FDR Dies: America Loses Its Wartime President

Franklin Roosevelt died at Warm Springs, Georgia, on April 12, 1945, while sitting for a portrait by Elizabeth Shoumatoff. He was talking with Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd, the woman with whom he'd had an affair in 1918. Eleanor was not present. He said "I have a terrific pain in the back of my head" and collapsed. He died of a massive cerebral hemorrhage at 3:35 p.m. He was 63. Germany surrendered 26 days later, on May 7. He never knew the war he'd led America through for four years would be won within weeks of his death. He'd been visibly failing for months. Photographs from the Yalta Conference in February 1945 show a gaunt, hollowed man bearing little resemblance to the robust figure who had rallied the nation through the Depression and Pearl Harbor. His cardiologist, Dr. Howard Bruenn, had diagnosed him with congestive heart failure, severe hypertension, and acute bronchitis in March 1944. None of this was disclosed to the public, the press, or most of his own Cabinet. Harry Truman, who had been Vice President for 82 days, had met privately with Roosevelt only twice during that period. He had not been briefed on the Manhattan Project, the status of military operations, or the secret agreements made at Yalta. When Eleanor told him the President was dead, Truman asked if there was anything he could do for her. She replied: "Is there anything we can do for you? For you are the one in trouble now." Truman learned about the atomic bomb from Secretary of War Henry Stimson on the day he was sworn in. He authorized its use four months later. Roosevelt's death was met with an outpouring of grief that surprised even those who had supported him. Over a million people lined the railroad tracks as his funeral train traveled from Warm Springs to Washington to Hyde Park, where he was buried in his mother's rose garden. He had served as president for twelve years and thirty-nine days, longer than any other person in American history. The portrait that Shoumatoff was painting when he collapsed was never finished. It is known as the Unfinished Portrait and hangs in the Little White House museum at Warm Springs.