Durant Weekly News
January 15, 1962
Thoughts…
FDR Great President, Time Shows
By Della Springer
It isn’t usual for me to write on just one subject. Most times my writing is general, but I got to thinking of the leaders of our land, past and present. I think a lot of our president that we have now, but the greatest one in my estimation was Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Our nation was tottering on the verge of bankruptcy when he took office. As many of you remember, times were awful. Most work to be had paid only from 50 cents to one dollar a day. Jobless pounded the pavement day after weary day, vainly searching for work that was not to be had.
Long lines at soup kitchens blocked traffic, breaking the huger of many, but also breaking their spirits and doing untold damage to their pride.
Farm produce sold for a pittance, scarcely enough to pay off the loan that inevitably came due in the fall. –Then we elected a president – but wait. I can best tell it with a poem I wrote years ago. I know it has been published several times, but here it is again – lest you forget:
Backward turn backward Oh time in your flight,
Give us a leader that does things just right.
A leader so gentle, so kind and so true,
He gave his all gladly for me and for you.
When all seemed lost, jobless thronged the street,
He brought forth prosperity and plenty to eat.
He gave his life finally, to bring things to par,
Let’s never forget him, our own F. D. R.
From Don’t Know Much About the Presidents, by Kenneth C. Davis:
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945)
Elected president in 1933 by a landslide vote. (Bryan County: Roosevelt- 7,650; Hoover- 825)
Roosevelt died in office in 1945. It was his third term.
“He was elected at the moment of America’s gravest crisis since Lincoln confronted secession, with the nation crippled by an economic disaster so severe that millions had simply lost hope. When the full fury of the Great Depression was unleashed on the country --- closing banks and business, forcing people from their jobs and homes, leaving millions starving --- the idea that the government should actually do something about it was still heresy, especially to the Republican Party and the business class. Government was supposed to stay out of the way and let the markets fix things. To do otherwise was Socialism, Bolshevism. And certainly un-American.
Franklin D. Roosevelt had other ideas.”