On April 12, 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was carried to his bedroom at The Little White House in Warm Springs, Georgia, by his staff, after he collapsed while posing for a portrait.
At 3:35 that afternoon, after tremendous medical efforts, the nation’s 32nd President was pronounced dead at age 63. On April 13, 1945, the President’s body was taken by train from Warm Springs to Washington, D.C. for a state funeral. He was later taken to his family home at Hyde Park, New York where he was buried in the Rose Garden.
During the busy years between 1932 and 1945, President Roosevelt only visited his beloved Little White House on 16 occasions while he and the nation struggled through the Great Depression of 1929 and then World War II. However, many of the New Deal programs developed during FDR’s presidency, which greatly benefited the South, are believed by presidential historians to have been based on his experiences in Warm Springs and the surrounding rural areas of Georgia.
Scott Kent, a native Mississippian and Ole Miss graduate, lives in Atlanta where he works for IHG (InterContinental Hotels Group), the world’s largest hotel company. He majored in journalism and business while at Ole Miss and later earned a master’s degree in journalism administration from the University of Memphis. During his career in the hospitality industry, he’s helped launch many of IHG’s newest hotel brands, including Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn Express, and Hotel Indigo. In addition to traveling across all 50 states, he has worked in more than 50 countries. He can be reached at scott.kent@ihg.com