Roosevelt# Secrets-Hidden History

 

Roosevelt's# the hidden truths...

History is amazing ! Its like an iceberg there is a lot beneath the surface,the more you know the more you don't! Hidden History is going to be a fun series to write for me as I explore famous people and the stuff most of us don't know. Hope you enjoy it.

I note that my blog of the  A man's behaviour... or the strange case of Nancy Bacon (Paul Newman) has been very popular.

 

Franklin D Roosevelt (FDR) and his wife Eleanor are icons of American politics, history and identity. Yet they held many dark and interesting secrets that surprise and bemuse me even at this time so long after their passing.

 

Franklin  d Roosevelt was of course the creator of the New Deal, the great second World War leader, progressive social reformer. He was elected President of the United States an unprecedented four times: 1932, 1936, 1940, and 1944. He was Revered by an adoring public during his time and after.

 

His wife Eleanor was like wise popular, a social progressive, woman's rights activist, column writer and leader/champion of human rights for most of her life.

 

Yet FDR and Eleanor carried terrible secrets and burdens, it is as though their public persona was a façade masking their true selves like a clowns face or a fake movie set.

 

Consider the following:

 

FDR & Lucy Mercer Rutherford: Lucy was Eleanor's social secretary in the period before 1918. In September, 1918, Eleanor discovered a packet of love letters from Lucy to FDR. Eleanor later admitted, "the bottom dropped out of my own particular world and I faced myself, my surroundings, my world, honestly for the first time." FDR and Eleanor immediately stopped living as man-and-wife. Lucy was dismissed but came back during FDR's later years.

 

FDR and Marguerite 'Missy' LeHand, his "other wife." FDR's son Elliot wrote in his book about his father, "everyone in the close knit inner circle of father's friends accepted it as a matter of course. I remember being only mildly stirred to see him with Missy on his lap as he sat in his wicker chair in the main stateroom holding her in his sun-browned arms...He made no attempt to conceal his feelings about Missy." FDR left Missy half of his 3 million dollar estate. Note: before FDR got polio, he was widely known as a womanizer and playboy.

FDR and his floozy cousin Margaret Suckley. As early as 1920 she was missidentified as his wife in a newspaper photograph of them at a ball game. Eleanor who was sitting behind them was cropped out of the picture. FDR built a secret lovenest on his estate for their trysts. For details of their affair see MARGARET SUCKLEY CLOSEST COMPANION, by Geoffrey Ward, 1995.

FDR blackmailed Princess Martha of Norway, mother of three small children, into having sex with him in return for war aid to her husband Crown Prince Olav and Norway during 1941.

Eleanor and Lorena Hickok lesbian affair- Hickok was an unattractive 5' 8" 200 pound reporter who moved into the White House to be near Eleanor. Some of the content of their letters to each other: "Hick longed to kiss the soft spot at a corner of Eleanor's mouth; Eleanor yearned to hold Hick close; Hick despaired at being away from Eleanor; Eleanor wished she could lie down beside Hick and take her in her arms." (Goodwin p.222) On March 7, 1933, Eleanor wrote to Hickok: "Oh! I want to put my arms around you. I ache to hold you close. Your ring is a great comfort. I look at it and think she does love me, or I wouldn't be wearing it." Enough?

Eleanor and the much younger Joseph Lash- in a very funny scene, military intelligence on FDR's orders bugged Eleanor's room in the Chicago Blackstone Hotel in March 1943 where she was having sex with Joe and sent the recordings to FDR for his listening pleasure. This led to a row between ER and FDR because she was told about the bugging afterwards by the hotel. FDR also read Joe's intercepted love letters to ER. Eleanor also had a long affair with Earl Miller, FDR's bodyguard.

Amazing stuff really given the world they occupied and the esteem they were held in!

The myth that there was a gentleman's agreement to hide the extent FDR's  disability caused by Polio when he was thirty nine years of age. In fact the Roosevelt machine enforced a rigid vendetta against anyone who ventured into the realm of showing him in a "bad light".

Incredible that a man so afflicted achieved what he did...would it be possible today?

Delano was FDR's mothers maiden name. (see below)

Secret Train

Did you know FDR had a secret train and a railway station under the Astoria in New York.

Franklin D. Roosevelt's secret armored train car lies wasting away below the Waldorf Astoria hotel in Grand Central Terminal. Known as Roosevelt's Station, the abandoned railway line and train used to be used by Franklin Delano Roosevelt when he arrived in New York. Stopping directly under the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, the president would be driven off his armored train and onto a lift that would take him directly inside the garage of the prestigious hotel.

The indulgences and expense incurredin by this president are amazing!

How did FDR die? Most people think he has a stroke but in all probability he died from the complications of cancer. Now we get to FDR, whose penchant for secrecy about his health was legendary. His melanoma was probably diagnosed as early as 1936 and a bleed into a brain metastasis was the final event that ended his life on April 12, 1945. The secrecy is so deep that one can only speculate why he chose to keep it a secret. Clearly, any hint of cancer would have brought his political career to a screeching halt and history would have been robbed of his magnificent leadership during the events preceding and during WW2.

Did you know that Eleanor Roosevelt had six children?

In 1905, Eleanor married her distant cousin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who would later become president of the United States. The couple had six children: Anna, James, Franklin (who died as an infant), Elliott, Franklin Jr. and John. Despite her busy home life, Eleanor became active in public service during World War I, working for the American Red Cross.

After her husband suffered a polio attack in 1921, Eleanor stepped forward to help Franklin with his political career. When her husband became president in 1933, Eleanor dramatically changed the role of the first lady. Not content to stay in the background and handle domestic matters, she showed the world that the first lady was an important part of American politics. She gave press conferences and spoke out for human rights, children's causes and women's issues, working on behalf of the League of Women Voters. She even had her own newspaper column, "My Day." She also focused on helping the country's poor, stood against racial discrimination and, during World War II, traveled abroad to visit U.S. troops.
For her active role in public policy, Eleanor was heavily criticized by some. She was praised by others, however, and today, she is regarded by as a leader of women's and civil rights, as well as one of the first public officials to publicize important issues through the mass media.

Life After the White House

Following her husband's death, on April 12, 1945, Eleanor told interviewers that she didn't have plans for continuing her public service: "The story is over," she reportedly stated. However, the opposite would actually prove to be true. From 1945 to 1953, Eleanor served as a delegate to the United Nations General Assembly. She also became chair of the UN's Human Rights Commission. As a member of the Human Rights Commission, she helped to write the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—an effort that she considered to be her greatest achievement.
Outside of her political work, Eleanor wrote several books about her life and experiences, including This Is My Story (1937), This I Remember (1949), On My Own (1958) and Autobiography (1961). She made a return to public service the same year her autobiography was published (1961), when President John F. Kennedy made her a delegate to the United Nations. President Kennedy also appointed Eleanor chair of the Commission on the Status of Women.

 

 Loved marrying people and Serving in Defence.
 

Amazing history of FDR's and Eleanor's children whose primary characteristic's were they were married many times and served in the armed forces in active combat roles.

 FDR and Antibiotics

FDR's third surviving son, name FDR Jr., contracted a serious strep infection in 1936 that was successfully treated with new sulfonamide antibiotics. Because of his father's fame, FDR Jr.'s recovery and the press that followed ushered in a new era of antibiotic acceptance among the US public, which greatly aided in wartime medicine.

Was FDR a racist?

Executive Order 9066, which sent 120,000 Japanese expatriates and American citizens of Japanese ancestry to be confined at internment camps, has been charged by critics as being racist. The Supreme Court upheld its constitutionality.

Treatment of Jesse Owens

After the 1936 Berlin Olympics, only the white athletes were invited to see and meet Roosevelt. No such invitation was made to the African American athletes such as Jesse Owens, who had won four gold medals. A widely believed myth about the 1936 games was that Hitler had snubbed Owens, something that never happened. Owens said, "Hitler didn't snub me--it was [Roosevelt] who snubbed me. The president didn't even send me a telegram." Owens lamented his treatment by Roosevelt, saying that he "wasn't invited to the White House to shake hands with the President."

Segregation

According to Bruce Bartlett in his 2008 book, Wrong on Race, Roosevelt segregated his African American and white servants by forbidding them from eating meals together at the White House.

Ku Klux Klan

When Roosevelt appointed Hugo Black to the Supreme Court he knew that Black had been a member of the Ku Klux Klan. In a memo written by Black decades later, Roosevelt did not express any disapproval of Black's past Klan membership. In private Roosevelt told Black that "some of his best friends and supporters he had in the state of Georgia were strong members of that organization.

Anti-lynching legislation

Roosevelt did not enact or even speak in support anti-lynching legislation that would protect African Americans from violence, due to fears of losing support from Democrats

Mama's Boy?

 


Sara Delano Roosevelt (SDR) was the daughter of Warren Delano, a wealthy merchant who made a fortune in the tea and opium trade in China, and after losing it, returned to make a second fortune. Sara grew up in Hong Kong from 1862-65 and in Algonac, the family estate on the Hudson River near Newburgh, New York. She was educated at home, except for a short period in 1867 when she attended a school for girls in Dresden, Germany. Sara Delano was tall and radiantly beautiful and had many suitors. At twenty-six, to the surprise of her friends, she married James Roosevelt, a widower who was twice her age. By all accounts, she found great happiness in her marriage and in life on her husband's Hyde Park, New York, estate. After the birth of Franklin Delano Roosevelt on January 30, 1882, she was advised to have no more children. She became absorbed in raising her only son, reading to him, giving him baths, and directing his activities herself rather than leaving these tasks to servants. After the death of her husband in 1900, she became still more single-mindedly focused on her son and his welfare. She moved temporarily to Boston when he attended Harvard in order to be near him. No mother could have been more devoted. She was also strong willed, controlling, opinionated, and inflexible. She does not seem to have been enthusiastic about any of the young women her son courted and, when he fell in love and proposed marriage to Eleanor Roosevelt, she tried to change his mind and insisted that the engagement be kept secret for a year.


For a man (And a woman) who strode across the world like a colossus there is going to be criticisms. The tall poppy syndrome is always alive and well in every era. But it is still an amazing thing the many secrets and interesting bits the famous(and not so famous) people carry in their baggage. Happy reading!