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The new library and museum covers four themes: freedom, opportunity, compassion, and responsibility.


O


n nov. 19, 1939, a war scare rippled throughout America from coast to coast. Under the fascistic leadership of Chancel- lor Adolf Hitler, Germany was hell-bent on conquering all of Europe.


Hitler had recently remilitarized the Rhineland, an-


nexed Austria, occupied Czechoslovakia, and violated Poland’s neutrality. But Franklin D. Roosevelt — or FDR, a moniker fi rst used on his Jan. 30, 1882, birth an- nouncement — did not despair that frosty November afternoon. Chain-smoking cigarettes and


polishing family artifacts, he was ef- fervescent, laying the cornerstone of the FDR Library in Hyde Park, N.Y. The Roosevelt estate, where the


library was being erected, located some 90 miles north of Manhattan on the Hudson River, was known as Springwood. This was the presi- dent’s lifelong home of forests, hills, gardens, and spectacular views of the Hudson River, which at its peak, encompassed 1,500 acres. The grand property was being


Douglas Brinkley is professor of history at Rice University and presidential historian for CBS News.


gifted by FDR to the U.S. govern- ment. For this, momentous decisions could wait. And Roosevelt himself would explain why. “To bring together the records of the past and to


house them in buildings where they will be preserved for the use of men and women in the future, a nation must believe in these things,” Roosevelt intoned. “It must believe in the past. It must believe in the future. It must, above all, believe in the capacity of its own people to learn from the past so that they can gain in judgment in creating their future.” Although FDR did not realize it, that dedication


speech marked the birth of the U.S. presidential library system. “My husband’s spirit will live in this house, in the library, and in the quiet garden where he wished his body to lie,” Eleanor Roosevelt, the longest-serving fi rst lady, recalled after her husband’s death in 1945. “It is his life and his character and his personality,


which will live with us and which will endure and be imparted to those who come to see the surroundings in


MAY 2013 | NEWSMAX 51


COURTESY OF GEORGE W. BUSH PRESIDENTIAL CENTER


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