Every now and then, this history nut finds himself in the right place at the right time. And the result often takes my breath away.
In November of 2013, I was in Dallas – fifty years to the month since the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Standing at the Texas School Bank Depository beside the spot where Lee Harvey Oswald changed history or at Dealey Plaza where JFK met his devastating demise was beyond eerie.
I experienced something similar this past weekend. I was in Warm Springs, Georgia at "The Little White House” – the place where Franklin Delano Roosevelt often retreated to administer to his polio-damaged legs.
The 32nd President loved coming to Warm Springs. For FDR, the springs were a spiritual experience: the water, a natural 30 C, helped soothe his legs, and he derived strength from swimming with others, especially children, who also had been afflicted with polio.
Along with Abraham Lincoln and George Washington, Roosevelt is on every historian's "Most Important Presidents" list. His New Deal fought the ravages of the Great Depression when unemployment was running at 25 per cent, before leading the Allies to victory in the Second World War against the existential challenges of Hitler's Germany and Hirohito's Japan.
Seventy years ago this week, on April 12, 1945, Roosevelt was at his home away from home, posing for an artist’s portrait. While seated behind his desk, he collapsed after suffering a massive cerebral hemorrhage.
Secret service officers carried him to his bedroom, but despite herculean medical intervention the president could not be revived. He died in his bed at Warm Springs at age 63.
Coincidentally, I had made plans to be in Georgia this past weekend, completely forgetting it was the 70th anniversary of FDR's death. When I saw the date while touring Roosevelt's home in Warm Springs, I felt overcome by the same awe I experienced a-year-and-a-half ago in Dallas. I know it's only a date—an artificial reminder of a moment in time. But we humans seem to respond more dramatically to anniversaries: witness the explosion of books around the 100th anniversary of the First World War last year, to name just one example. So, being at the spot where one of the world's greatest leaders came to his mortal end was quite moving.
At the FDR museum in Warm Springs, the so-called "Unfinished Portrait," which was never completed by its artist, hangs on a wall. There’s a second painting, which has been completed and presumably would’ve been the ultimate fate of the original. But the artist wanted the original left undone, and I think she made the right call. Seeing that unfinished portrait is a powerful reminder that despite winning four elections (no other president ever has), Roosevelt's greatest mission was also unfinished: it was left to then Vice President Harry S. Truman to make the onerous decision to drop two atomic bombs on Japan, effectively ending WW II.
But the drama of the weekend's visit didn’t end there. While I was at the museum, the staff had just learned one of Roosevelt's former employees—a man named Marion Dunn, who visited the museum almost every Saturday—had himself died that day at age 91. Dunn was a teenager Roosevelt hired to be a "push boy," someone who pushed the polio victims around in their wheelchairs. The staff was overcome by the loss. We had been talking about Dunn at the beginning of our tour, only to learn by the end of his death.
If you're a history nut like me, don't let anyone tell you history doesn't matter. Don't let anyone tell you it's all boring old, irrelevant dates of a bygone era.
History comes to life every day. Sometimes, it does so in a remarkably powerful fashion, as it did for me and this past weekend in Georgia.
And that makes it unforgettable.
Image credit: Wikipedia