Franklin and Eleanor by Hazel Rowley

Author:Hazel Rowley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2010-02-14T16:00:00+00:00

Throughout the next day, the convention remained deadlocked. Howe and Farley were frantically working on the Texas delegation, whose forty-six members had voted for John Garner. If Garner would only give up a hopeless fight and release his votes to FDR, they were “in.”

Louis Howe’s raspy breathing filled room 1702. His secretaries were sure that he was dying. Jim Farley snapped at them: “Of course he’ll last…You know he’s not going to die until he sees Roosevelt nominated. He’s one of the gamest little guys that ever lived.”

In Albany, FDR and Rosenman were working on FDR’s acceptance speech. “I hope we get a chance to use it,” Rosenman said. “We will,” said FDR.

That evening, the Roosevelt clan had just finished dinner when the phone rang. It was Louis Howe, wheezing down the line. FDR listened, smiled, and put down the phone. He refused to say what was happening. “Effdee, you look just like the cat that swallowed the canary,” Missy said. An hour later, the news came through officially. The Texas and California delegates—ninety of them altogether—had switched their votes from John Garner to Roosevelt. FDR had won the nomination.

Tradition had it that the presidential candidate waited for as long as six weeks to give his acceptance speech. FDR had a different plan. He knew the importance of symbolism. The American people desperately wanted a bold, decisive leader. FDR had decided to arrive at the convention the next day, by plane, to accept his nomination.

Never before had a political candidate made a campaign trip by airplane. It was only five years since Charles Lindbergh had made the first flight across the Atlantic—from New York to Paris, in thirty-three hours. Airplanes were still considered risky and dangerous, only for the intrepid.

The next morning at dawn, a convoy of limousines left the governor’s mansion for the little airport in Albany. A small three-engine Ford plane was waiting on the runway. Earl Miller and Gus Gennerich carried the governor inside the machine. Eleanor, Elliott, John, Missy, Grace Tully, and Sam Rosenman clambered in after them.

They flew into strong headwinds. Grace Tully worried that she had not made out a will. While his co-passengers turned green and reached for their airsickness bags, FDR quietly polished his acceptance speech. The flight took nine hours, with stops in Buffalo and Cleveland to refuel. They arrived in Chicago two hours behind schedule. On the tarmac in Chicago, a small figure in a straw boater stepped forward to greet the Roosevelts as they came nonchalantly down the ramp. It was Louis Howe, miraculously recovered.

“I regret that I am late,” FDR told the crowd at Convention Hall, “but I have no control over the winds of Heaven and could only be thankful for my Navy training…You have nominated me for President and I know it, and I am here to thank you for the honor. Let it also be symbolic that in so doing I broke traditions.” In former times Theodore Roosevelt had promised a “square deal” for every American.

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