fdr library. he was the deputy director and senior vice president for broadcasting and new media at the museum. he was a founding partner at the university of maryland's future of informational alliance and a pioneer in interactive digital media prior to his work at the museum. sparrow is a emmy award-winning television producer. he started his television career at kpix in san francisco and i saw we've got some folks from california, so we'll have to let us know if they they know your work paul from california and that are you with this fall? i'm here. yes. thank you patrick for having me here to them. i'm really pleased to be part of this series. i them in their fantastic. terrific we're delighted to have you before we let you jump in. i have to ask. how are you doing? how's the staff doing with the with the pandemic and everything? well, as you know, the national archives has taken a very conservative approach and staff health and safety has been the number one priority. so we've been closed to the public since march our staff is healthy and well we started bringing some of the staff back on part-time, but then as the detection rate increase we've closed back down again, but we're hoping that with the vaccine and with the trends we're seeing that hopefully will be able to get back to work soon. that's a fingers crossed. we're all looking forward to that. we miss our visitors. well, i know you've got a great presentation to give us so i'm gonna get out of the way give you the screen and the mic and afterwards we will obviously take q&a. so again, i invite our our viewers if you would like to ask a question. don't don't feel like you have to wait till the end you can get them in the in the chat box as paul's talking and we'll try and get to as many as possible when we get to the q&a paul. it's all yours. hey patrick, i appreciate that and welcome to you all. i'm a huge fan of the national archives foundation and very very pleased to be able to tonight to talk to you about franklin eleanor roosevelt who i think are probably the most important couple in 20 century american history we can start with our first slide. go ahead to the next one. so franklin roosevelt, you know really is the sun of sarah and james roosevelt go to the next slide and here he is in 1900 as he just graduated from groton and about to head off to harvard. he had had a truly privileged childhood growing up here on the hudson valley on the riverside on 1000 acres of property with a summer home and campobello and an apartment family had apartment in manhattan, and he really was. part of the very privileged elite next slide, please. there were two branches of the roosevelt family one branch that lived up in the hudson valley. that's the franklin roosevelt side another branch which lived out on long island, and that was the teddy roosevelt side. and this is eleanor roosevelt in her wedding dress, and she was given away by her uncle teddy roosevelt who happened to be president of the united states at the time her mother and father both died when she was young a child and so she became sort of teddy roosevelt's surrogate daughter and part of this big roosevelt family next slide, please. now frankly that eleanor has seen each other and family events while they were growing up, but as he was graduating from harvard, he really sort of fell for her and this is 1905. this is right after the wedding and as you can see, you know, they were a handsome couple and they were the melding of two branches of this family and as theodore roosevelt famously said to eleanor is good. you're keeping the name in the family. and of course. their wedding was scheduled for march 17th, because her uncle teddy was going to be in new york for saint patrick's day because as his other daughter once commented on him teddy roosevelt liked to be the baby at every christening the bride at every wedding and the corps said every funeral next slide, please. the young family grew quickly. eleanor was not a great mother by her own admissions in her autobiography. she had not had a nurturing mother growing up because he had been orphan so young, but she started having children and then in 1910 or so at franklin roosevelt gets into politics runs for state senate and when woodrow wilson is elected president. he is appointed as an assistant secretary of the navy and they all moved to washington dc now the wife of the assistant secretary of the navy back then had very very specific and rigid social responsibilities calling on the wives of other naval officers hosting these events and things and eleanor was not familiar with the washington social scene. so she needed someone to help her so she hired a young girl from a very prominent family next slide. please named lucy mercer now lucy was very efficient. her family was on hard times, but they had a really hepatic background and she was very very good at her job and during this time as franklin roosevelt was sort of rising to prominence in the democratic party. they were a power couple so when the war breaks out next slide please franklin roosevelt's role as the assistant secretary the navy becomes very important. he actually goes is a photograph of him in france in 1918. he had just flown on an airplane for the first time. you can see him with the helmet coming down off the plane and he was over there to inspect the naval operations. that was a tremendous effort obviously of getting all of the american soldiers over there and the materials and the supplies and he was really in his element. he loved the navy. he'd studied naval history from the time. he was a young boy, and of course you all know that in 1918. there was a terrible epidemic that's swept the world a pandemic the spanish flu and as fdr was coming home from the trip to europe. he got quite to sick and when he arrived at home, he was taken off the boat in an ambulance and put to bed and eleanor roosevelt began unpacking his things and in the process of unpacking his clothes she discovered a bundle of love letters from lucy mercer, and it turned out that her husband had having an affair with her social secretary. now this is a really seminal moment in they're both their relationship in some ways in 20th century american history because as you can go to the next slide please as they are struggling with this. this is the photograph taken in 1920. they're trying to decide whether they're going to stay together or not an elder offers to grant. franklin a divorce if he wants one now franklin was in love with lucy and there was a great moment where the whole thing could come apart next slide, please but franklin's mother sarah delano roosevelt who was a very very powerful figure in franklin's life told him that if he divorced eleanor his political career is over and she would disown him. and so franklin and eleanor came to an understanding franklin agreed that he would never see lucy again and that they would continue on as a as a partnership there was you know five children that they had to take care of. there was ankles political career and so they decided to stay together. although clearly the relationship was fractured next slide, please. then the next year 1921 franklin gets polio and this promising career of this dynamic energetic very very strong. democratic leader is suddenly thrown in to some question because polio has seriously handicap team use a photograph of they are is in warm springs, georgia. he became very interested in this polio filtation center that he was trying to develop down there in georgia. he sort of disappears off the scene a mean while eleanor roosevelt becomes the public face of the roosevelt name. she starts attending meetings. she joins the women's democratic coalition. she becomes very active and as she becomes more active in this case. she's keeping the roosevelt name alive. so after a few years franklin gradually comes back into the political scene and famously in 1928. he runs for governor of new york becomes governor of new york and at his political careers launched now very few people realize just how physically handicapped he was at that point. he was essentially paralyzed from the waist down and yet he developed a walking style that allowed it to pretend people knew he'd had polio but to pretend that he wasn't that severely crippled next slide, please. now the two of them were incredibly powerful and dynamic campaign when he decided to run for president in 1932 as the depression raised across the country. eleanor was a real strong supporter and a wonderful surrogate on the campaign trail now if you look at this picture, you can see several things that are classic fdr standing up. you wouldn't know he was paralyzed from the waist down willing steel leg braces, but he's holding on to the railing so that it would appear as if he could stand and when he would walk he would always hold on to the arm of his son or his bodyguard or someone like that and usually have a cane in the other hand so it would appear that he could walk he won the 1932 presidential election with a very large majority and came into the white house with this very progressive agenda to remake the way the federal government interacts with the american public. and of course eleanor was really very strongly committed to this. she was a very strong progressive. she believed it was federal government's job to help people who needed help and she was in many ways the conscience of the administration whereas franklin roosevelt was much more pragmatic. he wanted to get things done and that was always the question is how do you get what needs to be done done and yet? meet the goals and ideals of eleanor roosevelt next slide, please. one of their most remarkable abilities was that both of them were the masters of their media and during their era newspapers were the dominant source of information, but radio was emerging as really the best way to communicate people a way to transcend the political editors of the newspapers and really communicate directly with the people and franklin became an absolute master of the radio famously. he becomes president on march 4th. he was the last president inaugurated in march. during the midst of a terrible banking crisis and banks are foundry all across the country and his first fireside chat radio address he tries to calm the country and explain that they've closed the banks. he's going to reopen the banks and they're going to try to solve this problem and as the comedian will rogers said fdr explained the banking crisis. so well that even understood what happened. but he was so persuasive and so calming and so reassuring about the future and positive about it that when they reopened the banks instead of there being a run on the banks, which was the great fear. in fact people flowed their money back into the banks and although nothing economically had changed. he had essentially ended the bank in crisis by doing what he believed was the most important thing which was to end the fear as he famously said in his first and all girl dress. the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, and he was talking about the banking crisis. um, eleanor also had a remarkable radio career. she did radio programs later on and showing in 1935. she started a daily newspaper column, so she had a very strong public voice which is unprecedented for a first lady up to that point. she also became the eyes and ears of franklin roosevelt. she would travel a country she would talk to people she would come back and report to him. and so he really understood what was happening out there. and of course his famous the cartoons about eleanor roosevelt showing up an unexpected places, you know in a coal mine replaces like that next slide, please so they were a dynamic team with tremendous influence on the american public and the public was fascinated by them this here. they are sitting in the front yard of their home of franklin's mother's home in hyde park new york. it's a it's called springwood. this is where he grew up and really was the center of his life and when you look at this beautiful picture, you can see that rolling hills you can still see much of this landscape there as it exists and one of fdr's closest assistance was a woman named missy the hand marguerite missy, lehan. she had come with him when he first ran for vice president. she was with him through his polio and governor. and she became really almost like a chief of staff when he moved to the white house and she took a lot of home movies. so we're going to look at some of those home movies now to give you a little bit of a behind the scenes look at the roosevelt so we can go ahead to the video. now here he is in warm springs, georgia. actually this so this is in the backyard of springwood again, you can see elinor knitted eleanor knitted constantly in footage of her you'll see her knitting on boats. you'll see her knitting in cars and on trains it was a way she could be productive and franklin of course was enormously intelligent and absorbed huge amounts of information. so even when he was on vacation or on his home and he came up to springwood a lot. they would bring stacks of papers to read and design that's his daughter the tall blonde and his grandchildren there playing in the in the backyard. this is the home at springwood now, he had a study before the library's built. he had to study there and his mother's house which is where he did his official work. that's missy on the left and mcintyre on the right marvin mcintyre who was essentially his formal secretary and in this room, which you can still see when you visit the house you can see the books and desk, and this is where he would play with his stamp collection. he was a very avid collector. he collected stamps and ship models and naval manuscripts and one of the strange things about this situation was that they didn't really have their own home. so this was at fdr's home. not his home. so here they are back in warm springs, georgia. there's missy in the middle there. so someone else was using her camera to shoot this and you can see it's a rare footage you can see how withered his legs are and the reason he loved these pools at warm springs was that they allowed him to feel like he was able to swim and had some freedom and he spent almost half of his fortune converting that into a rehabilitation center. so here again, here's some of the home movies of that still photo you saw and they relationship between them at this point was very complicated because eleanor was still some what removed emotionally from their relationship and she was developing her own persona as a you know, a very very active first lady and franklin was the brilliant in the way. he would use her if she would come out with something with a new idea and say something if it generated a lot of controversy, he would say, oh, that's when this is i have no control over her but if it was well accepted then they would move on move on with it. he could use her as a bellweather. this is a party. those are the four sons there behind them and anna the daughter on the far, right? this was a his mother's birthday party where the entire clan got together in the backyard at springwood. you can see the four boys all very good looking young men all of them served in act after during world war ii and here we are a little bit more home movies from a place near the warm springs foundation and they love to have these picnics. they would have picnics in springwood. then warm springs at the end of the first hundred days. this is amazing footage at the end of the first hundred days. he sailed a boat with his son in a couple of boys up the new england coast to their home in campobello canada. that's his son james there and you can see he and eleanor she wasn't on the boat. she didn't care for sailing and yeah, this was a man who's paralyzed in the waist down the 40 foot yacht sailing in the north atlantic, you know as president of the united states. it's it goes to a lot of his characteristics, which was that he loved to live life. he wanted to be an adventurer and he loved to see and anything having to do with the sea. here's the the media that followed them everywhere and any having to do with the sea or the navy he was just passionate about again. you can see here how he's standing. holy on to his son james his arm with the cane in one hand and if you were to just see these in the newsroom newsreel at a movie theater, you would think that he's perfectly, you know capable standing. this is the last sequence. this is the car that we have at the museum. they on the property they had in warm hyde park they grew trees and they grew corn and other things and everywhere. they went of course, this was a a photo opportunity and you'll see the the press who were there with them. everywhere they went thank you now on to the next slide. so their relationship was remarkable in the effectiveness. it had in changing american politics. most importantly they changed the relationship between the federal government and the american public next slide, please. then of course a 1939 world war ii breaks out hitler invades poland and everything changes, you know the efforts around the the social renovation after the depression giveaway to having to prepare america, which was very isolationist to get involved in this european war and most americans didn't want to have anything to do with it next slide, please. in 1940 during that was the wars raging in europe fdr makes the controversial decision to run for a third term which no one had ever done an american history. he is re-elected and this is inauguration day 1941 with heat and eleanor leaving the white house, and this was he thought that he was the best person to deal with these international crises and to help transition america into a wartime footing and he famously talked about america becoming the arsenal of democracy. even we wouldn't set our boys to fight, but we would provide the weapons and material for england and the soviet union to fight germany next slide, please. now eleanor, so, this is march of 1941. eleanor was a strong champion of civil rights. so here she is down at the tuskegee institute. this is one of my favorite photographs of her because it was a lot of controversy but whether african-americans could serve in the military and what roles they could play so she goes down to this tuskegee institute. that's chief anderson behind the controls and he takes her up for a flight and flies around for 45 minutes an african-american man and a white first lady in this small plane. it was it was radical, but it changed the perception and it essentially helped create the tuskegee airmen and eventually the red tails and this was the kind of thing that she would do she would use her celebrity. she would use her voice with authority to change the way people thought about african-american about immigrants about poor people and she really dedicated yourself to changing that equilibrium next slide, please. so in june of 1941 the library open here is fdr in the white suit doing the opening ceremonies for the presidential library prior to this point when president's left office, they just took everything with him. all their papers were considered their personal property and he really believed that presidential papers belong to the american public. so he built the library to house both his presidential records, but also his collections his books his ship models his paintings his stamp collection were the one thing that he didn't give to the american public because when he died he that his children sell it next slide, please but inside the museum what this was called the oddities gallery where all the little weird gifts that would come into him either from american public or from other people were put on display and that large sphinx like head is still on display in the library