FDR's Funeral Train: A Betrayed Widow, a Soviet Spy, and a Presidency in the Balance

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Overview

In April 1945, the funeral train carrying the body of Franklin D. Roosevelt embarked on a three-day, thousand-mile odyssey through nine states before reaching the president's home where he was buried. Many who would recall the journey later would agree it was a foolhardy idea to start with—putting every important elected figure in Washington on a single train during the biggest war in history. For the American people, of course, the funeral train was just that—the train bearing the body of deceased FDR. It passed with darkened windows; few gave thought to what might be happening aboard. A closer look inside the train, however, would reveal a Soviet spy about to leak a state secret, a newly widowed Eleanor Roosevelt, who just found out that her husband’s mistress was in the room when he died, and the entire family of incoming president Harry S Truman. The thrilling story of what took place behind the Pullman shades, where women whispered and men tossed back highballs, has never been told. On the occasion of the sixty-fifth anniversary of FDR's death, Klara chronicles the action-packed threeiday train ride during which, among other things, Truman hammered out the policies that would galvanize a country in mourning and win the Second World War.

Editorial Reviews

AMERICA IN WWII magazine
“FDR put steel in the spine of a nation stunned and bewildered by the disaster of Pearl Harbor, promising, “We shall gain the inevitable triumph—so help us God.” The depth of feeling his death aroused and the sorrow that surrounded the train bearing his body to the capital and finally to the banks of the Hudson River is recalled and captured by Klara…This slim volume recreates vividly a sense of what America was like in 1945 and puts us aboard the melancholy train.”--(Brian John Murphy, Fairfield, Connecticut)
Kirkus Reviews
April 1945: From his death in Warm Springs, Ga., to his burial in Hyde Park, New York, Franklin Roosevelt's final journey. News of FDR's passing indelibly marked the Greatest Generation. Stunned by the loss of the only president many of them had known, huge crowds of mourners lined the tracks of his funeral train as it made its three-day journey through nine states. "The people did not wave," Life reported. "They wept." Klara takes us the entire route, furnishing information about the railways and their officials who shared logistical responsibilities, the locomotives and the lavish Pullman cars. However, the author focuses primarily on the train's passengers: Roosevelt's grieving widow Eleanor, twice-shocked to learn her husband's long-ago mistress, Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd, was present when FDR suffered his cerebral hemorrhage; bleary newsmen charged with generating copy at every stop; FDR's cousins Daisy Suckley and Polly Delano; his secretary Grace Tully and his famous dog Fala; presidential aide Lauchlin Currie, exposed years later as a KGB spy; Harry Truman, who used the train ride to confer with advisors to quickly come up to speed on the nation's business and to prepare an address to Congress that would introduce him as the nation's leader; speech writers, advisors and aides both to the old and new president, including the former director of the Office of War Mobilization and soon to be Secretary of State, James F. Byrnes. On the trip's penultimate leg, the slow train followed an announced route through densely populated areas, carrying the president, the cabinet, nine Supreme Court Justices, dozens of congressional leaders and the heads of major federal agencies, a security riskunthinkable in today's climate. In the manner of Bob Greene's Once Upon a Town: The Miracle of the North Platte Canteen (2002) or Jody Rosen's White Christmas: The Story of an American Song (2002), similar, bite-sized slices of World War II-era home-front history, Klara charms as he informs. A little gem. Agent: Gary Heidt/Signature Literary Agency

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780230619142
  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
  • Publication date: 3/16/2010
  • Pages: 244
  • Sales rank: 583,703
  • Product dimensions: 6.20 (w) x 9.30 (h) x 1.10 (d)

Meet the Author

Robert Klara is an editor and writer. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the New York Daily News, American Heritage, New Jersey Monthly, and The Christian Science Monitor. Klara has been a staff editor for numerous magazines, including Town & Country and Architecture, and has also worked as a researcher for legendary author Gay Talese. He lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

Prologue Pine Mountain The Mainline The West Hall Twelve Long Hours The Train of Secrets Car No.3

Where the Sundial Stands Homeward

"We do not fear the future"

Aftermath

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  • Posted April 24, 2012

    Classic Railroads, Wartime Politics - What A Wonderful Story!

    A rainy weekend was on the way and I had exhausted my supply of eBooks in the queue. I was searching for something new to read and none of the current popular listings interested me. Almost desperate, as a lifelong rail fan I typed “train” into the on-line search function and got all sorts of hits on children’s books, especially Thomas the Tank Engine. But several pages in, I came upon one that caught my eye, FDR’s Funeral Train by Robert Klara. I did not quite make it into the same era as FDR, missing it by a bit over four years, but my parents, especially my mother, had wonderful memories of his years in office, wife Eleanor, and particularly the sad occasion of his funeral train. I took a look at the summary overview and thought this could be pretty interesting, about how the great eastern railroads of the time – Southern, Pennsylvania, New York Central – handled that sad event. What I read was all that and much more.

    Klara’s story begins with the logistics and security of FDR boarding his Presidential train [at an undisclosed location] bound for Warm Springs GA. If you are a rail fan, you’ll enjoy the detailed descriptions of Southern steamers, Pennsylvania GG-1s, and New York Central 4-8-4 Hudsons. There are detailed descriptions of Pullmans, diners, and everything else that was coupled together for presidential travel and even an amusing anecdote on multiple coupler breaks leaving Washington Union Station for Hyde Park. And of course there are excellent profiles of the railroaders that operated and staffed the presidential trains.

    As FDR’s train heads south en route to Georgia, Klara weaves into the story an unexpected sense of the pressures of office as the war wears on and other issues of the times. There are detailed profiles of those who surrounded the president and their respective roles in the story that unfolds. Well researched narrative details what happened in the president’s final hours in Georgia, and upon his passing, the extraordinary plan-on-the-run efforts to deal with the many issues that followed to bring the president home and continue the business of a two-front war, not the least of which was swearing in a new president.

    The long slow train trip back to Washington, and then on to New York City to upstate New York, is a superb backdrop to facilitate Klara’s discussion of the many heartfelt gestures of a mourning nation, illustrating the sense of nationalism of that age. The travel from Washington to Hyde Park and back also provides the framework to highlight the extreme issues new president Harry Truman had to quickly assimilate and act upon, not the least of which was learning about a most top secret weapon and its potential use to shorten the war...while aboard the train.

    There are also very touching and sensitive discussions on Eleanor and their children throughout the story, examining sub-dramas that accompanied their husband’s or father’s death. All of the Roosevelt sons were deployed at war, but only one got home in time for the funeral.

    FDR’s Funeral Train provides a superb compilation of everything surrounding President Roosevelt’s death and the transition to the Truman administration. It’s a delight to read, especially for somebody who is simply searching for a book…about trains.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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