From a recent vacation.
The Franklin Delano Roosevelt memorial is relatively new, and gets much less attention than the "big three" of Washington, Lincoln, and Jefferson. One reason is it is not a tall structure that pops out of the skyline. The memorial is arranged in 4 areas over about 8 acres, each themed to a single term in office.
FDR was 4-term President that happened to have polio. This statue was a late addition and is not part of the official memorial. There was debate about showing his disability.
FDR made 33 radio "fireside chats" between 1933-44, as this sculpture represents.
He came into power at the height of the Great Depression, represented by the bread line and poor farmers.
This was is a bit controversial as it has plaques in Braille, yet many are too high to reach.
Unlike the first statue showing a wheelchair, this official statue uses a cloak to hide the chair, which only has caster wheels visible from the rear. That is his dog, Fala.
Each area has a waterfall of a different nature.
Wife Eleanor is the only First Lady with a statue. She was big in the United Nations.
On April 12, 1945 Roosevelt was sitting for a portrait painting when he said "I have a terrific pain in the back of my head" and collapsed, unconscious. He died of a massive stroke later that day, just months before the end of WWII.
A couple of his famous quotes:
From his first inauguration speech - "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.
Pearl Harbor attack - "Yesterday, December seventh, 1941, a date which will live in infamy, the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan."
After his death, an editorial by The New York Times declared, "Men will thank God on their knees a hundred years from now that Franklin D. Roosevelt was in the White House".
Thanks for looking.
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