President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies at age 63, April 12, 1945
On this day in 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt died of a massive cerebral hemorrhage at his Warm Springs, Georgia, retreat at the age of 63. Roosevelt’s death in the final months of World War II was met with shock and grief throughout the Western world. Many Americans had no inkling of his decline in health.
FDR had been president for more than 12 years, longer than any other person. He led the country through some of its greatest domestic and foreign crises to the impending defeat of Nazi Germany and within sight of Japan’s surrender.
When he was stricken, Roosevelt was in the living room with Lucy Mercer, with whom he had resumed an affair, two cousins and his dog, Fala, while the artist Elizabeth Shoumatoff painted his portrait.
At about 1 p.m., Roosevelt said, “I have a terrific pain in the back of my head.” He slumped forward in his chair and was carried, unconscious, to his bedroom. An attending cardiologist, Howard Bruenn, administered a shot of adrenaline into the president’s heart, trying in vain to revive him. Roosevelt died at 3:35 p.m.
Mercer and Shoumatoff left. Another doctor phoned first lady Eleanor Roosevelt in Washington, telling her that FDR had fainted. She initially told the doctor she would travel to Georgia that evening after a scheduled speaking engagement. When Eleanor heard about her husband’s death later that day, she also learned that her daughter, Anna Roosevelt Boettiger, had been arranging his trysts with Mercer.
While a slow train carried Roosevelt’s coffin from Warm Springs to Washington, thousands of Americans lined the track to bid him farewell. After a state funeral, he was buried at his family’s home in Hyde Park, New York.
As Roosevelt’s successor, President Harry S. Truman decided that a tougher policy toward the Soviet Union was necessarily in order. By 1947, relations between the wartime allies had been shattered and the Cold War was in full swing.
SOURCE: “NO ORDINARY TIME: FRANKLIN AND ELEANOR ROOSEVELT: THE AMERICAN HOME FRONT DURING WORLD WAR II,” BY DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN (1995)