PRESIDENTIAL VISITS 2

​        If one was to name the greatest presidents of the United States the names of George Washington (who gave Savannah two cannons from Yorktown), Abraham Lincoln (who was given Savannah as a Christmas gift by Gen. Sherman), would surely come up and probably after them one of the next presidents mentioned would be Franklin Delano Roosevelt. FDR the president who led us through the Great Depression and World War II also called Warms Springs, Georgia his second home. He visited Warm Springs so often that his home there was called the ‘Little White House’. Warm Springs became a place  used to allow his polio to be seen. Everywhere else he was seldom seen in a wheelchair but at Warm Springs if he was not crawling into the pool made of the spring water of the town he could be found in his wheelchair. He created a space for other polio stricken to come and seek assistance and inspiration for dealing with polio. FDR while at Warm Springs also drove through the countryside of Georgia in a car he developed so he could drive using his hands and not his feet. A time he used to listen, speak, and get to know people from the rural south. He became an honorary citizen of Georgia. So it is no surprise that he found himself in Savannah one day.
         Unlike Warm Springs’ informality he came to Savannah on an official visit as President. He came to Savannah to honor Georgia’s Bicentennial. It would be a visit that lined the streets with people along the parade and found 40,000 people in the Savannah Municipal Stadium. FDR traveled to Savannah with his mother Sara Roosevelt a New York patrician of the highest order. Along the way she asked FDR, "Franklin, this is the most beautiful avenue I have ever seen. Don't you think so Franklin?" as they traveled down Victory Drive. One folklore of the visit had FDR stop the motorcade in front of the famed Gingerbread House across from the Bull Street Library so he could better observe the gingerbread on the house.
         His speech at the Municipal Stadium stands out for his appeal for support for normalization of relations with the Soviet Union as he prepared the nation for World War II. He also mentioned the US Steamship Savannah something he would have been familiar with since he made and signed over eight proclamations of National Maritime Day which is set on the day that Steamship Savannah first left for Europe.  He also closed with these words:

Materially we must strive to secure a broader economic opportunity for all men so that each shall have a chance to show the stuff of which he is made. Spiritually and ethically we must strive to bring about clean living and right thinking. We appreciate that the things of the body are important; but we also appreciate the things of the soul are immeasurably more important. The foundation stone of national life is and ever must be the high individual character of the individual citizen.

                                                   These words still resonate even today.