Franklin D. Roosevelt's Life

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born on January 30, 1882 in Hyde Park, New York. He was his parents' only child. Him and Theodore Roosevelt were fifth cousins. His parents took about seven weeks to agree on Franklin's name. He was tutored by a governess and he took frequent trips to Europe. He graduated in 1904 from Harvard University and attended Columbia University Law School in New York. He married a distant cousin, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, in 1905 and together they had six children. He passed the bar exam and joined a law firm on Wall Street. He ran for the New York Senate and won when he was twenty-eight years old. President Wilson appointed Franklin assistant Secretary of the Navy three years later in 1913. FDR traveled to Canada when he developed polio in 1921 at age thirty-nine. After he contracted polio, it left him paralyzed waist and lower for the rest of his life. In 1929 he ran for Governor of New York and he won. He served one term as Governor. Roosevelt was in the 1932 presidential race along with former President Herbert Hoover. Roosevelt won in a landslide victory. In 1936 he ran for a second term as President and won. The economy had reached the prosperity levels of the 1920s by then. In 1940 he ran for a third term and won. He is the only President to served up to three terms. He became President in 1941. On December 7 of 1941 the United States Naval fleet was attacked by the Japanese Air Force. The United States declared war with Japan. On December 8, Roosevelt declared war with Italy and on December 11 war with Germany. Roosevelt was President during the Great Depression. The United States was embroiled in World War II in part of Roosevelt's president. Franklin was elected to a fourth term in 1944 and began his fourth term on January 20, 1945. Roosevelt died of a stroke in Georgia at age sixty-three three months later on April 12, 1945. Note: FDR was President from 1933 to 1945 and the Vice Presidents were John Nance Garner, Henry Agard Wallace and Harry Truman.