[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 55 (Thursday, May 1, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3928-S3929]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       Michigan Remembers F.D.R.

       Back in the 1920's, my father Alfred Angeli and a number of 
     his friends came over to this country to escape the Fascism 
     and Communism in Italy. They found a new life here in America 
     and they adored Franklin Delano Roosevelt. They had great 
     respect for him for the job he did in creating jobs and 
     putting everybody back to work.
       My father and about eight of his friends were very serious 
     in their respect for FDR, and honored him by naming their 
     hunting camp 'Campobello'. It was a very sad day when the 
     great man died. * * * My parents, who are now gone, would be 
     very proud to know they are taking part in this tribute to 
     Mr. Roosevelt.--Mike Angeli, Marquette, Michigan.
       About ten years ago, I appeared before the county board to 
     obtain approval for a grant to fund a senior citizens feeding 
     program. The chairman of the board got very upset calling me 
     something like ``a big spending-liberal-government interferer 
     * * * (like FDR)''. I told him I'm not old enough to have 
     served with President Roosevelt, but that he is an idol of 
     mine and that I was extremely honored to have been put in the 
     same category.--Ron Calery, Chippewa-Mackinac-Luce Community, 
     Action Agency Director, Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan.
       When FDR ran, the stock market had crashed and times were 
     tough. There were no jobs and no money. Hoover ran on a 
     platform of ``a chicken in every pot'', but people wanted a 
     job. Roosevelt won in a landslide, after he said he would put 
     people back to work. He did just that.
       Everyone had bills, and few people had the money to pay 
     them. So a situation was created where people could work off 
     their bills. If you had to go to the hospital while on 
     welfare, you worked the bill off with the city by sweeping 
     streets or picking up trash or cleaning the parks. Each time 
     you worked, you would reduce your bill. Though there were 
     years we didn't have two nickels to rub together, we 
     survived.--Arthur Carron, Bark River, Michigan.
       FDR literally transformed the country from a feeling of 
     overwhelming despair to hope and confidence. When Roosevelt 
     was elected I was approaching my 16th birthday. On the west 
     side of Detroit in a neighborhood of autoworkers practically 
     everyone was jobless. The giant Ford Rouge plant was working 
     at 25 percent of capacity. Other auto companies and all of 
     the auto supplier companies were in a similar situation. My 
     father and the fathers of all my boyhood friends were 
     unemployed. Men who were really willing and anxious to work. 
     There was a feeling of desperation and hopelessness. Most 
     important of all they lost their sense of dignity when they 
     could not provide for their families. Roosevelt, through the 
     various governmental programs, gave these men hope and a 
     sense of well being they had not experienced for some time.--
     Doug Fraser, Professor of Labor Studies, Wayne State U., 
     Former President of U.A.W., Northville, Michigan.
       Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, ``A man's mind stretched 
     by a new idea, will never return to its former dimension.'' I 
     was one of those fortunate unemployed young men who joined 
     with over three million other destitute kids and signed up 
     with the Civilian Conservation Corps.
       It seems that FDR scratched out his C.C.C. idea on a 
     restaurant napkin. This vision was an unprecedented gamble in 
     bringing a bankrupt nation back on its feet. I was one of 
     those three million who was lifted from the depths of 
     despair, each given a chance to earn self-respect, dignity 
     and self-esteem. How does a nation measure a dimension such 
     as that? Just consider the families that these men 
     represented, grateful for the monthly $25.00 and the succor 
     it supplied.
       I can testify to that. Sixty-four years ago when men's 
     spirits were tested by want and deprivation, it seems like 
     only yesterday that I walked into that welfare office. I was 
     not afraid of the hunger, but the indignity it caused. I felt 
     not a pain in my stomach, but an ache in my heart. . .I was 
     sworn into the C.C.C. Now, I was accepted, now I could say, 
     ``Hello to tomorrow''. I became a member of an idea whose 
     time had come. Roosevelt's tree army.--Rev. Bill Fraser, 
     First V.P. National Assoc. of C.C.C. Alumni, Grayling, 
     Michigan.
       My mother named me Franklin Delano Garrison in his honor. 
     From the time I was a small child I took a great pride in 
     being named for someone who was a hero to everyone I knew, 
     even though at first I wasn't really sure why. Then I came to 
     understand that my family was eating only because the New 
     Deal was providing some food assistance, and my father was 
     working only because the Works Progress Administration was 
     providing jobs. I came to see for myself the hardships that 
     the Depression had brought to the old, the hungry and the 
     deserted--and to realize that one man had led the nation in 
     providing not only sustenance but also hope where both had 
     been lost.--Franklin Delano Garrison, President, Michigan 
     State AFL-CIO, Lansing, Michigan.
       I am very happy that President Roosevelt is finally having 
     a memorial dedicated in his honor. I am 83 years old and 
     lived through the Depression, and know how bad times were. 
     Before the election of President Roosevelt, I worked on 
     welfare for $2.00 a day for an eight hour shift.
       With President Roosevelt's election times got better. With 
     the New Deal of the WPA, I got $22.00 a week for a four day 
     six hour shift. I will always be grateful to President 
     Roosevelt for social security, unemployment benefits and 
     being able to unionize for better wages and benefits and to 
     protect jobs. President Roosevelt will always be my idol.--
     Rudy Gregorich, Painesdale, Michigan.
       We members of the Eighth Armored Division had been on the 
     march, without a break, around the clock, for days--sometimes 
     unopposed, in other places, held up by the familiar and 
     bitter last-ditch Nazi resistance.
       At last, late one morning, a halt was signaled. We 
     dropped--dirty, hungry, and almost unconscious--and slept, 
     some in the ditches along the road, others stretched out on 
     the rear decks of their tanks, others where they sat in tank 
     turrets, in half tracks, or on truck seats.
       Then a startling message started down the line from the 
     lead vehicle, which had a short-wave radio. Men, as they 
     heard it, shook the next man awake and passed it on: 
     President Roosevelt was dead.
       In a sense, President Roosevelt was a soldier in that 
     fight--just like us. And like us, this good man was 
     exhausted. He was a casualty of the war. But he had the 
     satisfaction of knowing that he left the field with the 
     battle well in hand.--Jack R. Hendrickson, Ph.D., Birmingham, 
     Michigan.
       The year may have been 1932, or 1934, and my mother a widow 
     of some 60 years had been left well-provided for by my father 
     at his death in 1931. But the Great Depression struck the USA 
     and its economy was stagnant, mired down, seemingly unable to 
     extricate itself from the doldrums it found itself caught in 
     . . .
       It was a time of calamity, of no one knowing quite what to 
     do. Mother had never experienced this type of emergency in 
     her long life. There was little or no relief in sight. Radio 
     broadcasts were discouraging and gave no hint of the end of 
     the Depression in sight. My sister, married with three little 
     ones, recalls walking three or more miles to obtain 
     government free food and carrying it home, walking as she had 
     come.
       The one light on the horizon in the midst of this gloom was 
     the radio program when President Delano Roosevelt, elected a 
     few months previously, would address the people in his famous 
     fireside chats. His voice soothing, deep-textured, commanding 
     confidence as he spoke words of optimism were most welcome by 
     the bewildered public. ``We have nothing to fear, except fear 
     itself,'' he said on one momentous occasion. How the people

[[Page S3929]]

     clung to his words bearing hope that this President of the 
     United States instilled over the air. As someone noted sixty 
     years later, FDR could not raise himself from a chair, but by 
     moral strength was able to lift a great nation out of the 
     Depression in the Thirties! All America hung onto his words, 
     hung on to the confidence he instilled, in their government, 
     in their country, awaiting with patience for the clouds of 
     Depression to lift!--Dr. Marie Heyda, O.P., Grand Rapids 
     Dominicans, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
       My younger sister was in the wars and had the honor of 
     meeting President Roosevelt at his summer home.
       I feel that FDR was one of the greatest presidents that 
     ever lived. Even though he was so educated, he still was for 
     the average person. He did so much for the people while in 
     office.--Kathryn V. Holden, Saginaw, Michigan.
       * * * 1940. I was pregnant * * * and Newman, my husband, 
     was working for Labor's Nonpartisan League in the office of 
     the Philadelphia Joint Board, Amalgamated Clothing Workers of 
     America, 2000 South Street.
       Since I was not working and had no child care needs, I was 
     a volunteer in the office, handing out literature at rallies 
     and some house to house visiting in North Philly, in the 
     Kensington area and a bit in South Philly.
       Our work culminated in a huge rally for the President in 
     the stadium, shortly before the election. It was raining and 
     my husband and friends did not think I should go. But I did, 
     and it was the most impressive, exciting and largest rally I 
     ever participated in.
       My labor came early, and daughter Sharon was born at St. 
     Luke's Hospital November 3, the election was the next day * * 
     * Since I had made no plans for an absentee ballot and there 
     was no way I could get one of those days, I missed my 
     opportunity to vote for the third term of FDR. The only time 
     in my life I have failed to vote in an election either 
     primary or general.--Mildred Jeffrey, Detroit, Michigan.
       When the 73rd Congress opened * * * FDR bombarded Congress 
     with bills to stimulate the economy. During his first month 
     in office, he used his authority * * * to establish the 
     Public Works Administration which helped my father while laid 
     off from the railroad for about a year.--Leonard Klemm, 
     Saginaw, Michigan.
       President Roosevelt really left a great impact upon our 
     country. He came into office at the time of the Great 
     Depression and did much to relieve the suffering of the 
     people and to restore confidence in our banking system and 
     the Government in general. He won great respect through his 
     fireside chats, radio connection and as the first President 
     to address the nation on national television.--B.L. Little, 
     Saginaw, Michigan.
       I had only one personal encounter with President Roosevelt, 
     but it is one I can recall quite vividly even today. * * * 
     FDR had been campaigning for reelection that day in New 
     England, but the end of the day had brought him to New York. 
     By chance we saw his motorcade, which couldn't have been more 
     than two or three cars.
       He rode in an open car, and I can still see him waving his 
     hat and smiling as he passed by. He was an inspiration to me 
     then and he continues to inspire me today.--William G. 
     Milliken, Former Michigan Governor, Traverse City, Michigan.
       I became aware that President Roosevelt was planning to 
     recruit thousands of youths between ages 18 and 25 to serve 
     in forestry camps throughout the nation to perform tasks, 
     such as planting trees, building roads, erosion control, 
     fighting forest fires, miles of fire trails and telephone 
     lines strung, and other conservation related work.
       I had just turned 18 when I heard about the program, and at 
     the time was a barber's apprentice in Cascade, Michigan * * * 
     The Civilian Conservation Corps sounded like the answer to my 
     situation, and I immediately made myself available. * * *
       After leaving the C.C.C. camps, I enlisted in the U.S. Navy 
     * * *  While assigned to the Sick Officer's Ward, I was 
     attendant to then Secretary of the Navy, Claude Swanson. 
     During that time President Roosevelt visited Swanson twice * 
     * *  This was a great honor for me to have the opportunity to 
     stand close to the President of the United States.
       * * * Following a military career, I became involved in 
     organizing a civilian conservation corps alumni group here in 
     Grand Rapids, Michigan. * * *  with the support of the C.C.C. 
     Alumni veterans, was able to convince Governor Blanchard, and 
     the state legislature, to establish a Michigan Civilian 
     Conservation Corps patterned after Roosevelt's depression era 
     C.C.C. program.--Frank Munger, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
       My uncle, Billy Rogers, living in Chicago, was one of the 
     many. No job, no money and dependent on the small income of 
     his mother gave him little hope for the future. Thank God for 
     the C.C.C.! They took him in--fed and clothed him, taught him 
     the value of manual labor and gave him a sense of pride. 
     Friendships made in camp endured for many years.
       Diligent work and a cheerful attitude earned him the most 
     coveted job in camp: truck driver! After completing his 
     enrollment, he returned to Chicago. Due to his experience, he 
     was eligible to join the Teamsters Union and continued 
     working as an over-the-road truck driver until he retired. 
     All this due to the vision and persistence of one man--
     F.D.R.!--William Oberschmidt, Saginaw, Michigan.
       * * * on April 12, 1945. I was 13 years old at the time and 
     I remember the nuns grieving at school and how sad everyone 
     felt. It's about all anyone talked about or what you heard on 
     the radio.
       I don't think I understood the full impact of what 
     Roosevelt had accomplished until I was stationed in the 
     Pacific during the Korean War. I spent time on many of the 
     Pacific Islands where the war took place and it made me 
     realize what he had done to guide us through the second World 
     War * * *--Jack Salter, Royal Oak, Michigan.
       As a public official, I have given a lot of thought to the 
     question of leadership. What is leadership and how does it 
     manifest itself in public life? Although the answer to that 
     question is far from clear or simple, it seems to be embodied 
     in the memory of the person I consider our nation's greatest 
     president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
       My father was one of the millions who found themselves out 
     of work after the Crash of 1929. He directly benefited from 
     President Roosevelt's policies, taking part in the Civilian 
     Conservation Corps. That program helped my dad get back on 
     his feet, giving him, along with millions of others, hope and 
     purpose at a time when both seemed in short supply.
       Years later, facing another crisis--World War II--President 
     Roosevelt came to my hometown, Warren, to visit the tank 
     plant that was then producing Sherman Tanks by the thousands. 
     Moved by the sacrifice, commitment and ingenuity of the 
     people of southeast Michigan working to ensure that Naziism 
     was defeated, he dubbed that plant the ``Arsenal of 
     Democracy.''
       Now we in Warren are trying to follow his example, as we 
     work to transform the recently abandoned tank plant into a 
     new kind of arsenal: an arsenal for economic growth. As I go 
     to work each day, I frequently ask myself what President 
     Roosevelt would have done with today's issues. Looking at the 
     future of his Arsenal for Democracy, I believe that FDR would 
     be pleased.--Mark A. Steenbergh, Mayor, City of Warren, 
     Warren, Michigan.
       My father subscribed to the Chicago Tribune during the 
     depression since it was the cheapest paper in town at two 
     cents a copy. The Tribune had cartoonist by the name of 
     `Orr'. His cartoon appeared on the front page of the Tribune 
     and more often than not, his work of art was a slam against 
     President Roosevelt. As it turned out, the subscription was a 
     bad deal for my father, because my mother, being a staunch 
     Democrat and a supporter of FDR, would wait for the mailman 
     and promptly put the paper in the stove.--James F. Sodergren, 
     Marquette County Treasurer, Ishpeming, Michigan.
       I was a high school teacher during the Great Depression. 
     According to my memory, the American people had great faith 
     and believed that our President would do what was best for 
     the ``common good.'' We listened carefully and with pride to 
     his fireside chats. * * *
       And today, as we drive over miles of paved roads in 
     northern Michigan, we marvel at the lines of majestic 
     evergreens --so beautiful in summer and effective snow-
     barriers in winter! I relate with pride the work of the 
     C.C.C., that group of younger men who earned their livelihood 
     at that time by beautifying and preserving Michigan's natural 
     environment. Roosevelt's foresight has kept Michigan a 
     wonderful state!--Sister Agnes Thiel, O.P., Grand Rapids 
     Dominicans, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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