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Franklin D. Roosevelt visits New Mexico

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Speakers Platform Roosevelt train Lamy, New Mexico 1932 Speakers Platform Roosevelt train Lamy, New Mexico 1932 Author's personal collection

 

Franklin D. Roosevelt visits New Mexico

by

Arthur Scott

 

  

 

   The photo above, from my private collection, was taken on September  27, 1932 at Lamy, New Mexico. Then New York Governor Roosevelt was on a "whistle-stop" campaign railroad tour after receiving the Democratic presidential nomination at the Chicago convention in June. He spoke to a group from the state Democratic

 convention, being held in Santa Fe, who had just nominated my grandfather, Governor Arthur Seligman for a re-election bid. It is of note that FDR was paralyzed from the waist down in 1921. He had been fitted with a pair of iron braces that allowed him to stand while giving speache by holding on totthe lectern or other support with one or both hands. His affliction was a closely giuarded secret from the American public.

    Prominent among the audience was senator Bronson Cutting. He was a "progressive- party Republican" that supported both Seligman and Roosevelt. According to the following news article, he was invited to speak by Governor Roosevelt but declined after joining him on the speakers platform.

 

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1 comment

  • Comment Link Diana M. Capshaw Friday, 02 January 2015 17:34 posted by Diana M. Capshaw

    Franklin Roosevelt and Bronson Cutting were childhood friends having grown up in the rarified gentry of wealthy New Yorkers. They were also progressive thinkers, but I believe that Bronson Cutting had a disagreement with Roosevelt over some of the workings of the New Deal and he did not support FDR in 1936. At the time of his death in a plane accident, Bronson Cutting was being talked about as a possible Vice-Presidential candidate for the Republicans in opposition to Roosevelt. As Bronson Cutting was a political crony and close personal friend of my Grandfather, when we were in NY, we visited his grave in Greenwood Cemetery. I had brought a little pebble from NM to place on his grave to sort of bring some vibes from his adopted state, but I couldn't locate it in my purse, so I left a peppermint candy I had gotten at the cash register of a Santa Fe Restaurant. Hopefully, the great benefactor of the Spanish Americans of Northern New Mexico felt some familiar energy from this gesture, however sloppily delivered..

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