Georgia gathers at Little White House on 80th anniversary of FDR’s death

He may be long gone, said U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, but what he wrought remains as indelible as the colors on a flag.

“I stand in awe of this man,” said Warnock, a Democrat and the featured speaker. “Where did he get such imagination, determination?”

He might have gotten some of it in this crossroads town 70 miles south of Atlanta, which he first visited in 1924. Roosevelt came to Warm Springs hoping the waters from which the town got its name would offer him some relief from polio, perhaps free him from the 10-pound braces he wore on both legs.

While he didn’t find a cure, said Warnock, the nation’s 32nd president found something else — a region suffering the twin afflictions of hunger and want. Government, Roosevelt knew, could help alleviate both.

From that realization, said Warnock, eventually sprung the New Deal, a compendium of federal initiatives so sweeping that it transformed the country. The programs it offered helped raise a nation that had been knocked flat by the Great Depression.

“He did more in a wheelchair than most presidents ever imagine sitting in an Oval Office,” Warnock said.

“He sought to make America great. Period.”

Social programs, vaccines face scrutiny in current White House

The Little White House, gleaming white and built of pine, perched on a rocky promontory and ringed by oaks, is the same now as it was that sunny afternoon in 1945 when Roosevelt died while posing for a portrait.

It’s filled with furniture of the period, dark and solid. Boards of varying widths comprise its walls. Hanging in one closet is a leash set aside for the “first dog,” a bouncy little Scottish terrier named Fala.

While the structure appears unchanged, the same cannot be said for some segments of American life. Some New Deal initiatives that bore Roosevelt’s imprint, Social Security especially, are now getting a hard look from officials in the Trump administration.

What FDR created is under assault, Warnock said.

“His legacy remains relevant, compelling and instructive in this moment,” Warnock said. “We’re in a moment right now where people are trying to put a squeeze on the rights we take for granted.”

Credit: Mark Davis for the AJC

Credit: Mark Davis for the AJC

Another big change: a growing distrust of vaccines — even for polio. Introduced to wide use seven decades ago, the polio vaccine is credited with virtually wiping out a scourge that left children in iron lungs or walking with cumbersome braces. It’s considered one of science’s great successes.

But science is under unprecedented pressure from a new generation of government and research officials. Chief among them: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Trump administration’s secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. As recently as 2023, he questioned the safety of a vaccine that would have freed a young FDR from a lifetime in a wheelchair and braces.

In Warm Springs, FDR is everywhere

Roosevelt looms large here. The road bringing traffic to Warm Springs is called the Roosevelt Highway. The town’s water tower reminds motorists that FDR lived here. The only place to get breakfast early in the morning is named after him; his portraits grace its walls — even in the restrooms.

There’s FDR State Park, one of the largest in the state Department of Natural Resources’ inventory of public green spaces. The state agency also owns and operates the Little White House. Last year, more than 42,000 people visited it.

Credit: AP

Credit: AP

FDR may have come to Warm Springs for its purported healing waters, said Valarie Ikhwan, DNR’s chief historian. He also discovered a town whose people were just as warm as the springs’ 88-degree Fahrenheit waters.

Ikhwan thinks they still are.

“That is a common aspect of the community,” Ikhwan said. “You can walk around Warm Springs, and you can still feel their (residents’) pride” for having hosted him.

That’s not hyperbole. Just ask Gerrie Thompson, owner of the Hotel Warm Springs Bed and Breakfast Inn. It has stood downtown since 1907, almost two decades before FDR made his way to Georgia to sample its waters.

The hotel lobby is a monument to all things FDR. Its walls feature newspapers from the period. “ROOSEVELT DIES” trumpets one. Photos from the period are everywhere, too — the president sitting in a car longer than a sermon on a hot Sunday, his grin as bright as the car’s chrome; departing the train that brought him to Georgia; and more.

Thompson’s family revered Roosevelt. For her mom and dad, “there wasn’t another president,” said Thompson, who spent her early years growing up in Atlanta’s Grant Park community. “It was just Roosevelt.”

Why is that? Thompson nodded her head once to emphasize what she was about to say. “He was good for the people.”

Credit: NYT

Credit: NYT

Good for Warm Springs, too, said Lisa Butts, owner of Mother Daughter Antiques. She sells her goods in a reconfigured grocery store and garage on the edge of downtown. It’s been in her family for two generations.

Without FDR, she said, Warm Springs “would just be another little railroad town.”

Warm-water pools, Eleanor Roosevelt school get face-lifts

Great things are in the works in Warm Springs, estimated population 443. The town’s famed warm-water pools, closed for repairs, have just been refilled. They remain closed but should open soon, officials say.

Just outside the town’s limits is another Roosevelt historic site. The Eleanor Roosevelt School, opened in the mid-1930s, helped educate Meriwether County’s African American children. Roosevelt helped fund the school, named in honor of the first lady.

Credit: Andrew Feiler

Credit: Andrew Feiler

The building is now dark and empty, but a campaign is underway to transform the school into a museum and community center. On Saturday, before the Little White House ceremony, about 30 people got a tour of the old school — and, boosters hope, a look at the building’s future.

And if that wasn’t enough…

Warm Springs hosted its annual party, the Spring Fling. Merchants popped open canopies and sold things that glitter or taste good. Children whooped and howled in a bouncy house. Traffic slowed to a crawl as people tried to see as much as they could without actually stopping. The town pulsed with life.

FDR would have felt right at home.