The Death Of Franklin D. Roosevelt After Serving 12 Years As President
Public DomainThe last photo of President Franklin Roosevelt, taken one day before his death in 1945.
Franklin Roosevelt was one of the most consequential presidents in American history. Elected in 1932, he guided the nation through both the Great Depression and World War II. For some young Americans, Roosevelt was the only president they’d ever known. But on April 12, 1945, Roosevelt became the seventh president who died in office.
By then, Roosevelt was 63 years old and feeling the pressures of the presidency more than ever. His election to a fourth term in office in 1944 and his negotiation of the fate of post-war Europe at the Yalta Conference in 1945 had drained him. So, in April 1945, Roosevelt decided to recover in Warm Springs, Georgia, alongside his mistress, Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd.
The president was sitting for a portrait on the afternoon of April 12, 1945, when he suddenly felt ill. Roosevelt exclaimed, “I have a terrific headache,” then slumped forward in his chair. At 3:35 p.m., the president died.
Elizabeth ShoumatoffFranklin Roosevelt died while his portrait was being painted by artist Elizabeth Shoumatoff.
Roosevelt had succumbed to a stroke after suffering from health ailments like high blood pressure, congestive heart failure, and possible melanoma, as well as the lingering effects of his polio.
But though the president had been ill, his death came as a shock to Americans — and the rest of the world. Winston Churchill described Roosevelt’s death as “a physical blow.” And his vice president, Harry S. Truman, exclaimed that the president’s death felt like “the Moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me.”
Indeed, Truman had rarely been included in Roosevelt’s administration. On the night of the president’s death, he was informed for the first time of a “new explosive of almost unbelievable destructive power” — the atomic bomb — which Truman would deploy on Japan later that year.
