National Affairs: My Boy Franklin

Franklin Delano Roosevelt spent his last week as a private citizen in a buzz of conferences and confusion, packing and play, travel and talk. There was little real work to be done before he took over the Presidency. His Cabinet was off his mind (see p. 12). Appointments to the sub-Cabinet and the diplomatic corps could wait until he got into the White House. He had written his Inaugural address. Most new Presidents orate an hour or more; he planned to speak for eight minutes, broadly outlining the “New Deal” and leaving its specifications to the message he would deliver to the 73rd Congress when called into special session in April.

His many prints of ships had been carefully packed and dispatched to Washington in Army trucks, along with trunks of clothes, boxes of books, bales of papers, crates of furniture, cases of knicknacks. Also sent to the Capital was a bulletproof broadcasting lectern donated by CBS to protect him from thighs to shoulders. Mrs. Henry Nesbitt, a Hyde Park neighbor, had been engaged as White House housekeeper and her husband, a lusty Irishman who used to sell whale oil, was to be custodian of the executive offices. Because she was so quick at detecting important voices, Miss Louise Hachmeister of Manhattan had been picked to take charge of the White House telephone switchboard. Mr. Roosevelt was “delighted” with the set-up for the Inaugural, as revealed by the first official copy of the program. Nothing remained but for him to go to Washington and take over the biggest job in the nation at the hardest period in its history.

The week’s conferences in Mr. Roosevelt’s Manhattan home began with French Ambassador Paul Claudel on War Debts, with Canadian Minister William Herridge on tariff reciprocity. After an overnight stop at his Hyde Park home, Mr. Roosevelt motored on to Albany to attend the legislative correspondents’ annual dinner and political burlesque. He laughed uproariously when a “Roosevelt” asked a “Smith”: “Well, Al, what do you think my administration will need most?” And was told, “a four-leaf clover, Frank.”

Back amid the restful expanse of the Hyde Park estate overlooking the Hudson, Mr. Roosevelt spent five hours talking second-string patronage with his political prime minister, Jim Farley. Jesse Isador Straus, Claude Bowers, Henry Morgenthau Jr., James Michael Curley, Howard Bruce, Homer Cummings, Clark Howell, John Cohen were some of the names the President-elect juggled about on paper to see how they might fit into the new administration. William Hartman Woodin, the new Secretary of the Treasury, arrived from Manhattan to discuss the banking situation in the light of the Maryland moratorium (see p. 18). And on his heels entered Daniel Calhoun Roper, new Secretary of Commerce, with fresh plans for wringing larger savings out of government reorganization. Mr. & Mrs. Roosevelt attended a farewell party at nearby Staatsburg where old friends were told that Hyde Park would serve as the summer White House because “it’s a whole lot cheaper to come home.”

After two crowded days in Manhattan, the President-elect was to entrain for Washington on Thursday. The Mayflower Hotel would house him until the morning of March 4 when his schedule was as follows :

11 a. m.—Arrive at the White House; change cars; start for the Capitol with President Hoover.

Noon—Watch John Nance Garner take the oath as Vice President in the Senate chamber.

12:50 p. m.—Appear on the East front of the Capitol; take the oath as President from Chief Justice Hughes; deliver the Inaugural address; start back to the White House.

1:35 p. m.—Eat a buffet luncheon in the State Dining Room.

2:30 p. m.—Enter the Court of Honor built on Pennsylvania Avenue to review the six-mile parade composed of soldiers, sailors, marines, troopers, national guardsmen, high school cadets, 25 governors, visiting firemen, police squads, G. A. R. veterans (one car), C. S. A. veterans (five cars), American Legionaries, Gold Star Mothers, Boy Scouts, Knights of Pythias, Red Men, real Indians,Tammany Indians and merrymaking Democrats by the thousand.

This great spectacle with its bands and its banners will stir the blood of some 250,000 spectators. But in all the crowd no heart will pound with such pride as that of an erect, white-haired, hazel-eyed old lady sitting close to the new President as he takes the oath before the Capitol, looking over his shoulder on the reviewing stand. Few mothers have known the exaltation that Sara Delano Roosevelt will know as she watches her only son enter the White House.

Franklin Roosevelt was not brought up by his mother with the idea that some day he would be President. “That was the last thing I should ever have imagined for him,” Mrs. Roosevelt lately told interviewers.* “The highest ideal I could hold up before our boy was to grow to be like his father, straight and honorable, just and kind, an upstanding American.” She shared her son’s political successes only from a distance, never obtruding herself into his spotlight. The Hyde Park estate is legally hers until her death but she has made it a home and a refuge for her boy. She still worries about his health, warns him to wrap up when going out in the cold, busies herself about his small comforts. When he returned to Manhattan from Miami fortnight ago, it was his mother who first greeted him on the outside steps of his house. A great believer in heredity and “good blood” Mother Roosevelt justly feels that she has contributed some of her son’s best qualities.

Seventy-eight years ago Sara Delano was born on the west side of the Hudson near Newburgh, N. Y. Her father, Warren Delano II, was a wealthy China tea merchant. Her great-great-great-great-grandfather, Philip de Lannoy, landed at Plymouth, Mass., in 1621 aboard the Fortune. When Sara was eight, her mother took her and six brothers and sisters around the Horn on the clipper Surprise to Hongkong. The voyage lasted 110 days. Later there were trips to Paris, breathtaking glimpses of the Empress Eugénie.

When she was 26, Sara Delano married James Roosevelt. He was 50, a widower with one son, James Jr., who after a minor diplomatic career died in 1927. James Roosevelt took his bride across the Hudson to the Hyde Park house where Franklin was born 51 years ago. He and his mother nearly died as the result of an overdose of chloroform. In his nursery he first met and played with his cousin Anna Eleanor Roosevelt who later became his wife. With his well-to-do parents, he made frequent trips abroad, generally to Nauheim where his elderly father took the cure. James Roosevelt, every inch the country squire, died during his son’s freshman year at Harvard.

Mrs. Roosevelt’s brother Frederick now owns her birthplace. There, too, lives her older sister Mrs. Dora Delano Forbes. Last week Mrs. Roosevelt crossed the

Hudson to visit Mrs. Forbes, made arrangements for her to attend her nephew’s Inaugural. Another brother, Warren, married the sister of the late Henry Walters, chief owner of Atlantic Coast Line R. R. and Louisville & Nashville R. R. Their son Lyman Delano is today board chairman of the two roads.

Into My Boy Franklin Mrs. Roosevelt has packed her best recollections of her son’s childhood. As a baby he was ”plump, pink and nice.” A model youngster, he never got spanked. Early association with grown-ups matured him rapidly and he soon became “a responsible little body . . . with a pretty conservative sense of values.” Once an aunt told him he was full of tact. His reply: “Yes, I’m just chock full of tacks.” He was always busy collecting stamps, building tree houses, modeling boats, stuffing birds, riding his pony. Recalls his mother:

“Franklin had a great habit of ordering his playmates around and was generally permitted to have his way. Once I said to him: ‘My son, don’t give the orders all of the time. Let the other boys give them sometimes.’ ‘Mummie,’ he said, lifting a soil-streaked face, ‘if I didn’t give the orders nothing would happen!'”

*Published last week by Ray Long & Richard R. Smith was My Boy Franklin as told by Mrs. James Roosevelt to Isabel Leighton & Gabrielle Forbush.