PRESIDENT FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT - TYPED LETTER SIGNED 02/04/1939 - HFSID 279323

FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT
FDR signed this typed letter on White House letterhead to James Francis Thaddeus O'Connor, his former Comptroller of the Currency, in 1939 to thank O'Connor for a $1,000 contribution to Roosevelt's Warm Springs Foundation.
Typed letter signed "Franklin D Roosevelt". 1 page, 6¾x8¾, 1 sheet folded, on White House letterhead. Feb. 4, 1939. Addressed to the Honorable J. F. T. O'Connor, Los Angeles, California. In full: "Dear Jefty: I am sure you know how grateful I am for your sympathetic interest in the work of the Warm Springs Foundation and for the fine spirit which prompted your contribution of One Thousand Dollars for this cause. I want to thank you both for myself and in behalf of the Foundation for this generous gift. Affectionate regards, As ever yours,". The Georgia Warm Springs Foundation was founded by Roosevelt in 1927, after he was diagnosed with poliomyelitis. Roosevelt had discovered in 1924 that the hot springs in Georgia's southern Meriweather Springs soothed his polio symptoms. He even built a home there, which is where he died in 1945. The Georgia Warm Springs Foundation is now the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation. JAMES FRANCIS THADDEUS O'CONNOR (1886-1949, born in Grand Forks, North Dakota), also known as "Jefty", was appointed Comptroller of the Currency by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt from 1933, after the infamous bank holiday of March 1933. O'Connor re-organized banks and liquidated those that couldn't be saved. He also organized the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in 1933. O'Connor resigned in 1938 for an unsuccessful gubernatorial run in California. He was appointed a U. S. District Judge to California's Southern District in 1940. FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT (1882-1945, born in Hyde Park, NY) is an American politician who served as president during two of the most difficult times in world history, the Great Depression and World War II. He also served as president for four terms (1933-1945), longer than any other president in history. Roosevelt's parents were from old New York families, and he was raised in privilege. Theodore, his fifth cousin, was elected president in 1902; his leadership style and lust for reform made him Franklin's hero and role model. Roosevelt was elected to the New York State Senate in 1910; he ran as a Democrat in a district that hadn't elected a Democrat since 1884, but ran on his privileged name and rode a Democratic landslide to the State Senate, where he joined reformers in opposing New York City's Tammany Hall Democratic machine. He resigned in 1913 when appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy (1913-1920), where he worked to expand the Navy and founded the Navy Reserve and where he met Winston Churchill for the first time in 1918. He ran as vice president with James M. Cox of Ohio, but they were handily defeated by Warren Harding. He contracted a paralytic illness in 1921 while vacationing in Campobello Island, New Brunswick, widely believed to be poliomyelitis, which permanently paralyzed him from the waist down. Not many people knew at the time that he was paralyzed, though, thanks in part to a cooperative press. He was elected Governor of New York (1928-1932), a governorship that was marred by his reluctant deal-making with the faltering Tammany Hall machine during his 1930 re-election run. He was elected president in 1932, three years into the worldwide Great Depression, a depression that contributed to the rise of Adolf Hitler. Roosevelt tried to get people back to work with the New Deal and prevent the same thing happening in the United States. The New Deal was a patchwork of programs that scholars now agree had limited success at best in ending the Depression, and some of its programs, like the National Recovery Administration (NRA), were determined to be unconstitutional. However, programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps employed hundreds of thousands of Americans and programs like NRA and the Tennessee Valley Authority injected billions of federal dollars into the economy. Roosevelt was also responsible for Social Security benefits for the elderly and minimum wage laws. He began re-arming the United States in 1938, in the face of strong isolationism, and declared that the United States would become an "arsenal of democracy" against Hitler. But the isolationism dissolved with the attacks on Pearl Harbor, and the United States entered World War II. Roosevelt's administration put the nation on a war footing while coordinating strategy with his counterparts Churchill and Josef Stalin, the so-called "Big Three". He died four months before V-J Day and the official end of World War II on Aug. 12, 1945. Lightly toned, soiled and creased. Discolored along top, right and bottom edges. Light tears, possibly from binding, along left edge. Adhesive residue on back of letter (no show-through). Folded once and unfolded. Otherwise in fine condition.