Franklin D. Roosevelt 

On March 4, 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was inaugurated as the thirty-second President of the United States. He would lead the country through some turbulent years, including a world-wide depression and another world war. He won four presidential elections and was considered a world leader, both at home and abroad.

Eleanor Roosevelt 1933

Franklin had been born on January 30, 1882, to a prominent, Dutch family in New York and attended Harvard University. He could speak both French and German from frequent trips to Europe when he was a child. He married Eleanor Roosevelt when he was 23 and she 21. They were fifth cousins once removed. Her uncle, Theodore Roosevelt gave her away, because both of her parents had died when she was ten. The couple had six children.

In August 1921, Franklin fell ill at Campobello Island, New Brunswick, Canada, where the Roosevelts were vacationing. The polio left him paralyzed from the waist down. He stayed out of the public eye for several years, focused on his law practice, and tried several forms of physical therapy, including warm springs. In 1938, he founded the National Foundation of Infantile Paralysis, now called "The March of Dimes."

When he decided to run for public office again, Franklin convinced many people he was improving. He struggled to teach himself to walk short distances wearing iron braces and using a cane, and he could stand with them. He took care that the public never saw him in a wheelchair and that the press never highlighted his disability. He wanted to be known by what he could do, not what he couldn't.

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