John Aspinwall Roosevelt, the sixth and last child of Eleanor
and Franklin Roosevelt,
was a businessman, philanthropist and – unlike the
rest of the Hyde Park Roosevelts – a Republican. He
was also the only one of ER's sons who did not have political
aspirations.
John and his next oldest sibling, Franklin
Jr., were much closer to ER than the three older Roosevelt
children had been in part because by the time they were
born, she was more comfortable as a parent and in part because
of the polio that struck FDR when John was five years old.
Conscious of her husband's disability and determined that
the younger children should not miss out on the sports and
physical activities that their older siblings had enjoyed,
ER learned to swim and skate. She also took John and Franklin
Jr. camping and to Europe and urged them to live boldly
and self-reliantly.
Educated at Groton and Harvard, John worked at Filene's
Department Store in Boston until World
War II broke out in 1941. He served in the navy until
1946 and thereafter pursued a business career on the West
Coast. In 1952, he became a Republican so he could support
Dwight Eisenhower's
bid for the presidency. John's defection from the Democratic
party and his subsequent leadership of Citizens for Eisenhower
caused family friction as ER strongly supported the Democratic
presidential candidate, Adlai
Stevenson. The tension was exacerbated when John and
his family moved into Stone
Cottage next door to ER's home at Val-Kill
that same year. He and his brother, Elliott, who lived at
nearby Top Cottage, did not get along and Elliott left shortly
after John and his family arrived. John subsequently acquired
what remained of the Hyde Park property Elliott had farmed
with ER. More importantly, the presence of John and his
family enabled ER to live at Val-Kill until her death in
1962. She saw John's children often and was particularly
close to Sara who died in a horseback riding accident in
1960.
In 1967, John joined Bache and Company. He retired as
a vice-president in 1980. His philanthropic activities included
serving as a fund raiser with the National Foundation for
Infantile Paralysis, which FDR had founded, membership on
the executive committee of the Greater New York Council
of the Boy Scouts of America and service as a trustee of
the State University of New York.
Within three years of ER's death, John divorced and remarried.
In 1970, he sold the Val-Kill properties. Thereafter, he
and his second wife lived on an estate in Tuxedo, New York.
He died of heart failure in 1981.
Sources:
Graham, Otis L. Jr. and Meghan Robinson Wander. Franklin
D. Roosevelt: His Life and Times. New York: Da Capo
Press, 1985, 372.
Cooke, Blanche Wiesen, Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume One,
1884-1933.
New York: Viking Press,1992. 327-329, 412-415.
Cook, Blanche Wiesen. Eleanor Roosevelt Volume Two,
1933-1938.
New York: Viking Press, 1999, 22.
Goodwin, Doris Kearns. No Ordinary Time: Franklin
and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in
World War II. New York: Touchstone Books, 1994, 635.