WITNESS TO HISTORY IN WARM SPRINGS

The Little White House

While visiting the Franklin Roosevelt National Historic Site in Hyde Park, New York, I got to thinking about a visit I made back in 2008 to the tiny village of Warm Springs, Georgia. It was in Warm Spring that President Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945.

President Roosevelt was a frequent visitor to Warm Springs, as exercising and swimming in the nearby mineral springs was one of the few things that seemed to ease the pain from polio that he was diagnosed with in 1921. President Roosevelt came to Warm Spring so often that he built a 6-room cottage on Pine Mountain near the tiny village and near the mineral pools.

FDR was sitting in the chair when he slumped forward

He first visited Warm Springs in 1924 and his small cottage known as the “Little White House,” was built in 1932. During his presidency he visited the are a total of 16-time and could often be seen driving around the country side visiting with his neighbors.  Unlike the presidents of today, President Roosevelt would drive himself about the country road of Meriwether County.

On the afternoon of April 12, 1935, President Roosevelt was sitting in the living room of the Little White House, posing for a portrait for artist Elizabeth Shoumatoff.  Early in the afternoon the President complained of a severe pain in the back of his head and slumped forward in his chair. His aides carried him to his bedroom where at 3:35 p.m. he was pronounced dead by his attending physician Dr. Howard Bruenn.

FDR Died in this bed on April 12, 1945

During my visit to the Little White House I toured the cottage and the nearby museum and also made my way down the Mountain to the Warm Springs Pools where President Roosevelt swam and received treatments for his polio. While I enjoyed my tours, it was my visit to the tiny Village of Warm that made a lasting impression on me.

It was late in the afternoon when I finished my tour of the Warm Spring Pools and the Little White House, so before I headed by to my hotel for the night I decided to park and walk around the village.  The Village of Warm Spring is basically a couple of block of locally owned shops.  It was a rather warm day and I found a small ice cream shop and decided to have a cup of Georgia Peach Ice Cream. 

While I was sitting in a rocking chair in front of the ice cream shop an elderly gentleman came up and started talking to me. In small towns everyone knows everyone else so a stranger had to be a tourist.  He asked it I “had visited the Little White House yet.”  I told him that I had and that I had also visited the Pools.

The man whose name was Ed, (I am terrible with last names) told me that he was 12-years old when President Roosevelt died and that he had vivid memories of the time when the President was in the area but none of those memories was a vivid as the day in 1945 when they “brought the President off of the mountain,” to the depot for the “trip back north.”

Wow, how lucky am I to be talking to someone who witnessed one of the most important events of the 20^th Century.  For the near hour or so I sat in a comfortable rocking chair listening to this gentleman reminisce about how the entire community came out and lined the streets as the hearse pulled up in front of the small depot.  The military honor guards stood at attention near the train that would carry the President back to Washington.

Ed told me that one thing that he remembers is the silence. Men, women and children all stood in silence waited for the hearse to arrive. Not one word was spoken.  As the hearse came into view and pulled up in front of the depot, men and women that he had known all of his young life were silently crying as the flag draped casket was removed from the back of the hearse and carried to the waiting train. 

President Roosevelt's 1938 Ford

 For the better part of an hour I talked with this gentleman, and listened intently as he described how it was a common occurrence for a family to be sitting on their front porch on a Sunday afternoon and President Roosevelt would come driving up the road and stop for a visit.  Because of his polio he couldn’t get out of the car but the family would walk down and visit with him while he sat in the driver’s seat of the car. Because of his polio his car had been specially equipped with hand controls. 

After the train departed on the morning of April 13, 1945, the people of Warm Springs silently returned to their homes to mourn the loss of their friend and neighbor who just happened to be the 32^nd President of the United States.

It was late afternoon when I returned to my car and head back toward my hotel in Newnan. As I drove back up the Highway 27, I couldn’t help but think, how Ed’s recollection of that day in 1945 was so much like my memories of a similar day in November 1963. He witnessed history in person and I witnessed it on a black and white Television in the comfort of my home in Virginia.