Dead Presidents

Chris White is touring the gravesites, birthplaces and homes of the U.S. presidents. Here are his notes from those visits, which he probably means to be funny. Eh.

32. Franklin D. Roosevelt

Little White House, Warm Springs, Georgia

Little White House (September 13, 2007)

I leave it to historians to decide if Franklin Delano Roosevelt pulled our nation up from Depression or saddled it with crippling economic programs; whether he steadied our national character or infected the American spirit with a creeping sense of entitlement; whether he led us bravely to victory or left our forces idle for too long as the world plummeted into disaster.

I know only this: I would have hired him as an interior decorator.

The Little White House in Warm Springs, Georgia (about 90 minutes from Atlanta), was a real kick. It was Roosevelt's home away from home away from home -- the place he spent his time when he wasn't in Hyde Park or Washington, because he liked to cool his largely paralyzed heels in the warm soothing waters of the Georgia mountains. It's a neat way to see the softer side of Roosevelt -- the guy who spent hours on end playing with polio-crippled kids in a swimming pool on his vacations away from ... uh ... putting people in camps.

Hey, it was a complicated time.

The house is tiny -- not quite what you'd expect from a guy with so much money that he used a cigarette holder and wore a top hat. It's almost like a mini beach house, only stuck in the mountains, and I would buy it totally furnished and decorated without touching a thing. (Sadly, I'm not top-hat rich.) Roosevelt was a navy fanatic (former assistant secretary, just like his cousing Teddy) and everything in the central living/dining room area is BOAT-TASTIC! Model ships, paintings of burning boats and John Paul Jones, a print of Lord Nelson ... plus everything is made of dark wood and rough around the edges (by Roosevelt's instructions), so you get that "captain's quarter's" kind of feel. Neat stuff. Roosevelt was sitting in that room having his portrait painted on April 12, 1945, when he experienced some technical difficulties with his brain. Three hours later, in the adjacent bedroom, he was dead.

Today the house is basically unchanged from the day he died -- the books on the shelves are Roosevelt's, the furniture is all original ... you can even see one of the leashes for Fala, FDR's terrier, hanging in the linen closet. They moved FDR's body from the bedroom, so you aren't getting the full experience, but it's still neat to see:

And right down the road are the warm springs themselves -- FDR bought the bathing complex in the 1920s and renovated the whole thing for the use of the hydrotherapy institute he founded in town to help treat paralysis and whatnot. The pools are drained, but you can actually walk down in the bottom and feel some of the water coming out of one remaining fountain. It's in the 80s. And FYI, they don't like it when you try to wash your socks in it.

There's also a really nice on-site museum near the house with some info on FDR's ties to Georgia and one of his Fords, outfitted with the hand controls that FDR himself designed so he could go cruising around the mountains. When you imagine things in the modern media context, it's impossible to understand how FDR ever could have hidden the extent of his paralysis. But somehow, even though he founded a medical center to help similarly stricken kids, even though he could hardly stand, even though a small army of family members, servants, secret service and more all knew the extent of his condition, millions of Americans had no idea their leader was a cripple.

Mind boggling.

  • FDR was in the habit of sneaking out for a drive, so the Secret Service put a blue light on the front porch that was lit to indicate whenever he was home. The bright red sock on the front door was to indicate when the house was a rockin'.
  • Roosevelt played in the pool for hours with stricken kids when he visited Warm Springs, including the popular game "Marco Polio." The kids called him Rosey, and he responded by having the Secret Service rough them up a little bit.
  • As a young prep schooler, Roosevelet was forced to play both football (he was 4th string) and baseball (he was the team manager). Which may explain the directive of 1943 which ordered all 1st, 2nd and 3rd string football players to the front lines.
  • Roosevelt's experiences in rural Georgia (he purchased a tree farm near warm Springs) and his visits with farmers were strong influences when he pushed programs for farm aid, rural electrification and goverment subsidies for functionally illiterate racists.
  • Fala's full name was Murray the Outlaw of Falahill. Really.
  • The unfinished portrait is on display at the on-site museum, next to the finished caricature of Roosevelt as a race car driver.
  • Eleanor had a separate bedroom which she rarely used; she usually didn't visit Warm Springs with her husband. Which is a good thing, because she did not look that hot in a two-piece.
  • The radio in the Little White House living room had a dictaphone where Roosevelt could record radio addresses, and also practice his beat-boxing.
  • The home became "The Little White House" only after FDR became president. Before that it was known to locals as "Cripply McGee's Summer Shack."
  • Roosevelt smoked two packs a day of unfiltered Camels. He would have smoked five packs, but you know how it is with war rationing.

Bonus picture! Here's the oven that cooked our leader's food. Get ready to enter ... THE FLAVOR ZONE!

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