FDR - Jean Edward Smith [186]
They were just good friends with no selfish ends
To serve as they paced the decks;
There were George and Fred and the son of Ted
And Vincent (he signed the checks);
On the splendid yacht in a climate hot
To tropical seas they ran,
Among those behind they dismissed from mind
Was the well-known Forgotten Man!70
After two days at sea FDR wrote Sara that he was “getting a marvelous rest—lots of air and sun. Vincent is a dear and perfect host. George and Kermit and Freddie are excellent companions. When we land on the 15th I shall be full of health and vigor—the last holiday for many months.”71
In the early evening of February 15, Nourmahal docked at Miami and Roosevelt hurried to Bay Front Park, where he was scheduled to address the annual encampment of the American Legion. Some 20,000 legionnaires crammed the brightly lit park to greet the president-elect. Roosevelt spoke briefly, perched on top of the backseat of his open car. When he finished, he slid back into his seat and chatted amiably with Chicago mayor Anton Cermak, who was standing alongside, having made the pilgrimage to Miami to eat political crow.* Suddenly, from a distance no more than forty feet away, five shots rang out in quick succession. Blood spurted from the hand of a nearby Secret Service agent, Mayor Cermak crumpled to the ground, a woman standing behind FDR was hit twice in the abdomen, and two other people were wounded. Roosevelt sat immobile and unflinching, his jaw set, ready for what might follow. He had been spared by inches. At the critical moment an alert spectator, Mrs. Lillian Cross, had hit the assassin’s arm with her handbag and spoiled his aim.72
“I heard what I thought was a firecracker; then several more,” Roosevelt wrote later.
The chauffeur started the car. I looked around and saw Mayor Cermak doubled up.… I called to the chauffeur to stop. He did—about fifteen feet from where we started. The Secret Service man shouted to him to get out of the crowd and he started forward again. I stopped him a second time [and] motioned to have [Mayor Cermak] put in the back of the car, which would be first out. He was alive but I didn’t think he was going to last. I put my left arm around him and my hand on his pulse, but I couldn’t find any pulse.… For three blocks I believed his heart had stopped. I held him all the way to the hospital and his pulse constantly improved. I remember I said: “Tony, keep quiet—don’t move. It won’t hurt if you keep quiet.”73
The assassin, an unemployed thirty-two-year-old Italian bricklayer, Giuseppe Zangara, acted alone. He had bought his revolver at a pawnshop on North Miami Avenue for eight dollars. “I have always hated the rich and powerful,” he told police. “I do not hate Mr. Roosevelt personally. I hate all presidents, no matter from what country they come.” After Cermak died on March 6, Zangara was tried, convicted, and executed for murder.74
After the shooting Roosevelt remained at Jackson Memorial Hospital until Cermak was brought out of the emergency room. He spoke with him for several minutes and then visited the other shooting victims. About 11:15 he returned to the Nourmahal. If he had been unnerved, it did not show. “All of us were prepared, sympathetically, for any reaction that might come from Roosevelt now that the tension was over and he was alone with us,” wrote Moley.
There was nothing. Not so much as the twitching of a muscle to indicate that it wasn’t any other