23 Dec FDR’s Funeral Train
(2010) FDR’s Funeral Train by Robert Klara is the story of the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his final trip back home to Hyde Park. On April 12, 1945, the exhausted President was working from the Little White House in Warm Springs, GA when he suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage. He was sitting for a portrait painting by an artist who had come to White Springs with Lucy Mercer Rutherford, his dear friend and former mistress.
I have visited that very room in the cottage that was such a haven for FDR. The rooms are surprisingly small. I could hardly photograph his bedroom, and trust me, there was no room for a king-sized bed. The kitchen where Daisy Bonner prepared some of the President’s favorite dishes was a vintage display of well-used utensils and appliances.
Who would have thought I would be so fascinated by the details of the train itself that left Warm Springs. I found one connection after another as it meandered north through one town after another, thousands upon thousands of tearful spectators paying their respects. Atlanta’s prominent mortician Fred Patterson oversaw the arrangements of the casket and embalming.
When the train got to Atlanta, there were 20,000 people waiting. Only one hundred were allowed onto the platform. 2000 soldiers flanked the track. Atlanta’s mayor William B. Hartsfield presented a huge spray of flowers on behalf of the citizens of Atlanta.
As the train approached Gainesville, GA, fifty miles north of Atlanta, a group of women picking cotton dropped to their knees and raised their palms up to heaven. This was typical of the response from the Southerners who had so adored their President.
25,000 people came toward the station in Greenville, S.C. In Charlotte, N.C. just about everybody in town sang “Onward Christian Soldiers” in unison. A newsman reported that they sang as though they were asking, “What are we going to do now?”
For the mile-long procession from Union Station to the White House the casket was lifted onto a ceremonial caisson, pulled by seven white horses. Twenty-four heavy bombers, B-17s and B-24s, flew overhead. Only 378 people were invited to attend the White House funeral, and it was a good thing because the humidity was almost unbearable. The service was twenty-three minutes long.
I loved all the research, the detailed descriptions of who was there and what they did. There was a spy for the KGB on the train too … you’ll have to read the book to find out more. The author quoted one of the West Point cadets who accompanied the coffin to the burial site. That night he wrote home to his family and expressed what so much of the country, the world, was feeling:
“As I stood there I felt a tear trickling down my cheek. Not more than thirty feet ahead of me was my ideal in life — perhaps the greatest man the world has ever seen.“
FDR’s Funeral Train: A Betrayed Widow, a Soviet Spy, and a Presidency in the Balance on amazon.com
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