Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945)

Franklin Roosevelt was born in 1882 in Hyde Park, New York. He was an only child whose mother doted on him. After graduating from Columbia Law School, he became the Democratic vice-presidential nominee and later served as Secretary of the Navy.

In 1921, disaster struck him in the form of polio. He was paralyzed from the waist down after his illness. He went to Warm Springs, Georgia, where he became an inspiration to other polio victims, as he developed a special healing center for them. In 1938, he was elected governor of New York.

He was elected President in 1933 and oversaw one of the worst periods of the American economy. Almost one in three Americans were out of work and many families were hungry. He instituted the New Deal, a series of governmental programs to help Americans get back to work and to provide relief to those in...