09/05/09 - On this day in history — September 5, 1937 — Lucretia Ball, the owner of Block Island’s largest and most elegant hotel, the Ocean View, wrote a letter beginning “Your Excellency,” and chose some fortunate employee to hand-deliver the note to the USS Potomac anchored in New Harbor. The Potomac was the official yacht of the president of the United States.

The president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, had left his home on the Hudson River September 2 and traveled 200 miles down Long Island Sound to Newport, Rhode Island.

On the afternoon of September 4, Roosevelt was off-loaded from the Potomac into a Navy tender and trolled for fish along the West Side of Block Island. After returning to the yacht, then anchored off the Coast Guard Station, the skies darkened and the Potomac steamed into Great Salt Pond for the evening, just ahead of a squall and thunderstorm.

Lucretia faced a mighty task in her effort to invite FDR to dinner. Knowing he could leave as quickly as he appeared, she had to ask him immediately — that very hour.

Using special stationary from her “Private Office,” she picked a time for the president to arrive for dinner — at “seven-thirty” — so he would be assured that if he came, the hotel would be fully prepared. But Lucretia left him the choice also to “set an hour” that he “would like.”

Then, as though he had already accepted — and inferring how could he now refuse — she asked for “the number in your party” and said the hotel’s car would meet him.

She phrased her letter this way:

“Your Excellency,

“Block Island is very proud that you have dropped anchor in our harbor, and we wish very much that you might include in your plans a visit on shore.

“Would it be possible for you to have dinner with us at Ocean View this evening? Would seven-thirty be a convenient time, or if not, perhaps you would set an hour that you would like. If you would be kind enough to tell us the number in your party ... I would be happy to greet you, and to send the car. We would esteem it a very great honor.”

Nice try, but Mrs. C.C. Ball, like most people in the country, probably did not know her greatest obstacle — that after he contracted polio in 1921, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s legs were paralyzed.

To expose his helplessness fully in public would reveal a situation the press, and even other politicians, refrained from publicizing during all four of FDR’s terms as president, right up to his death on April 12, 1945.

The President Roosevelt, though, did not disappoint everyone on Block Island.

Summer visitor Gwen Jacobsen, as a small child, was taken early in the morning to Payne’s Dock by her mother. Finding themselves the only ones there, Gwen waved to Roosevelt sitting on the back deck of his motor yacht. The president waved back, and she would always remember.

Later, FDR came to the dock ladder in the presidential tender and, as described by island resident Maizie Rose in her 1957 book, autographed nearly any piece of paper thrust his way whether “napkin, taffy box, steamer ticket, or match folder.”