8% of the vote.

Roosevelt received 84.85% of the vote in Georgia.

For several years, Roosevelt had been warning Warm Springs residents and visitors about the situation in the world, especially the war in Europe.

- [Franklin] I'll be back, if not for war.

- [Narrator] By this time, his trips to Georgia became rare.

In 1941, he came for a belated Thanksgiving dinner, but quickly headed back to Washington because of threats from Japan.

A few days later, on December 7th, 1941, Pearl Harbor was bombed.

The next day, Roosevelt appeared before Congress to give one of the most famous speeches a president has ever given.

- Mr. Vice President, and Mr. Speaker, and Members of the Senate and of the House of Representatives, yesterday, December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy, the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.

(soft music) - [Narrator] When Roosevelt came to Georgia during the 1940s, he most often visited military bases, including Fort Benning and Fort Oglethorpe, where the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps drilled.

He did not spend time exercising at the pools at Warm Springs, but he deeded his Georgia farm and 2,600 acres to the Warm Springs Foundation.

He came for almost three weeks in 1944, and had Thanksgiving dinner here.

By then, the holiday had become a time to look back at progress at Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute and the treatment of polio.

Actress Betty Davis was one of the guests for that occasion.

Roosevelt defeated Thomas Dewey on November 7th, 1944.

He received 53.4% of the vote, versus 45.9% for the Republicans.

In Georgia, he received 81.74%, versus 18.25% for Dewey.

In February, 1945, Roosevelt flew to the Yalta Conference to meet with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin.

The three world leaders met in secret to plan the post-war reorganization of Germany and Europe.

Six weeks later, he headed to Warm Springs.

Mike Riley, head of the White House Secret Service detail, later remembered being glad that the boss was going south where he could actually rest, and also recalled being shocked at how heavy Roosevelt felt when he tried to move him at the end of the long train ride.

He reported this to the president's doctors.

After he had been at Warm Springs a few days, Roosevelt seemed to be doing much better and went out for rides and attended a church service at the chapel.

Others who joined Roosevelt on this trip included Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd, the girlfriend from 1917.

They had resumed a friendship.

She brought along an artist, Madame Shoumatoff.

Also on the trip was Margaret Daisy Suckley, Roosevelt's sixth cousin.

She traveled with him often starting in 1935, and often recorded details of their trips in letters and diaries.

- Thursday, another beautiful day with the promise of heat.

F. woke up with a slight headache and a stiff neck, probably comes from being overtired.

Madame S. had her easel set up.

He walked in looking very fine in a double-breasted gray suit and crimson tie.

His color was good, and he looked happy and ready for anything.

Madame S. exclaimed, "Mr. President, you look so much better than yesterday."

Mr. Hassett, his aide brought some papers to be signed.

F. had his feet up on the wicker stool and the usual card table in front of him.

He signed everything.

- [Narrator] A short while later, Roosevelt ate a few bites, and then seemed to be looking for something.

- He was slumping forward.

I opened his tie and his collar.

At 3:15 PM Central war time, F.'s breathing became heavy and labored.

3:35 PM, Franklin D. Roosevelt, the hope of the world, is dead.

- I was a little boy.

I had just turned six years old, and I was living at the fourth house up the winding dirt road that climbed Pine Mountain.

And it was Friday morning of April the 13th, Friday the 13th.

And we got word that people were assembling at Georgia Hall to see the funeral procession and bid one last farewell to FDR.

As we stood there for just a few minutes, the soldiers came marching up the road that went down past the gate to the foundation.

And they were followed by the hearse, and in back of the hearse were several cars with Mrs. Roosevelt and on her lap was Fala, the wonderful little Scottie dog that FDR loved.

Once everything was settled, the conductor signaled the two steam locomotive engineers to go.

and this, and I remember it vividly, that train drifted silent out of Warm Springs, not the usual whistles and bells and huffing and chuffing that steam locomotives were famous for.

The thing drifted out of town, slipped around the curve, and FDR was gone forever.

- What the New Deal did was lay some of the groundwork for the South's emergence in the decades after World War II as a destination for business enterprise, national defense, and tourism, what we know today as the Sunbelt.

He got the ball rolling in New Deal programs that brought electricity to the countryside, that recruited unemployed young men to work in forestry, erosion control, flood prevention, road building, and public parks.

Throughout the New Deal initiatives, like the Agricultural Adjustment Act, or AAA, FDR helped make farming a profitable enterprise again.

And then there's this big one, where would retirees be today without Social Security, another New Deal initiative?

FDR left a wide and varied legacy in Georgia, which we still feel after all these years.

- A few years ago, I was a student here at Gordon State College, one of the premier colleges here in the state of Georgia, a college that has a history of creating smart and excellent leaders for our country.

While in my dorm room, I was studying for a history class, and I wondered to myself, "Hey, is there anything historic on my campus?"

And ended up googling, finding out that President Roosevelt spoke here, and he spoke on August 11th, 1938, just a few yards from my dorm room.

After reading the speech, I was inspired.

I was inspired about how it talked about helping your fellow citizens become better by bringing electricity to the South and helping Southerners get to the same level as their counterparts in the North.

It made me wanna make sure that other people understood that, that we all have a duty to help our fellow citizens out.

- Dowdell's Knob occupies a special place in the story of FDR in Georgia.

This spur on Pine Mountain in Harris County looks out over a vista, largely unchanged since FDR last saw it many decades ago.

FDR, through the New Deal, crafted 20th-century solutions to the crisis of his era.

In doing so, he developed a framework for addressing the challenges of the 21st century as well.

The Knob provided our 32nd President with a place to connect with the world and its wonders.

This outdoor cathedral inspired and energized him, helping him create solutions for the many problems facing our country in the 1930s and 1940s.

Drawing inspiration from both nature and his neighbors, FDR crafted public programs to improve the lives of American citizens impacted by the Great Depression.

Drawing inspiration from Dowdell's Knob, FDR encouraged his fellow citizens to preserve and improve natural resources in farming, forestry, and public lands.

Through the New Deal, the Civilian Conservation Corps planted over one billion trees, corrected agricultural practices that produce the Dust Bowl, and significantly expanded and improved our national and state parks.

Georgia's largest park, FDR State Park, encompassing 9,000 acres, was greatly enhanced by the New Deal's efforts here.

The Little White House, today, is the most visited historic site in the Georgia State Park system.

Invigorated by the soothing waters of Warm Springs, FDR imagined a world free from the polio virus, the pandemic that impacted him and millions of others worldwide.

Two agencies he helped create achieved this goal.

The Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute provided physical therapy to polio patients, while the March of Dimes provided financial support, enabling scientists to develop the vaccine that would eradicate polio from all the two countries in the world.

The first global public health campaign originated in Warm Springs, Georgia.

Today, the Roosevelt Rehabilitation Center continues the work of therapeutic rehabilitation of stroke and accident victims, in addition to providing vocational rehabilitation to those with physical or mental disabilities.

The March of Dimes continues its work focusing on issues related to mother, infant, and child care.

Drawing from his experiences in rural Georgia, FDR envisioned a nation where rural Americans would be afforded the benefits of electricity through another New Deal program, the Rural Electric Administration.

Today's electric membership cooperatives created by the REA are a national network of 900 member owned co-ops covering 88% of America's landmass and providing electricity to 42 million people.

The challenge of providing internet access to rural America is a task today's EMCs are now seeking to address.

Living in rural Georgia, FDR saw firsthand the poor housing conditions of many of his neighbors.

As part of the New Deal, FDR advocated for public housing in both rural and urban areas.

Techwood and University Homes in Atlanta, as well as the Pine Mountain Valley community below Dowdell's Knob were among the first projects the federal government created to meet the housing needs of low-income people throughout America.

FDR, as president, addressed these and so many other challenges facing ordinary Americans with solutions grown in part from the insights gained while living in West Central Georgia.

On January 31st, 1946, the Georgia General Assembly created the FDR Warm Springs Memorial Commission to preserve FTRs legacy in Georgia.

Through this legislative act, the General Assembly uniquely honored our 32nd President and neighbor.

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