Franklin D. Roosevelt

American politician, U.S. President 1933-1945; the only one to serve four terms. A state Senator in 1910-13, he was Assistant Secretary of the Navy 1913-20, and Attorney Governor of New York 1929-33, Roosevelt was elected to the nation's highest office in November 1932.

In 1902, he was a senior at Harvard, handsome and personable when he began courting his fifth cousin, Eleanor. He proposed the following year and they married on 17 March 1905, New York City. In the next 11 years they had six kids, Anna (1906); James (1907); Franklin Jr. (1909), who died in infancy; Elliott (1910); another Franklin Jr. (1914); and John (1916).

By the time their youngest was born, Franklin was a rising Democratic politician, first representing his home district of Hyde Park in the New York State Assembly and then serving as assistant secretary of the Navy.

In 1918, Eleanor found that Franklin was having an affair with her secretary, Lucy Mercer. Their marriage survived, but in name only; they occupied separate bedrooms and lived separate lives.

On 11 August 1921, while at Campabello, he swung his legs over the side of the bed to get up and found himself paralyzed from the waist down by polio. Through sheer force of will, he pushed himself through years of rehab, with hours of exercise and hours immersed in water. He did regain most of his bodily functions but could never again walk unaided, and wore heavy braces on his legs. A sympathetic press aided him in his concealment of his handicap during his governorship and presidency.

Roosevelt's grace under pressure helped ease, if not heal, the fracture between himself and his wife, winning her admiration for his courage under great adversity. Running for public office, he was elected Governor of New York in 1928, and he attained the presidency in 1932.