April 12, 1945: FDR and the Unfinished Portrait

As March 1945 drew to a close, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was exhausted. At the beginning of February, Roosevelt had attended the Yalta Conference with Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin and his appearance had shocked the foreign leaders and their aides. In his last meeting with Churchill, on February 18, 1945, FDR was seen as a dead man walking. Churchill’s personal doctor, Lord Moran, told a friend that Roosevelt had “only a few months to live”.



Being President of the United States for just one term is taxing enough on a young man or a healthy man. Franklin Delano Roosevelt had been President for twelve years. He had campaigned for the Presidency and been victorious in four national elections. His Administration featured one of the greatest domestic crises in American History – the Great Depression – and the greatest crisis and bloodiest conflict in world history – World War II. FDR had attacked these problems (and other issues that arose during his terms) with energy, creativity, and a relentless pursuit of victory.



A healthy and athletic man, who stood nearly 6'2" and weighed about 200 lbs as Assistant Secretary of the Navy under Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt had been stricken by polio in 1921. The disease robbed him of his ability to walk and, at the time, looked as if had robbed him of a political future. He rebounded politically, but physically, he was never the same. Confined to a wheelchair, the muscles in his legs withered like the branches of a tree in winter. Although he could not walk under his own power, FDR taught himself to stand while wearing heavy steel braces around his shins. He needed the assistance of a muscular partner – sometimes one of his sons, sometimes a military aide – in order to feign the appearance of walking. Through sheer will, however, Roosevelt learned to take a few steps without anyone’s help – a handy skill that he would show off at important campaign rallies. But FDR no longer had the energy to show off.



Roosevelt was as gravely ill as Lord Moran suggested. The successful 1944 Presidential campaign had severely drained his already tapped-out reservoirs of energy and stamina. His fourth inauguration was low-key, partly because it took place in the midst of war and partly due to the President’s failing health. Instead of at the Capitol, Roosevelt took the Oath of Office at the White House and gave his brief Inaugural Address from a balcony at the Executive Mansion. The famously verbose Roosevelt gave the second-shortest Inaugural Address in American History. By the time the crowd realized that he was talking, he had already finished. Only George Washington’s four-sentence-long speech in 1793 was shorter than the address given by FDR on January 20, 1945.



FDR looked entirely different than the man who had told the nation that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” in 1933. Dark circles surrounded his eyes, which seemed sunken into his skull. Since his first Inauguration, Roosevelt had lost 40-50 pounds. His hands shook so violently at times that some observers wondered how he was able to eat. He smoked constantly, but rarely finished his cigarettes. Most shocking of all, FDR no longer went to great lengths to conceal his disability. Frail and tired, he found it almost impossible to wear the heavy braces that he long wore on his crippled legs. On March 1, 1945, Roosevelt addressed a joint session of Congress on the results of his Yalta Conference with Churchill and Stalin. In an unprecedented move, the President sat in a chair on the floor of the House of Representatives and apologized to Congress, beginning his speech by saying, “I hope that you will pardon me for this unusual posture of sitting down during the presentation of what I want to say, but I know that you will realize it makes it a lot easier for me not to have to carry about ten pounds of steel around on the bottom of my legs." It was the first time that President Roosevelt had ever publicly acknowledged his physical disability.



Twelve years of the Presidency, economic depression, and war had strained Roosevelt’s health but the 14,000-mile trip to the Yalta Conference on the Black Sea had pushed FDR to the limit. On March 30, 1945, Roosevelt arrived in Warm Springs, Georgia for a few weeks of relaxation and, hopefully, recuperation. Roosevelt loved Warm Springs. He had started visiting the small town in western Georgia in the 1920’s, hoping that the warm waters from the natural mineral springs nearby would help him regain the use of his legs. When he was Governor of New York, FDR purchased a small house that he used when he visited Warm Springs. As President, the home was called the "Little White House” and although FDR only visited it sixteen times during his Presidency, many of those trips were for 2-3 weeks each. When his train pulled into Warm Springs at about 1:30 PM on March 30, 1945, many longtime residents said that things seemed different. Roosevelt looked terrible and while he waved to onlookers, it was with noticeable weakness.



The first few days in Georgia were tough. FDR was obviously ill and seemed to struggle making it through a church service on Easter Sunday. Roosevelt also avoided his beloved Warm Springs pools, instead the President rested, caught up on sleep, and visited with guests. The goal was for FDR to regain enough of his health to make a trip to San Francisco for the charter meeting of what would become the United Nations. At the Little White House with Roosevelt were some personal aides, military attaches, and cousins Daisy Suckley and Polly Delano. During his first week at Warm Springs, Roosevelt did very little work, dictating a few letters and reading briefings, stronger and more animated in the mornings and evenings but completely drained in the afternoon. One goal for Roosevelt was to gain weight – by the time he left Warm Springs, he hoped to be up to 170 lbs.



Still, there was no noticeable improvement in FDR’s health or spirits. Then, on April 9th, Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd arrived. As President Wilson’s Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Franklin D. Roosevelt had become involved in a passionate love affair with his wife’s social secretary, Lucy Mercer. It was 1918 when Eleanor Roosevelt discovered the affair between Franklin and Lucy and threatened to divorce him unless he promised never to see or speak to Lucy again. FDR agreed to the ultimatum – an ultimatum that was backed up by his mother’s threat to cut off his inheritance if he and Eleanor were divorced as well as the fact that Franklin’s budding political career would be crushed if the affair were revealed. The relationship between FDR and Eleanor was never again passionate or loving after the discover of the affair, but Eleanor kept her word and remained married to Franklin. Franklin, however, didn’t keep his word to Eleanor.



The Franklin-Lucy affair probably resumed shortly after Roosevelt’s first Inauguration in 1933. FDR and Eleanor had more of a professional relationship than personal one. He respected the First Lady’s political viewpoints, used her as a sounding board, and tried to act on many of her suggestions. Personally, however, there was no passion or tenderness or intimacy between the First Couple. It was FDR and Eleanor’s eldest daughter, Anna, who rekindled Franklin’s relationship with Lucy. She arranged for Lucy to visit the President in the White House when Eleanor was out of town. And on April 9, 1945, Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd was in Warm Springs, Georgia visiting President Roosevelt due to Anna Roosevelt’s invitation.



FDR was so excited to see Lucy that he didn’t wait for Lucy to make the drive all the way from Aiken, South Carolina to Warm Springs. The President and his cousin Daisy decided to meet Lucy’s car en route. At Manchester, Georgia, 85 miles away from Warm Springs, the highway rendezvous took place. FDR looked happier than he had in months as Lucy got into FDR’s car along with her friend, painter Elizabeth Shoumatoff. Lucy had brought Shoumatoff along to paint a portrait of the President – a portrait that she hoped would be an improvement on the recent photographs that had made Roosevelt look “ghastly”.



For the next two days, Roosevelt and Lucy enjoyed their time together, going on small drives, eating happy meals, and sitting together while Shoumatoff prepared to paint the President’s portrait, studying photographs and making preliminary drawings. Daisy Suckley had the opportunity to observe the unique relationship between FDR and Lucy Mercer and also had some private conversations with the President’s longtime mistress. In her diary, Daisy recorded her thoughts about the two after she accompanied them on an automobile drive that they took: “Lucy is so sweet with F(ranklin) – No wonder he loves to have her around – Toward the end of of the drive, it began to be chilly and she put her sweater over his knees – I can imagine just how she took care of her husband – She would think of little things which make so much difference to a semi-invalid, or even a person who is just tired, like F(ranklin).”



On April 12th, President Roosevelt woke up and ate a light breakfast. He had a slight chill despite the warm, humid weather that day and wore his cape draped over his shoudlers throughout the early afternoon. Roosevelt did a little bit of work, reading the Atlanta newspapers and dictating some correspondence. Elizabeth Shoumatoff had set up her easel in the living room where the President worked behind a card table that served as his makeshift desk. As Shoumatoff painted, FDR continued reading, and at about 1:00 PM, Roosevelt said, “We have got just about fifteen minutes more to work.”



In the quiet of the room, Daisy Suckley thought that the President had dropped his cigarette and was searching for it because his head slumped forward suddenly. Roosevelt could barely lift his head when Daisy asked what was wrong. He placed his left hand gently against the back of his head and, in a barely audible voice, told Daisy, “I have a terrific pain in the back of my head!”



Roosevelt quickly slipped into unconsciousness as the women in the room summoned help. They called for a doctor who was staying in a cottage close to the Little White House and they helped two of FDR’s valets carry the President into the bedroom. Roosevelt’s hands and feet were ice cold, but he was still breathing. Smelling salts were administered but FDR was unresponsive. As the doctor and aides tried to help the President, Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd and Elizabeth Shoumatoff recognized the hopelessness of the situation. They also recognized the potential scandal that was possible if it was learned that the President collapsed in the presence of his longtime mistress.



Shoumatoff packed up all of her paints and the unfinished portrait she had been working on. Lucy Mercer grabbed her belongings and took one last look at her beloved Franklin. He was still alive when they left, but he was breathing laboriously and his eyes no longer recognized Lucy. Lucy and Elizabeth Shoumatoff had been on the highway back to Aiken, South Carolina for an hour when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt died in Warm Springs at 3:35 PM. The official cause of death was a cerebral hemorrhage. FDR was 63 years old.



Eleanor Roosevelt was notified of her husband’s death a few minutes after 4 PM. She summoned Vice President Harry Truman to the White House while he was having a drink at the U.S. Capitol with House Speaker Sam Rayburn. Truman wasn’t told why he needed to hastily come to the White House, but he knew it sounded urgent. As Truman left the Capitol, he ran into a young Congressman who questioned the Vice President about his speedy exit – that Congressman was Lyndon Johnson.



At the White House at 5:30 PM, Eleanor Roosevelt broke the news to the Vice President simply and directly: “Harry, the President is dead." Truman was stunned and asked what he could do for the widowed First Lady. Eleanor smiled sadly and asked, "Is there anything we can do for you? For you are the one in trouble now." At 7:00 PM, Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone administered the Oath of Office to Truman as the 33rd President of the United States.



By that time, Eleanor was on her way to Warm Springs to claim her husband’s body. At about midnight, she arrived at the Little White House in Georgia where she asked about her husband’s last hours. It was then that she learned news almost as shocking as the President’s death. Eleanor found out that FDR had been with his former mistress Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd when he was stricken. She spent 45 minutes alone with his body, picked out the clothing for his burial, but never lost her composure despite the shocks that she experienced that day.



A funeral train returned FDR’s body to Washington, D.C. the next day. Roosevelt was embalmed by morticians who found that the President’s arteries were so hardened that they could barely inject the embalming fluid into his body. FDR’s body laid in state in the East Room of the White House almost 80 years to the day that Abraham Lincoln’s body rested in the very same place following his assassination. On the 80th anniversary of Lincoln’s death – April 15, 1945 – Franklin Delano Roosevelt was buried in the garden of his beloved estate Hyde Park on the Hudson River in New York.



Upon his death, the New York Times wrote of the deceased President, "Men will thank God on their knees a hundred years from now that Franklin D. Roosevelt was in the White House. It was his hand, more than that of any other single man, that built the great coalition of the United Nations. It was his leadership which inspired free men in every part of the world to fight with greater hope and courage. Gone is the fresh and spontaneous interest which this man took, as naturally as he breathed air, in the troubles and the hardships and the disappointments and the hopes of little men and humble people." Elizabeth Shoumatoff’s Unfinished Portrait of President Roosevelt – which she was working on when he died – now hangs in the Little White House in Warm Springs, Georgia.