On 30 January 1882, in a grand house overlooking the Hudson River in Hyde Park, New York, a baby named Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born. His parents were rich, his nursery was full of toy soldiers, and he grew up sailing boats and collecting stamps. He went to Harvard, married his distant cousin Eleanor, and entered politics young. By 1921, at age 39, he seemed unstoppable. Then, on a summer holiday, he came down with polio. Within days he could not move his legs. He would never walk on his own again.
For years Franklin worked himself back into public life from a wheelchair, hiding the chair from cameras and using heavy braces to stand for speeches. In 1932, with the Great Depression crushing America - 25 percent of workers had no job, banks were collapsing, hungry families queued for soup - voters chose him as president. He launched a flood of programs called the New Deal that built schools, dams, parks, and electric lines, and put millions of people back to work. Then he led America through World War Two alongside Britain's Churchill and the Soviet Union's Stalin.
Voters loved him so much they elected him president four straight times - the only person ever to do that. After Roosevelt, the Constitution was changed to limit presidents to two terms. He died in April 1945, just weeks before victory in Europe. Today Roosevelt's face is on the U.S. ten-cent dime, and on quiet days at Hyde Park you can still walk past his desk, his wheelchair, and the boyhood stamp collection of one of America's most determined leaders.
