Whowas TheMan
On FDR’s Bedroom Wall?
by F. Martin Harmon Her question was totally unexpected and cause for
bewilderment. Herewewere twoWarmSprings’veter- ans withmuchmore knowledge of the place and story than most people and yet she had raised an issue we (and possibly no one else) had really ever considered. She asked us why her grandfather’s photo was on the wall in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s bedroom at the Little White House. We,beingmyself, the former public relations direc-
tor at RooseveltWarm Springs for over 13 years, and Linda Creekbaum, the Roosevelt Warm Springs tour guide who constantly meets visitors with a personal connection to Warm Springs, the Georgia place that fostered one of mankind’s greatest stories ever—vic- tory over polio. The she being Lynn Garland, grand- daughter of SamRosenman, an FDR speechwriter. He wasn’t family or among Roosevelt’s well known inner- most circle, and he certainly wasn’t a Warm Springs regular. What was he doing there? Both Linda and I considered ourselves very famil-
iar with the people who composed that inner-circle, people like LouisHowe,FDR’s trusted friend and polit- ical adviser during the early years of his career;Missy LeHand and Grace Tully, his two influential secre- taries; Basil O’Connor, his law partner and the man entrusted with overseeing Warm Springs upon Roosevelt’s return to politics; and evenHarryHopkins, his astuteWhite House advisor and go-between dur- ingWorldWar II. But despite recognizing Rosenman’s name, we had not recognized his influence, especially an influence that reached all the way toWarmSprings.
Why was his the only individual photo to be found
on FDR’s walls, walls supposedly just like Eleanor Roosevelt left them the day he died in that room on April 12, 1945? There he is, still hanging there in his judge’s robes, a man who must have earned sincere trust fromthe longest serving president inU.S.history just tomake his bedroomwallwhen no one else appar- ently did. And while it’s possible Eleanor removed some othermementoes or pictures (especially consid- ering theway the remaining ones are arranged), there’s no way of knowing for sure. What an honor! I venture to say that even in life
SamRosenman never received a greater one than to be featured on the bedroom wall of someone recognized as one of the greatest Americans ever. There he remains, pictured for posterity and witnessed by the thousands of visitors who have passed throughWarm Springs’ hallowed little cottage for decades, as well as the decades to come. Imagine, of all the friends, com- rades, associates, co-workers, or even family that FDR had contact with during those critical years of Great Depression and World War II, the one he thought enough of to hang on his bedroom wall was Sam
Rosenman.According to one LittleWhite House inter- pretive ranger,an observant visitorwill sometimes ask about theman in the photo,“but only about once every two weeks.” Exactly who was this guy, I wondered. A supreme
court justice for the state of NewYorkwas probably the loftiest title he ever achieved and, I discovered, his 17 years of service to Roosevelt had led him to author a
FranklinD.Roosevelt’s LittleWhiteHouse in WarmSprings remains one of Georgia’smost beloved and visited historic sites nearly seven decades after his death there in 1945.
book—a 1952 copy of which I was able to acquire online. With that I plunged into Working With Roosevelt by Sam Rosenman.Did he know his picture was actually posted on the president’s bedroomwall? I rather doubted it since his granddaughter had been surprised and,after all, that’s the kind of thing families would share and pass down. Also, despite his nearly two decades of work with FDR and several visits to WarmSprings, it’s rather doubtful he had ever been in the man’s small and very simple cottage bedroom. Before his death there onApril 12,1945,notmany peo- ple had. Nevertheless, I had to find out. At 500-plus pages,
the book was not going to be a quick read, but in less than 80 pages I had already learned a couple of things that immediately pointed to Rosenman’s importance and stature in the Roosevelt pantheon of key perform- ers. First, while working with FDR during his second two-year term as governor of New York, when it was becoming obvious that he would be a prime candidate for president in an increasingly Depression devastated country, it was Rosenman who came up with the idea of a “brain trust,” the term I had always heard for the creative minds who were brought together on a regu- lar basis in New York City to share thoughts and develop new ideas for the nation’s economic woes should the opportunity and need to have such ideas ready in a hurry develop during the 1932 presidential campaign. Secondly, Rosenman’s presence at New York’s executive mansion during the Democratic Convention as FDR awaited the convention’s decision
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