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April 05, 2010
Library of Congress: FDR
I spent some time (okay, hours and hours!) exploring the on-line archives of the Library of Congress -- perhaps the only useful thing Congress has done in my lifetime, but I digress.
There are a variety of collections available for you to search or browse, as the mood may move you, and I started paging through them, 100 images at a time, looking for whatever caught my eye.
Pres. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was almost never photographed in his wheelchair, thanks to the efforts of a compliant press corps, eager to curry favor with the White House. Consequently, it's always passing strange when one encounters photos of a young, healthy (and ambulatory) Roosevelt. Here are a few images of the young Franklin Delano Roosevelt, before he lost the use of his legs in the summer of 1924.
Assistant Sec. of the Navy Franklin Delano Roosevelt (center) exercises with other members of Pres. Wilson's Cabinet on the White House Lawn in 1917.
FDR strides purposefully towards the camera, sometime during his service in the Wilson Administration, 1913-1917.
The patrician Roosevelt was, to the best of my knowledge, never caught on camera revealing his inner feelings of class-related superiority. Whether he intended it or not, this may be the most perfect depiction of smug, supercilious, better-than-thou arrogance I may have ever seen, caught in 1913 near the beginning of his service as an extremely young member of the Wilson cabinet.
FDR stands next to his horse during a break from a hunt during 1920.
It's easy to forget that FDR was a fairly tall man, given that Americans almost never saw him standing up. Here he's with the Ohio Gov. Cox, who was visiting Washington, D.C., in 1920.
The assistant secretary of the Navy greets some of the officers serving aboard "his" ships in 1920. In four years, he'd be paralyzed from the waist down, in twelve years he'd be in the White House, this time as boss.
Posted by Mike Lief at April 5, 2010 07:07 AM