Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, October 14, 1994                   TAG: 9410140099
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-12   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder Newspapers
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

FDR TO GET WHAT HE DIDN'T WANT

But soon, Franklin Delano Roosevelt will get a $52 million memorial near those commemorating Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln.

On Thursday, nearly 50 years after his death, construction finally began on a memorial to the president who led the nation longer than any other, and in times of unparalleled troubles.

There have been decades of detours in getting money and a proper design. But some suggest it may have taken this long just to come to grips with the life of the man.

``He was so large in people's minds,'' says one of his biographers, Doris Kearns Goodwin, ``it's taken this distance to look back.''

Americans are looking back on the FDR era. Goodwin has written a book on Roosevelt and his wife, Eleanor, called ``No Ordinary Time.'' PBS this week broadcast a David Grubin documentary, ``FDR.''

Roosevelt led us out of the Great Depression and into and nearly through World War II. He was great-hearted and secretive, the manipulative, hated and beloved father of our modernness.

His social programs enraged the scions of his own class and changed the relationship of Americans to their government. Something of his endless confidence became part of the national psyche.

He was as complex as he was huge.

His memorial, on the other hand, will be far more discreet than those tall white monuments to long-vanished patriots. The FDR memorial will be a series of ``rooms'' of reddish-gray granite, open to the sky and cherry trees and ballfields that surround the Tidal Basin.

Scheduled to be completed in the fall of 1996, the 850-foot long memorial will include several fountains and will be inscribed with words taken from his speeches and with images from his times and his life.

Born into a New York society family, the child of wealth and privilege, he campaigned on behalf of the ``forgotten man.''

He took the oath of the presidency in March 1933. The nation was in a state of near collapse.

``This great nation,'' he said, ``will endure as it has endured, will revive and prosper. So first of all, let me assert my belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.''

He was the first president to make full use of radio. That voice, not quite Boston, not quite New York, delivered in a cadence that mixed the theater with the military, commanded the ear to listen.

He was the dominating presence - a source of reassurance, a spur to action, a lightning rod for critics - during the 12 most critical years for the nation in this century.

His New Deal programs reopened banks and businesses, saved farms, the Works Progress Administration built roads and schools and put millions back to work. He began Social Security.

His confidence remained the nation's guide.

Barrel-chested and grinning, with those secret crippled legs, he was a public man of great mystery.

He hid his polio from the cameras. His love life threatened his marriage to Eleanor but remained a secret from the world.

``Meeting Roosevelt,'' said his friend Winston Churchill ``was like uncorking your first bottle of champagne.''