the museum. he was a founding partner at the university of maryland's future of informational alliance and a pioneer in interactive digital media prior to his work at the museum. sparrow is a emmy award-winning television producer. he started his television career at kpix in san francisco and i saw we've got some folks from california, so we'll have to let us know if they they know your work paul from california and that are you with this fall? i'm here. yes. thank you patrick for having me here to them. i'm really pleased to be part of this series. i them in their fantastic. terrific we're delighted to have you before we let you jump in. i have to ask. how are you doing? how's the staff doing with the with the pandemic and everything? well, as you know, the national archives has taken a very conservative approach and staff health and safety has been the number one priority. so we've been closed to the public since march our staff is healthy and well we started bringing some of the staff back on part-time, but then as the detection rate increase we've closed back down again, but we're hoping that with the vaccine and with the trends we're seeing that hopefully will be able to get back to work soon. that's a fingers crossed. we're all looking forward to that. we miss our visitors. well, i know you've got a great presentation to give us so i'm gonna get out of the way give you the screen and the mic and afterwards we will obviously take q&a. so again, i invite our our viewers if you would like to ask a question. don't don't feel like you have to wait till the end you can get them in the in the chat box as paul's talking and we'll try and get to as many as possible when we get to the q&a paul. it's all yours. hey patrick, i appreciate that and welcome to you all. i'm a huge fan of the national archives foundation and very very pleased to be able to tonight to talk to you about franklin eleanor roosevelt who i think are probably the most important couple in 20 century american history we can start with our first slide. go ahead to the next one. so franklin roosevelt, you know really is the sun of sarah and james roosevelt go to the next slide and here he is in 1900 as he just graduated from groton and about to head off to harvard. he had had a truly privileged childhood growing up here on the hudson valley on the riverside on 1000 acres of property with a summer home and campobello and an apartment family had apartment in manhattan, and he really was. part of the very privileged elite next slide, please. there were two branches of the roosevelt family one branch that lived up in the hudson valley. that's the franklin roosevelt side another branch which lived out on long island, and that was the teddy roosevelt side. and this is eleanor roosevelt in her wedding dress, and she was given away by her uncle teddy roosevelt who happened to be president of the united states at the time her mother and father both died when she was young a child and so she became sort of teddy roosevelt's surrogate daughter and part of this big roosevelt family next slide, please. now frankly that eleanor has seen each other and family events while they were growing up, but as he was graduating from harvard, he really sort of fell for her and this is 1905. this is right after the wedding and as you can see, you know, they were a handsome couple and they were the melding of two branches of this family and as theodore roosevelt famously said to eleanor is good. you're keeping the name in the family. and of course. their wedding was scheduled for march 17th, because her uncle teddy was going to be in new york for saint patrick's day because as his other daughter once commented on him teddy roosevelt liked to be the baby at every christening the bride at every wedding and the corps said every funeral next slide, please. the young family grew quickly. eleanor was not a great mother by her own admissions in her autobiography. she had not had a nurturing mother growing up because he had been orphan so young, but she started having children and then in 1910 or so at franklin roosevelt gets into politics runs for state senate and when woodrow wilson is elected president. he is appointed as an assistant secretary of the navy and they all moved to washington dc now the wife of the assistant secretary of the navy back then had very very specific and rigid social responsibilities calling on the wives of other naval officers hosting these events and things and eleanor was not familiar with the washington social scene. so she needed someone to help her so she hired a young girl from a very prominent family next slide. please named lucy mercer now lucy was very efficient. her family was on hard times, but they had a really hepatic background and she was very very good at her job and during this time as franklin roosevelt was sort of rising to prominence in the democratic party. they were a power couple so when the war breaks out next slide please franklin roosevelt's role as the assistant secretary the navy becomes very important. he actually goes is a photograph of him in france in 1918. he had just flown on an airplane for the first time. you can see him with the helmet coming down off the plane and he was over there to inspect the naval operations. that was a tremendous effort obviously of getting all of the american soldiers over there and the materials and the supplies and he was really in his element. he loved the navy. he'd studied naval history from the time. he was a young boy, and of course you all know that in 1918. there was a terrible epidemic that's swept the world a pandemic the spanish flu and as fdr was coming home from the trip to europe. he got quite to sick and when he arrived at home, he was taken off the boat in an ambulance and put to bed and eleanor roosevelt began unpacking his things and in the process of unpacking his clothes she discovered a bundle of love letters from lucy mercer, and it turned out that her husband had having an affair with her social secretary. now this is a really seminal moment in they're both their relationship in some ways in 20th century american history because as you can go to the next slide please as they are struggling with this. this is the photograph taken in 1920. they're trying to decide whether they're going to stay together or not an elder offers to grant. franklin a divorce if he wants one now franklin was in love with lucy and there was a great moment where the whole thing could come apart next slide, please but franklin's mother sarah delano roosevelt who was a very very powerful figure in franklin's life told him that if he divorced eleanor his political career is over and she would disown him. and so franklin and eleanor came to an understanding franklin agreed that he would never see lucy again and that they would continue on as a as a partnership there was you know five children that they had to take care of. there was ankles political career and so they decided to stay together. although clearly the relationship was fractured next slide, please. then the next year 1921 franklin gets polio and this promising career of this dynamic energetic very very strong. democratic leader is suddenly thrown in to some question because polio has seriously handicap team use a photograph of they are is in warm springs, georgia. he became very interested in this polio filtation center that he was trying to develop down there in georgia. he sort of disappears off the scene a mean while eleanor roosevelt becomes the public face of the roosevelt name. she starts attending meetings. she joins the women's democratic coalition. she becomes very active and as she becomes more active in this case. she's keeping the roosevelt name alive. so after a few years franklin gradually comes back into the political scene and famously in 1928. he runs for governor of new york becomes governor of new york and at his political careers launched now very few people realize just how physically handicapped he was at that point. he was essentially paralyzed from the waist down and yet he developed a walking style that allowed it to pretend people knew he'd had polio but to pretend that he wasn't that severely crippled next slide, please. now the two of them were incredibly powerful and dynamic campaign when he decided to run for president in 1932 as the depression raised across the country. eleanor was a real strong supporter and a wonderful surrogate on the campaign trail now if you look at this picture, you can see several things that are classic fdr standing up. you wouldn't know he was paralyzed from the waist down willing steel leg braces, but he's holding on to the railing so that it would appear as if he could stand and when he would walk he would always hold on to the arm of his son or his bodyguard or someone like that and usually have a cane in the other hand so it would appear that he could walk he won the 1932 presidential election with a very large majority and came into the white house with this very progressive agenda to remake the way the federal government interacts with the american public. and of course eleanor was really very strongly committed to this. she was a very strong progressive. she believed it was federal government's job to help people who needed help and she was in many ways the conscience of the administration whereas franklin roosevelt was much more pragmatic. he wanted to get things done and that was always the question is how do you get what needs to be done done and yet? meet the goals and ideals of eleanor roosevelt next slide, please. one of their most remarkable abilities was that both of them were the masters of their media and during their era newspapers were the dominant source of information, but radio was emerging as really the best way to communicate people a way to transcend the political editors of the newspapers and really communicate directly with the people and franklin became an absolute master of the radio famously. he becomes president on march 4th. he was the last president inaugurated in march. during the midst of a terrible banking crisis and banks are foundry all across the country and his first fireside chat radio address he tries to calm the country and explain that they've closed the banks. he's going to reopen the banks and they're going to try to solve this problem and as the comedian will rogers said fdr explained the banking crisis. so well that even understood what happened. but he was so persuasive and so calming and so reassuring about the future and positive about it that when they reopened the banks instead of there being a run on the banks, which was the great fear. in fact people flowed their money back into the banks and although nothing economically had changed. he had essentially ended the bank in crisis by doing what he believed was the most important thing which was to end the fear as he famously said in his first and all girl dress. the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, and he was talking about the banking crisis. um, eleanor also had a remarkable radio career. she did radio programs later on and showing in 1935. she started a daily newspaper column, so she had a very strong public voice which is unprecedented for a first lady up to that point. she also became the eyes and ears of franklin roosevelt. she would travel a country she would talk to people she would come back and report to him. and so he really understood what was happening out there. and of course his famous the cartoons about eleanor roosevelt showing up an unexpected places, you know in a coal mine replaces like that next slide, please so they were a dynamic team with tremendous influence on the american public and the public was fascinated by them this here. they are sitting in the front yard of their home of franklin's mother's home in hyde park new york. it's a it's called springwood. this is where he grew up and really was the center of his life and when you look at this beautiful picture, you can see that rolling hills you can still see much of this landscape there as it exists and one of fdr's closest assistance was a woman named missy the hand marguerite missy, lehan. she had come with him when he first ran for vice president. she was with him through his polio and governor. and she became really almost like a chief of staff when he moved to the white house and she took a lot of home movies. so we're going to look at some of those home movies now to give you a little bit of a behind the scenes look at the roosevelt so we can go ahead to the video. now here he is in warm springs, georgia. actually this so this is in the backyard of springwood again, you can see elinor knitted eleanor knitted constantly in footage of her you'll see her knitting on boats. you'll see her knitting in cars and on trains it was a way she could be productive and franklin of course was enormously intelligent and absorbed huge amounts of information. so even when he was on vacation or on his home and he came up to springwood a lot. they would bring stacks of papers to read and design that's his daughter the tall blonde and his grandchildren there playing in the in the backyard. this is the home at springwood now, he had a study before the library's built. he had to study there and his mother's house which is where he did his official work. that's missy on the left and mcintyre on the right marvin mcintyre who was essentially his formal secretary and in this room, which you can still see when you visit the house you can see the books and desk, and this is where he would play with his stamp collection. he was a very avid collector. he collected stamps and ship models and naval manuscripts and one of the strange things about this situation was that they didn't really have their own home. so this was at fdr's home. not his home. so here they are back in warm springs, georgia. there's missy in the middle there. so someone else was using her camera to shoot this and you can see it's a rare footage you can see how withered his legs are and the reason he loved these pools at warm springs was that they allowed him to feel like he was able to swim and had some freedom and he spent almost half of his fortune converting that into a rehabilitation center. so here again, here's some of the home movies of that still photo you saw and they relationship between them at this point was very complicated because eleanor was still some what removed emotionally from their relationship and she was developing her own persona as a you know, a very very active first lady and franklin was the brilliant in the way. he would use her if she would come out with something with a new idea and say something if it generated a lot of controversy, he would say, oh, that's when this is i have no control over her but if it was well accepted then they would move on move on with it. he could use her as a bellweather. this is a party. those are the four sons there behind them and anna the daughter on the far, right? this was a his mother's birthday party where the entire clan got together in the backyard at springwood. you can see the four boys all very good looking young men all of them served in act after during world war ii and here we are a little bit more home movies from a place near the warm springs foundation and they love to have these picnics. they would have picnics in springwood. then warm springs at the end of the first hundred days. this is amazing footage at the end of the first hundred days. he sailed a boat with his son in a couple of boys up the new england coast to their home in campobello canada. that's his son james there and you can see he and eleanor she wasn't on the boat. she didn't care for sailing and yeah, this was a man who's paralyzed in the waist down the 40 foot yacht sailing in the north atlantic, you know as president of the united states. it's it goes to a lot of his characteristics, which was that he loved to live life. he wanted to be an adventurer and he loved to see and anything having to do with the sea. here's the the media that followed them everywhere and any having to do with the sea or the navy he was just passionate about again. you can see here how he's standing. holy on to his son james his arm with the cane in one hand and if you were to just see these in the newsroom newsreel at a movie theater, you would think that he's perfectly, you know capable standing. this is the last sequence. this is the car that we have at the museum. they on the property they had in warm hyde park they grew trees and they grew corn and other things and everywhere. they went of course, this was a a photo opportunity and you'll see the the press who were there with them. everywhere they went thank you now on to the next slide. so their relationship was remarkable in the effectiveness. it had in changing american politics. most importantly they changed the relationship between the federal government and the american public next slide, please. then of course a 1939 world war ii breaks out hitler invades poland and everything changes, you know the efforts around the the social renovation after the depression giveaway to having to prepare america, which was very isolationist to get involved in this european war and most americans didn't want to have anything to do with it next slide, please. in 1940 during that was the wars raging in europe fdr makes the controversial decision to run for a third term which no one had ever done an american history. he is re-elected and this is inauguration day 1941 with heat and eleanor leaving the white house, and this was he thought that he was the best person to deal with these international crises and to help transition america into a wartime footing and he famously talked about america becoming the arsenal of democracy. even we wouldn't set our boys to fight, but we would provide the weapons and material for england and the soviet union to fight germany next slide, please. now eleanor, so, this is march of 1941. eleanor was a strong champion of civil rights. so here she is down at the tuskegee institute. this is one of my favorite photographs of her because it was a lot of controversy but whether african-americans could serve in the military and what roles they could play so she goes down to this tuskegee institute. that's chief anderson behind the controls and he takes her up for a flight and flies around for 45 minutes an african-american man and a white first lady in this small plane. it was it was radical, but it changed the perception and it essentially helped create the tuskegee airmen and eventually the red tails and this was the kind of thing that she would do she would use her celebrity. she would use her voice with authority to change the way people thought about african-american about immigrants about poor people and she really dedicated yourself to changing that equilibrium next slide, please. so in june of 1941 the library open here is fdr in the white suit doing the opening ceremonies for the presidential library prior to this point when president's left office, they just took everything with him. all their papers were considered their personal property and he really believed that presidential papers belong to the american public. so he built the library to house both his presidential records, but also his collections his books his ship models his paintings his stamp collection were the one thing that he didn't give to the american public because when he died he that his children sell it next slide, please but inside the museum what this was called the oddities gallery where all the little weird gifts that would come into him either from american public or from other people were put on display and that large sphinx like head is still on display in the library today next slide, please. so in august of 1941 i'm again america still isn't in the war. but the war is raging around the world fdr has this secret meeting in placentia bay with winston churchill and they draft the atlantic charter, which is essentially the framework for why america should fight this war this is an awarded reserve the british empire. this is about saving democracy next slide, please then, of course in december of 1941 japanese attack pearl harbor and any isolation resistance to getting involved in the war goes away. this is a critical moment in this transition of fdr from a regular presidential wartime president, and he goes on to mobilize the most extraordinary military alliance in the history of the world next line, please in 1942 of the americans and the british and the allies land in north africa and in 43, he and churchill have another meeting in casablanca and after with all their military leaders, and after the meeting is over churchill insists that fdr come with him to marrakesh. so here they are in the katuba tower in marrakech and the villa they were staying in two people had to literally carry fdr up the stairwell because it was too narrow to get his wheelchair up there and they're looking out across america towards the atlas mountains and you can there's an extraordinary moment in this relationship between the two of them the next day as fdr is departing on a plane churchill turns to his aid and says, that's the greatest man i've ever known and he returns to this spot and does the only painting he did during the entire war of this scene and he then gave that painting to franklin roosevelt next slide, please. eleanor meanwhile takes on this role of being the mother to all of the soldiers who are fighting in the summer of 1943. she engages with an extremely dangerous mission, and she tours the pacific visiting thousands of soldiers and sailors who are wounded every soldier sale. she meant she would get their home address their families would get a letter. it was an extraordinarily brave and difficult journey, you know, these were on pressurized military aircraft. she was flying through a war zone, but it really showed her commitment to being supportive of american troops next line, please. then of course november 43 they have the famous tehran conference and here we have the first time the big three are together and this is really fdr at the height of his power and at the height of his he still healthy and he is sort of the person that both churchill and stalin look to because churchill install didn't really trust each other at this point. they're trying to side on the post-war world what's going to happen with the eastern europe? what's going to happen with japan will russia come into the war and it was an extraordinary moment, you know. these three men commanded, you know a military force even to this day is unprecedented. next slide please. unfortunately on the trip home fdr becomes quite ill and the early parts of 1944. he starts really suffering from illness d-day happens on june of 1944 and the balance of the war starts to shift dramatically as allied troops begin their march across western europe and the soviet troops begin their march from the east next slide, please fdr however is in fairly bad health. that's his daughter anna on the left and eleanor on the right and you can see he's lost a tremendous amount of weight. anna has moved into the white house at this point and essentially become the hostess because eleanor is traveling so much and eleanor it isn't as concerned about franklin's health because she had sort of seen it slowly degree. whereas anna was very upset and forced them to have a test done which revealed that he had congestive heart failure extremely high blood pressure high pretension and that he needed to do some dramatic changes to his lifestyle next slide, please of course, this is also the moment when he's running for president in 1944 for an equally unprecedented fourth term. it's one of the few color photographs taken that summer of 1944 before the election. you can see the palace lost weight. this is the picture that makes him look as good as he could at that. and but he runs for president and and he's re-elected at this point, you know, the doctors were being pretty honest with them telling him if you run for office, you will probably die. you need to stop working and rest and yet he decided to go ahead and do it anyway, and this is the moment as they decided to run for fourth term that he selects harry truman to be his vice president next. then it 1945 the big three meet again in yalta. it's a grueling trip 14,000 miles. it takes a tremendous toll on fdr. they don't resolve some of the issues such as what's going to happen with eastern europe. they do resolve some of the bigger issues the united nations opiates agreed to join the united nations in the coming to war against japan. however, his health does not recover next slide, please. he goes when he returns home, he goes down to warm springs to try to recover because the first meeting of the united nations will be at the end of april this photograph was taken on april 11th. he died the next day at april 12th in warm springs. now unfortunately one of the people who was with him in warm springs was lucy mercer who had married a man named rutherford who had died recently so lucy was there and when eleanor came down the next stage the body franklin's cousin told her told her that lucy had been there. so eleanor lost her job her husband and found out that he had been seeing his former mistress all on the same day and yet she put together an extraordinarily public face that information didn't get out for years next slide, please. his casket is moved from warm springs goes on a train thousands of people line the tracks that comes up to washington. there's a big national ceremony that it comes up to hyde park. you can see here the casket on the caisson as it rolls up. they had a soldiers and sailors lining the pathway from the railroad tracks all the way up to the rose garden where he was buried next slide, please. after his death initially eleanor had well, the story is over she moves up to her home at val kill here in hyde park, but of course the story is now over if you only looked at eleanor's career from time, she left the white house to the time. she died. you would still say she was one of the most important woman in 20th century history next slide, please. president truman puts it on the united nations commission for human rights. she chairs the committee that drafts the universal declaration of human rights. she championed civil rights women's rights. she's the most famous american woman in the world one of the most powerful politicians in the democratic party and she leaves the lasting legacy of commitment to human rights next slide, please she dies in 1962 and you can see here. this is the burial site on the home. that's the marble monolith at fdr had described the first grave with the flag is fdr's grave and the grave next to it is eleanor's. this is a site a matter of fact in just a few days franklin's birthday is january 30th and every year there's a wreath laying ceremony here and it's a very spiritual place next slide, please. eleanor roosevelt's papers along with franklin roosevelt's papers and 400 other people are stored here at the fdr library and museum we're closed right now, but obviously we are dedicated to preserving these records making them available to the public and telling the story of the roosevelt legacy next slide, please while we've been closed we've been doing tremendous number of these virtual meetings. we have almost a million documents online. you can go to franklin which is our search you look at the master speech files all of the documents thousands of photographs as well and next slide we encourage you to join us on our social media sites because obviously social media is where you communicate. i hope we'll see you on twitter facebook instagram or youtube and at the end of my presentation. thank you. that's fantastic. got to get a selfie in right paul. that's a wonderful overview. and i just i've been looking forward to having you and in the series because i have to say before this job. i worked at the un foundation and and when i had the opportunity this job to come up and visit before you arrival at the library, i remember that train ride up the hudson and how struck i was making making my way that the hyde park and then to see the property and the museum. so it's it's a great. it's a great one. they're all great but in different ways and and hopefully folks when we get back to regular days elite coming to see you. so you've mentioned the museum's closed. i want to go before we jump i jump into my questions. i will remind folks to get their questions in in the youtube chat box. i see some have come in so we've been taking notes there. so the museum's closed and regular times though. i know it all the presidential libraries folks can come and do research. what kind of research are our folks coming and doing i mean don't doing not know everything about the roosevelts yet. so can you talk to us a little bit like how many folks maybe come and do research a year? and what kind of projects without maybe getting the specifics are people looking into? well, we get about a thousand on site researchers every year and then you know many thousands who do research online or put in requests through email other sources and you know, they research all sorts of things because we have a collection that's outside of just right the roosevelt. for example, we have the war refugee board records. so people are interested in the american response to the holocaust come up we have several million letters to eleanor roosevelt. so people who are interested in the eleanor roosevelt story, we have the families personal correspondence. we have the whole roosevelt family documents going back to the you know, mid 17. century so there's a tremendous amount of material. we have all of the map room papers. so when world war ii story fdr created a map room. so all communications from all military base around the world would come through the map room to fdr. so at any day any moment of any day he can go in and see you know, what? is happening in the pacific. what's happening in north africa? what's happening in soviet union? we did a big exhibit several years ago about d-day and we found these incredible maps which we realized these were the maps that were drawn out each day for him to see the advance of the allied forces on the beaches of normandy. so there's a lot of material there and people are still discovering new material all the time. we got a new home movies just a few years ago showing fdr and the white house so, you know material is coming all the time. that's terrific and you've you hit on one of the questions about the materials there and what is there related to that? is there a an eleanor roosevelt papers project? well, we've digitized some of the eleanor roosevelt's papers. one of our goals is to you know, obviously just digitize all of the records. here. we have about 17 million pages. so we have a ways to go and we really want to digitize eleanor roosevelt these letters to eleanor roosevelt because they're extraordinary during this period special in the early part of the administration when the depression is just ravaging the country people write to her. they say things like, you know, i have no winter coat you dress. so well, would you send me an extra winter coat? you know, my my father has no money, you know, he's starving. can you send me five dollars so he doesn't starve one african-american woman wrote that her father was walking down the streets in a white man pulled over to pick up truck and said getting my truck. i want you to pick my cotton and then 65 year old man said i don't do that anymore in the white man beat him and nothing happened and she was reaching out to eleanor roosevelt for justice. so those letters are we think are incredible snapshot of america during, you know, one of the most difficult times in our history and we think there's great knowledge to be gained from them at this point. you have to come up here literally and go through the boxes and look at all these letters. we could digitize them and organize them so you could sort by state gender topic date, you know, it would be a tremendous resource. absolutely, and that's a major priority of the archives as well as all the presidential library. so you provide more access that way digitally we always get the question about biography. so do you have a favorite or a recommended or a couple what what do you tell people if they really want to learn about fdr? well, there are thousands of literally thousands of books about the roosevelts and if you're just starting, you know, and you know, we know much about them the book that i usually recommend is no ordinary time by doris kearns goodwin it was written almost 20 years ago. now the door screen is such an extraordinary writer and in a fairly easy to read book. she really encapsulates the complexity of their relationship the complexities of their time the title no ordinary time comes from one of fdr speeches, and i think what's wonderful about the book, is that it helps frame the bigger story and then if you're interested in world war ii you can read nigel hamilton's trilogy about fdrs military commander if you're interested. eleanor roosevelt, you can read blanche weiss and cook's trilogy on eleanor roosevelt. you can dive into different subjects that are specific because there's such a large amount of history to cover here really, you know from the early 1920s all the way through to 1962. okay. i want to talk a little bit about relationships. so. it's been said that truman didn't know anything about the manhattan project until he he took over. so before we jump into that, what was fdr's relationship with hoover because we did have the hoover presidential library on earlier in our series and then what about is the fact that truman didn't know about the project. is that a reflection of their relationship? can you talk about his relationships there? sure, so. you know, he had a very bad relationship with hoover and in the interregnum period again back then remember he was inaugurated on march 4th, but elected in november early november, so there was a long period in which the country was experiencing severe economic crisis 25% unemployment literally millions of people living on the street homeless farms closing banks being for closing homes being foreclosed on an fdr's vision for what he wanted to do what he campaigned on the idea of the new deals at the federal government's going to get involved and we're going to help and we're going to find a way to help these people. and of course hoover was the old school, you know, it's not the federal government's role to get involved in helping people's lives. you have to let the market recover so during that period hoover put an enormous pressure on fdr to renege and promise. he wouldn't follow up with these new deal ideas of his and to stick with hoover's program and roosevelt refused for lots of good reasons he was elected to do. teddy was going to do so there was tremendous bad blood between them hoover thought roosevelt was a lightweight and ignorant. it was got a ruin the country. it's about the rest of his life campaigning against fdr. and so it was it was a very fraught relationship and on the drive from the white house to the capital for the inauguration, you know, hoover just sat there and refused to talk to him and there's some very famous photographs of two of them sitting there and fdr the charming man that he was captured trying to make small talk with uber and eventually give up and just wave to the crowd. now situation with the truman is very very different so fdr it had a vice president for his first two terms the jack nor garner and then at first third term he brought in wallace henry wallace who had been as agricultural secretary, but wallace was very very liberal and progressive and the democratic party didn't want him to be vice president for the fourth term because there was such a high risk of fdr dying. so truman was selected fdr didn't have much of a relationship with truman. he knew him because he'd been in the senate. they didn't have much of a relationship with truman and during that period after the election fdr was with someone ill he traveled a lot. he went to the the alta conference. he came back. he was really focused on the starting up the united nations. they only had three meetings the entire file of correspondence between them is only a dozen pages, but i think fdr assumed he had more time and that eventually he would bring truman into the narrative and explain these things to him, but there's you know, my theory is always been that fdr's plan was that as soon as the war ended that he would step down as president of the united states and become the head of the united nations, which was the organization. he was most passionate about and he wanted someone like truman to be president in that stage because he felt he could work with truman and that truman wouldn't compete with him in that role as the post war leader of the free world. and so i think that's partly what happened there. i i think it's one of fdr's grave. it's mistakes not briefing truman, you know, the japanese internment was a terrible mistake, and i think you know not supporting it federal anti lynching laws was a mistake but not briefing to him and it was certainly a major feeling on his part. i think it had to do with the fact that he couldn't accept his own mortality and that he might die and that he had a responsibility to brief truman so he was prepared to become president. are there any papers that indicate that he was thinking about stepping down at certain point but is this is just sort of historian lore that the only reference to it is from his distant cousin days and strictly who spent a tremendous amount of time with him special towards the end of his life. she has a home up here and she wrote it she kept diaries of their meetings and their correspondence and she's the only one that really has put it down on paper saying that he had discussed this with her, but i think if you look at what he was focused on what was it most important to him the post-war world and how these former empires like britain and france were going to deal with a non-colonial based world and how america would have to be one of the four policemen as he saw it that would stop another war from happening. it was speaking of relationships. was his uncle teddy influential in his his presidency at all. fdr idolized teddy roosevelt and you know mirrored his career like teddy roosevelt. he ran for a state legislature like teddy roosevelt. he was assistant secretary of late the navy like teddy roosevelt, you know, governor of new york and then of course the idea of being a wartime president, you know, he had studied at the office fdr had studied teddy, you know feelings about, you know, creating the great white navy projecting american force overseas. so teddy roosevelt was a tremendous influence on him, although politically, you know, teddy roosevelt was was the colonialist, you know, he tried to expand the american empire and fdr felt very strongly that all those colonies needed to be freed. and i want to remind folks they can put their questions in the chat. i've got a couple we've got some here that are queued up and want to welcome folks from around the country fdr lovers from from coast to coast as you can imagine that's far away from california. we've got omaha, nebraska houston palm beach, which it's a little chilly and desi today. i'd like to be in palm beach, massachusetts, new jersey vermont. lots of folks from the dc area south bend, indiana, pennsylvania. so we've got we've got the country covered here and you've covered a lot of a lot of information. so let me jump into some more of these questions and encourage more to come in so a couple little logistics things here for folks. it's hyde park the same as springwood. so hyde park is a town in upstate new york along the hudson and springwood is the name of the house and the property so lots of people a lot of these states along the hudson river are named estates. so people would give their names some of them don't even have addresses. they're just they were known for generations as springwood or as bill would so that that's why there's a distinction to hyde park was the town springwood is the home. understood and sort of related to geography here. was there a reason that eleanor didn't move to springwood after fdr's death versus staying in bow kill. well very much because it was fdr's mother's home and eleanor never felt comfortable there. there was a lot of tension between eleanor and sarah. sarah was a very important person and fdr's life very domineering often overshadowing eleanor criticizing her about the racial race through children. so eleanor never really felt comfortable in springwood. where as val kill was really her home, and i think that she needed that separation plus fdr had planned to give the home and all this property too the national park service. he'd already donated the library to the national archives and the property that it was on it. it's surrounded by the springwood estate. and so eleanor said, okay, give us one year and we will give it all to the national park service and i will move up to that kill. okay, and where did the roosevelt family money come from? well, it's an interesting story because it really is about the the wealth and development of new york city. i mean originally the clause von roosevelt who came to new york probably around 1660. he started out as a farmer and then over the generations, they became investors. they owned property. they were involved with the sugar trade. they were involved with railroads. they were involved with banking one of fdrs descendants helped start the bank of new york with alexander hamilton, and so they were involved with a lot of different things. i mean, they were never a financial status like the vanderbilts, you know or the melons, but they were in that upper class of wealth and most of it came from investments. okay. can you talk a little bit about the descendants so we often get this question, are there any descendants involved with the library now and related us? another question sort of related is have any descendants run for elected office since it runs in the family. so they were five children. anna the oldest daughter and the four boys james elliott franklin jr. and john several of them were congressman ran for office between the five children. there were 19 marriages. so it was a complicated set of descendants. and yes a number of the grandchildren are directly involved with the library and roosevelt is the chair of the roosevelt institute board her cousin nancy roosevelt, ireland as the chair of the library trustees. there are at least eight or nine other family members who are directly involved either with the roosevelt institute or the library the next generation the great we have several great grandchildren who are now involved. so it's been a consistent sort of relationship in the early days that were the family members were not directly involved in the management of either the property or the library, but they have remained connected to us and you know, their support is is very important. you mentioned towards the beginning about fdr's extramarital affair, but didn't really talk about relationships that eleanor had and how that might have impacted their relationship. can you sort of talk to talk about that? give us a for that? sure, and it you know, there's this is one of those areas where people have to decide for themselves. there's no evidence that supports that eleanor roosevelt ever had extramarital sexual relationships with anyone. we know that fdr had an affair with lucy mercer again. there's no evidence supporting him having sexual and anyone else during the course their year, but there's no question that there was a disconnect emotionally between franklin and eleanor and eleanor had a need for strong emotional connections. and so there was a series of people throughout her life that she developed these very intense emotional relationships with earl miller who was a new york state trooper who was her bodyguard. they developed a very strong personal relationship lorena hitchcock who was a reporter covering her on the campaign trail in 1932. they developed a very intense personal relationship. lorena hitchcock was a lesbian. um, but we don't know what happened behind closed doors. there was also people joe lash who was a young student that she became involved with for the students movement that she kept when she died his photograph was in her wallet. there were no photographs of her boys, but there was a photograph of joe. last david gravich was a doctor. she became involved with at the end of her life. but again, these were emotional relationships that she needed. i don't personally think that they were sexual relationships. so, you know, we don't know i always say it doesn't matter but people want to know and people, you know are always asking and we just don't have a definitive answer other than i think eleanor roosevelt was very victorian in her morals and that it would have been outside of her framework to have extramarital affairs. so we talked a little bit about relationships with politics. can you talk about politicians? i should say his relationship with the press and obviously you talked about in mastery of radio both of them. what about also congress or the supreme court any thoughts on that? three very different questions fdr held 998 press conference during his 12 years in office and his press conference is particularly early days. he would just opened the doors and they would come into the oval office and even sit around the oval office and they would talk and all of the transcripts of those press conferences are available on our website. some of them were fascinating. he would always say everything is off the record and he would start have this banter with them and even occasionally feed them information for their stories and the press who covered in loved him. they really did their bosses hated basically every major newspaper in america endorsed his opponent in every election that he ran. so it was a split feeling there, but the reporters really loved him and they had an agreement with the roosevelt white house that they wouldn't show fdrs disability. so they never took pictures of him in a wheelchair. you know, he had to be lifted and carried out of a car every time he went anywhere. he often would you know have to be carried in positioned up up to the leg term when he was giving speeches and they did not film it. you can see some of the outtakes of the newsreel footage whoever's doing the introduction to fdr the cameras on the podium. they introduce fdr the camera pans away to the audience clapping once fdrs back at the podium the camera pans back. so it was a real agreement something that would never happen today, but it was a collaboration between the press and fdr now an fdr had in his first election in 1932. he had a dominant control of both houses the senate and house. he had super majorities. he increased those super majorities in 1936 when he was re-elected. he lost a little bit of his power in terms of congress in 1940. but so he had a super majorities particularly in the early days who wanted him to succeed because the country was in such desperate shapes. he had a contentious relationship with the southern democrats who were very conservative, you know, jim crow laws auntie civil rights isolationists. he actually had a lot of trouble with the southern democrats from his own party when he was elected in 1940 actually before the election 1940. he appointed two republicans. wanted to be the war secretary of war and then secretary of the navy so we he had a complicated relationship with congress. he was a master at getting legislation accomplished. yeah. look at his first hundred days 15 pieces extraordinarily complicated major pieces of legislation. you've just never seen anything like that since then legislation is not like an executive order. you can't just write something down inside it legislation means both houses of congress passed it. his relationship with the supreme court was very contentious, especially in the early days because after a few years they started striking down many of the critical new deal legislation that was trying to help people an fdr floated the idea of after the 1936 election of stacking the supreme court adding one new judge for every judge over the age of 70, which would have brought the total up to 15 so that they could help with the workload and this was such a sort of outrageous idea that even his own party rejected it and it never came to pass but through natural evolution a couple justices retired new justices came in and they shifted their support for the new deal and he ended up pointing some of the most important federal judges supreme court justice in the history of america. he ended up appointing eight supreme court justices. hmm um, well we're getting close to the end of time here. i do have a couple presidential library questions for you. so can you talk about i know there's a roosevelt institute some of the you know averitt presidential library has different configurations of a foundation supports it you talk a little bit about that relationship. what the what the library does versus what they do. sure. fdr presidential library museum is a part of the national archives. it's a federal agency. we're responsible for preserving and protecting these records the federal government pays for the building for the staffing etc. however, the federal government will not pay for things like special exhibits websites programming educational efforts. so all of that sort of things that we associate with museums have to be paid for with private money. so the roosevelt institute originally it was the franklin eleanor roosevelty student. it's now just the roosevelt institute. they are the 501c3 that funnels private money to help us do these programs the roose? student like many of the other presidential library foundations also have other efforts of their involved with one is the campus network, which is an extraordinary collection of groups who cross the country i think about 10,000 students involved at over 150 campuses who are designed to train the next generation of political leaders. they come to hyde park a group of their leaders. come to hyde park every summer. it's it's a very inspiring experience with them. and then the roosevelt institute has a think tank where they bring together the great minds who develop new progressive economic policy ideas based on the core beliefs of franklin eleanor roosevelt. so the three different term, you know units work separately but work together and felicia wong. who's the ceo of the roosevelt institute has done a really remarkable job. yeah, she's terrific. we have a group in new jersey interested in putting together a new presidential library from grover cleveland any advice for them. this might be a longer answer. they might want to follow up with you directly. well, i mean, i think you have to define what you want to do. so we have you know, multiple functions because we are both a federal repository. we are an educational center. we are research center and we're a museum. so the big question is what are you trying to do? you want to be a museum to tell that story to people who have a better understanding of the time and the man then that's that's a great thing to do because thing i love about presidential libraries is that they're these slices of american history and that they really dive deep into that period of american history. so if you whether you're looking at the reagan library or the kennedy library, you can drill down and really see what was happening in america during that period unlike other museums which have much broader scopes. so in that sense, telling that story of that period american history is an important thing to do then there's idea. are you making available the records of that administration to help researchers come in. have you accumulated enough volume of material to really be a research center? and that's the other thing you have to decide because that's a whole different sort of institution very good. well before we wrap up i want to give you a chance to plug what might be coming up. so we're all gonna think about the the sunny or days later in the year where we're reopen people are coming. you might not have that that sort of calendar set. but any anniversary's exhibits big programs, maybe next year you're looking at or even later this year that you want folks to know about. well, we originally had planned to open an exhibit in march of 2020 which was called fdr spinal campaign, and it looks at though that last sort of year when he's running for office and and the war in europe and the development of the united nations and he's campaigning for his very life because it is illness and that weaves those four threads together. and so this point we're playing on opening that exhibit when we open. hopefully this spring or this summer to tell that story and then in 2020 to hoping to do an exhibit on the roosevelt and civil rights and look at how what their policies affected african americans how eleanor worked with the civil rights leaders in the 50s and 60s and to try to reveal some of the structural inequality that despite both franklin and eleanor roosevelt being very progressive. there are certain things. they just couldn't do many of the new deal legislation excluded african-american from the benefits. so it's an important thing to look at to understand what people talk about as they talk about structural racism. sometimes it's not racism. it's the politics of what you can accomplish and we think it's an important story to tell that's terrific to look forward to so in the in the meantime folks can as you mentioned earlier find you online explore and research and i will give a pitch to everyone out there to to go visit when the opportunity gives you that that chance because it's a terrific property. the museum is wonderful, and i was a shopper at your gift store too. so all in all