THE NAME OF FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT first appeared in TIME in our eighth issue, April 21, 1923. When he died in 1945 we said, "TIME has given far more space to recording the extraordinary career and achievements of Franklin Roosevelt than to any other man. Eight times he has appeared on our cover—three times as Man of the Year." Some highlights from our coverage of FDR:
Twenty years ago F. D. Roosevelt took office as President of the Harvard Crimson. He has been a leading citizen ever since. Parallels are not hard to find with Theodore Roosevelt, whose neice he married. Both went to Harvard, to Albany, to the Navy Department on the eve of war, and both were shuttled into vice presidential candidates. Franklin is as good a Democrat as Theodore was a Republican.
From Construction Halts
May. 28, 1923
Mr. Roosevelt caught a chill stamping out a forest fire. A cross-country run and a cold plunge in the Bay of Fundy seemed to help things, but when he got home he sat in his wet bathing suit to read his mail. He took another chill. Next morning he was down with infantile paralysis. Months later he arose to find his legs quite dead.
From The Squire of Hyde Park
Feb. 1, 1932
Instantly President Roosevelt, without hat or overcoat in the chill wind, swung around to the crowd before him, launched vigorously into his inaugural address. 'My Friends!' he began. '...The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.'
From "We Must Act"
Mar. 13, 1933
Wife, mother, grandmother, schoolmarm, lecturer, editor, charitarian, social service worker, shopkeeper, clubwoman, colyumist, traveler—the nation had been given continuous demonstrations of Mrs. Roosevelt in all these capacities by this week when the time came for her to function formally as First Lady.
From Eleanor Everywhere
Nov. 20, 1933
At Franklin Roosevelt's radio fireside, the electorate has sat and imbibed faith in closed banks, in NRA, in the New Deal's monetary experiments.
From Seventh Firesider
May. 6, 1935
In 1935 Franklin Roosevelt sold Congress and Congress sold the U. S. the Social Security Act, the biggest, most comprehensive, most expensive mass insurance policy ever written.
From Pie from the Sky
Feb. 13, 1939
He has one priceless attribute: a knack of locking up his and the world's worries in some secret mental compartment, and then enjoying himself to the top of his bent. This quality of survival, of physical toughness, of champagne ebullience, is one key to the big man. Another key is this: no one has ever heard him admit that he cannot walk.
From Prelude to History
Jun. 10, 1940
Mr. Roosevelt gripped the reading clerk's stand, flipped open his black, loose-leaf schoolboy's notebook. He took a long, steady look at the Congress and the battery of floodlights, and began to read. 'Yesterday, Dec. 7, 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.'
From National Ordeal
Dec. 15, 1941
The relief and release that U.S. citizens felt in 1933, when the President broke the paralysis that had gripped them, was nothing compared to the lifting of heads all over the world when the power and might of the U.S. was thrown into the war.
From Man of the Year
Jan. 5, 1942
Most Americans now 40 were still in their 20s when Franklin Roosevelt entered the White House; thousands of U.S. soldiers and sailors fighting around the world remember no other President. Yet associates still marvel at his Gargantuan appetite for work, his ability to relax in the midst of it, his endless gay optimism.
From Rendezvous with Destiny
Nov. 29, 1943
Before midnight, the verdict was clear: Franklin Roosevelt, the first U.S. President to serve three terms in the White House, had rolled up a huge popular vote—and a landslide electoral vote—to give him his fourth term.
From The Winner
Nov. 13, 1944
The shadows of the pines grew longer. In the bedroom of the Little White House one of the physicians looked at the time. It was 3:35 (C.W.T.). Death, at that moment, had come to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
From Afternoon on Pine Mountain
Apr. 23, 1945
TIME has given far more space to recording the extraordinary career and achievements of Franklin Roosevelt than to any other man. Eight times he has appeared on our cover—three times as Man of the Year.
From A Letter From The Publisher
Apr. 23, 1945
To Roosevelt, then 31, Lucy Mercer became far more than a mere employee. In fact, says a World War II aide of the late President, F.D.R. and Lucy began a romance that was to span 30 years.
From A Great Romance
Aug. 19, 1966
Like so many men with boundless power, personality and ego, Franklin D. Roosevelt had an eye for women.
From Now, Dorothy and Franklin
Jun. 7, 1976
Roosevelt assumed leadership during one of the greatest crises in modern history—a crisis that seemed to mark the total breakdown of the American system—and his response to that emergency changed the nation's ways forever.
From F.D.R.'s Disputed Legacy
By Otto Friedrich
Feb. 1, 1982
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