AILSA CHANG, HOST:
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt died 80 years ago in Warm Springs, Georgia. A polio sufferer, he first went there for healing, to soak in the town's namesake waters. But the rural Georgia landscape and its people also helped shape his political philosophy that the federal government could pull the nation out of the Great Depression. A ceremony over the weekend commemorated FDR's legacy, which is now being threatened by President Trump's anti-big government and America First agenda. NPR's Debbie Elliott reports.
DEBBIE ELLIOTT, BYLINE: Under a clear, blue Georgia sky and a crisp spring breeze, an honor guard plants the U.S. flag in front of the Little White House at Warm Springs, now a national historic landmark and state park.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Center hike, plant colors.
ELLIOTT: People are gathered on the lawn to mark the day President Roosevelt died here on April 12, 1945. But first, Hal Toby Raper wants to show me something pointing through the tree canopy in the distance.
HAL TOBY RAPER: Can't really see. There's a mountain here.
ELLIOTT: OK.
RAPER: It goes all the way up to about 1,100 feet. And I was at the last house on top of the mountain when he died in this house. I had just turned 6.
ELLIOTT: The retired dentist is now on the Memorial Advisory Committee here, dedicated to preserving the story of Roosevelt's relationship with Warm Springs, Georgia.
RAPER: I'm standing here talking to you because of FDR.
ELLIOTT: His mother, a physical therapist, and his father, a doctor, met here. They came to work for the foundation Roosevelt established in 1927 to treat people with polio after he'd found relief here.
RAPER: He swam in the water of the pool - Warm Springs, still right there. And he liked it. He said, I can feel some movement in my toes, first time ever.
ELLIOTT: Raper says after Roosevelt, a Democrat, was elected president in 1932, he returned often to his retreat here, connecting with Americans struggling in the Depression. What he saw in rural Georgia was very different than his experience growing up in Hyde Park, New York.
RAPER: This was a very poor part of the country in those days, when he came. He really learned and knew many, many of the common working people who lived here.
ELLIOTT: That remains a source of pride for residents, says local state representative Debbie Buckner.
DEBBIE BUCKNER: When he came to this part of Georgia, he saw people in a different way than he had ever seen them before. And I like to think that as Georgians, we helped him be the president that he was, providing services for people to have a hand up, not necessarily a handout. And I think we still need that today.
ELLIOTT: Roosevelt's New Deal included rural electrification, agriculture programs, Social Security, banking and labor reforms, along with new government spending on roads and bridges, libraries and parks. Buckner, a Democrat, believes the America that FDR helped create feels fragile today.
BUCKNER: Most of the people that I talk to throughout the district are feeling afraid, whether it's services that are gone or people that they know that are losing jobs or what the economy might do as a result of tariffs. There's just a multilayer level of uncertainty that cause them to be fearful.
RAPHAEL WARNOCK: Good to see you, man.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Welcome to the Little White House. Yes, sir.
WARNOCK: I can't wait. It's great to be here.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: This is our...
ELLIOTT: U.S. Senator, the Reverend Raphael Warnock, the Georgia Democrat, stops in a small museum on the property where there's a partial watercolor painting of Roosevelt's face and shoulders.
WARNOCK: This is the unfinished portrait here.
JASON GRANTHAM: That is the unfinished.
ELLIOTT: Site manager Jason Grantham explains the significance of FDR's unfinished portrait.
GRANTHAM: He once was painting that portrait on April 12, 1945, when the president collapsed, and he died...
ELLIOTT: He'd suffered a stroke and died just months into his fourth term as president and weeks before the end of World War II. Warnock is in Warm Springs on the 80th anniversary of FDR's death to give a keynote speech on his legacy.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
WARNOCK: It was an unfinished portrait, an unfinished presidential term, an unfinished legacy. And in many ways, the America he fought for remains unfinished.
ELLIOTT: Warnock uses the opportunity to contrast FDR's legacy to President Trump's agenda.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
WARNOCK: He sought simply to make America great, period.
(APPLAUSE)
ELLIOTT: He says the Trump administration's work to slash the federal workforce threatens what FDR helped accomplish.
WARNOCK: Roosevelt said we have nothing to fear but fear itself. President Trump is bent on weaponizing fear. He and those who are working alongside him - Elon Musk and others - are counting on a context in which federal workers wake up every day and wonder whether or not they have a job. They seem to enjoy that. They want us to be afraid of one another.
ELLIOTT: But there's a debate over whether the U.S. still needs or can afford the buildup of government programs that FDR spearheaded.
JEFFREY MIRON: And I think that was the first step in the U.S. moving toward a more redistributionist view of the economy, and I think that that's undesirable.
ELLIOTT: Jeffrey Miron is a senior lecturer in economics at Harvard and vice president for research at the libertarian Cato Institute.
MIRON: FDR sort of changed the thinking that the federal government needs to be involved in controlling the economy and running the economy and expanding expenditure up and down to moderate business cycles and all those sorts of things. And my view is, on the whole, that's been negative.
(CROSSTALK)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: This will be a good picture.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: Yeah.
ELLIOTT: But in Warm Springs, Georgia, there remains a fondness for FDR.
HAVEN ROOSEVELT LUKE: My name is Haven Roosevelt Luke. I am FDR's great-grandson.
ELLIOTT: Luke says it's gratifying to see that the community's bond with his great-grandfather is still strong.
LUKE: The state of Georgia gave so much to FDR, not just his vision politically, but personally. I think he felt most comfortable here.
ELLIOTT: But he's alarmed at what's happening in the country.
LUKE: I feel like we're in an extraordinarily divisive time, when the foundation that FDR laid is being torn down. And I feel it's really, really important to come here and try to keep that legacy alive.
ELLIOTT: Luke says his great-grandfather built a coalition that advocated how the government can serve the interests of all Americans, not just those with access to power. He fears another key part of FDR's legacy is breaking down the consensus that endured for decades after the end of World War II.
LUKE: And he also promoted the notion that global peace was based on global economic security for everybody. So he promoted free trade. He promoted open borders. He was in favor of a global community because he felt that didn't just enhance our security, it enhanced everybody's security.
ELLIOTT: Despite his sense of his great-grandfather's legacy facing what he calls death by a thousand cuts, Luke says he will hold on to hope because he says that's what FDR would have done.
Debbie Elliott, NPR News, Warm Springs, Georgia.
(SOUNDBITE OF JOEL JAKOBSSON'S "OLD MONEY") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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