Customer Reviews

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

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Robert Klara has written an excellent book about the railroad train that carried FDR's body from Warm Springs to Washington, D.C. He also gives detailed logistical information about the two trains that carried the body, family, Cabinet, Court, old cronies and friends, and of course the Truman's from Washington, D.C., and on to Hyde Park. This is a must-read for anyone who is a devotee of the FDR era. All the drama is here: his death in the Little White House at Warm Springs, Georgia (in the presence of a Russian artist and her friend, FDR's old flame, Lucy Mercer). Other events at the White House are not overlooked, including Eleanor's little known visit to FDR's body in the East Room (witnessed by J.B. West, Chief Usher); the details involved in who would accompany the funeral train for the burial in Hyde Park; all are included. In short, it is a page-turner. And the author raises some good points about the safety, in wartime, of the two trains which would convey almost the entire U.S. government up to Hyde Park...something that would never be considered today, especially since only the body and the Roosevelt family was in the bullet-proofed Pullman, leaving Truman in one that was not. The author has done an excellent job in detailing the thoughts and actions of the principal players while entrained, including a soviet spy and another man who later became a public embarrassment to Truman. The end of the book is especially satisfying, with details of Truman's address to the Joint Session of Congress. Not wanting to give away any "spoilers" of the book's content, suffice to say, it is a story that has been thoroughly researched and documented. There is a surprise on almost every page; a little nugget of information, that, before now, has never been in print. My highest recommendation.

Of late, there have been a lot of books written about FDR including a memoir written by his grandson. I have read all of the recent ones and have enjoyed them to varying degrees. However, by far this is the one that is the standout. Intensively researched, it reconstructs the events leading to FDR's last trip to Warm Springs, GA ('the little White House'), his death, and the two legs of the funeral train that returned his body to his beloved Springwood at Hyde Park, NY.
Reading more like a novel than a history, the premise of transporting the fallen president's body for a public funeral and burial was a gargantuan task and one that was mind boggling, dangerous, and probably never should have been undertaken.
Even in a pre-9/11 America there was no shortage of security concerns. The country was at war on two fronts and national security was imperative. The game plan was essentially to include all the key players in the government in the massive funeral procession to Hyde Park by train.
The security aspects of this undertaking and the logistics involved might well have been enough for one book. However, interwoven within this undertaking is the stuff that elevates this book into a totally different category. The president's widow finds out that FDR died in the company of a former mistress named Lucy Rutherfurd. Harry Truman becomes president after 3 months as vice president. Completely unprepared for the job, FDR has not shared information with him regarding Stalin or the A-bomb or anything else for that matter. There is the typical political jockeying which occurs when a new president assumes office as another president is buried. Complicating matters further for Truman is a soviet spy and an oddball character with political aspirations which will cause some embarassment for Truman in the future.
As for the late president, it is apparent that his physical condition had been deteriorating for quite some time. Suffering from uncontrolled high blood pressure and calcified arteries for starters, the public was kept unaware of just how ill FDR was. A grieving nation mourns and the country seems directionless at a critical time.
This book is loaded with information culled from a variety of sources.
Interestingly, there are files pertaining to the funeral that have yet to be declassified by the FBI. While FDR'S FUNERAL TRAIN covers some commonly known information, much of what is covered is new material. It is a well-written and an absorbing account of FDR's death and burial.

So much has been written about Franklin Roosevelt that you would think there was little left to mined; you could fill a small library with the number of books written on him and this era of history. Yet the final chapter in FDR's life has not really been covered to quite this degree of detail. And Klara certainly serves up the details, many of which were quite astonishing and astounding. FDR's sudden death unleashed all sorts of drama, both on the global scale and on a more micro level amongst those closest to him. There was no way to cover-up that at the time of his death he had resumed his affair with his longtime paramour Lucy Mercer; a fact that devastated his widow Eleanor. Klara plays out all the various unfolding dramas with a tension that is gripping for the reader, even if you've read these details before. And Klara comes up with new details such as Eleanor's private viewing of her late husband's body in the East Room. But that isn't all. Klara points out the stunning breech in security as virtually every member of the government is loaded onto the two trains to carry them and FDR's body to Hyde Park for burial. More surprising, FDR's body and family were carried in the sole bullet-proof Pullman car; President Truman and virtually every other government official traveled in unarmored Pullman cars, creating the potential to wipe out the entire government in the event of sabotage or an accident. Such were the exigencies of wartime and the sudden and profoundly sad demise of FDR. Truman's moving eulogy of FDR and his pronouncement to the world that we would continue to fight on to victory is a wonderfully fitting coda to the book. The result is a lively page-turner that is a template for how to write history well. Klara also includes a dramatis personae to help readers keep track of all the characters; something I wish EVERY monograph did. Well worth the read!

Klara's book went on my Amazon Wish List when I saw a favorable review of it in Trains Magazine and I soon received a copy as a Father's Day gift--and I'm delighted that I did! This is history as it should be written. The book is nothing less than a page-turner from start to finish.

Some may criticize FDR'S FUNERAL TRAIN as being a "popular history," written more as a novel than as a serious history, because it includes observations on such things as the humidity, the rocking of the funeral train, people's expressions, the slant of the sun, and such extraneous details that, in truth, are probably more imagined by the author than observed by the historical participants. However, such details bring the action to life and make the actors into real humans rather than mere dead names from the past. So long as such details are realistic and typical of what might have been observed, I find no objection to their inclusion.

One of the delightful characteristics of the book is that it is an "insider's history," weaving its narrative so that the reader feels as though he is an invisible observer of the scene, an eavesdropper inside FDR's cottage, inside the limousines, at FDR's graveside, and, of course, inside the funeral train. Lending credence to the various conversations that the reader "overhears" and to the actions that the reader "observes" are copious footnotes. Never does Klara ask us to accept his words at face value, always assiduously citing his sources. Consequently, the Notes section at the back of the book runs to 31 pages!

Not long ago when I presumed to write a review of Senator Edward Kennedy's wonderful memoir, TRUE COMPASS, I mentioned that one of the things about it that strongly appeal to me is that it treats of historical events that I can personally recall and that it gives us a backstage view of those events, which is always more interesting that what we have learned through the public press. In the case of FDR'S FUNERAL TRAIN, while I technically lived through those events as well, I was far too young to pay attention to them, much less understand them. Yet, knowing that these events transpired in my lifetime perhaps makes them more urgent to me, somehow more significant than they might otherwise be, and many facts were new to my understanding. I cannot recall my history classes in school addressing FDR's long-time mistress and soul mate, Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd, nor the anguish that her presence caused the First Lady. I did not know how eager Eleanor Roosevelt was to leave the White House behind. I did not know how shabbily FDR treated his vice president and successor, Harry Truman, nor how ill-informed Truman was of events such as the Manhattan Project. It seems that an astounding number of truly fascinating historical facts escape inclusion in public school history textbooks. Thank goodness for books like Klara's to help fill in the cavernous gaps in our knowledge.

I especially appreciate Klara's inclusion of a epilogue that sketches the later history of most of the people in his book; the reader is not left to wonder at the fates of those whom he meets in these pages. The "Dramatis Personae" section, too, is nothing short of inspirational. When names begin to run together in the reader's memory, a quick glance at this section will refresh his knowledge of precisely who each person is and how he or she fits into the historical scene. The index is also very useful in locating references to each person within the book.

Only three somewhat niggling points leave me restive and call for at least some gentle criticism. (1) Although examination of the Notes section will reveal all of the author's sources, a bibliography would have been nice. (2) In his use of creative phraseology, Klara occasionally oversteps creativity and lands in a verbal swamp of nonsense as when he refers to the locomotive headlight as a "pilot light," when he describes the electric locomotive as "taking a quick sip of 11,000 volts," and when he refers to a diverging track as a "turnout" instead of a switch. (Curiously, "turnout" tends to be a model railroader's term but is not found in full-sized railroad lexicons.) (3) One loose end is seemingly forgotten and never tied up, and it continues to tickle my curiosity. At the moment of his hemorrhage, FDR is being sketched by a Russian-born artist, Elizabeth Shoumatoff, who, along with FDR's mistress, leaves hurriedly after the president's fatal attack. What happened to her sketches? After all, incomplete as they may have been, they were the very last visual depictions of one of our most famous and influential presidents.

In closing, allow me to note that this is not so much a book about a train as it is a slice of American history. The train is the focal point around which the history is written, but it is a book of greater fascination to the student of history than to the railroad fan. Of course, if one is both, then the book is surely a must-read.

Robert Klara's book tells the story of Roosevelt's death and the train ride from Warm Springs to Hyde Park. The details of building Roosevelt's Pullman car will interest railroad fans and those who find the methods of protecting the president absorbing. There is a quantity of remarkable history here; the helplessness of almost nothing that could be done for Roosevelt's blood pressure that read 260/150, the story of Eleanor's terrible distress at the confirmation that her husband continued to see Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd, the story of Truman's learning of the Manhattan Project and his desperate race to discover all that he had not been informed of during Roosevelt's presidency.

The step by step funeral plans, logistics and problems solved are told, including the usual bureaucratic tangles that left the West Point officer in charge of ceremonies in the dark concerning the exact movement of the train until he asked the New York Central employees. Amazingly there is still classified material 65 years after regarding this funeral train
The book ends with Truman's brilliant speech that gave reassurance not just to the US but to the allies that were still fighting the axis powers. An epilogue is included that gives the information concerning those included in the writing and the Pullman sleepers. A list of dramatis personae will help those not familiar with some of the historical figures, notes and an index is included.

There are similarities to Lincoln's funeral train and closer to today the ceremonies for John Kennedy and the funeral train of Robert Kennedy; but `FDR's Funeral Train' will be of interest to those who like to read stories of history, especially those in relation to the domestic front during WWII; but it will also be a captivating book for those who have a love of trains and the railroad system. It is written well and reads as easy as a novel.

One of my favorite things to do is pick an event in history about which not much is known and find out as much as I can about it. FDR's funeral has always been one of these events that has intrigued me and Klara has done an amazing job of illuminating everyone that was involved in the last trip of one of our greatest presidents. There are so many little known details and back stories that it was hard to accept that this book was only a little less than 200 pages. The author does an excellent job within these pages though!

I am just young enough to have missed FDR and he has always fascinated me. His story obviously continues after his death and burial at Hyde Park. And then there is Eleanor--a gallant, tragic figure in her own right. Both these people live and breathe and one dies in this book, which told me more about them both. Excellently done, and I thank you for the book and what it taught me.

Anyone who knows the "basics" of Franklin Roosevelt will find this book a lot of fun. Those who are students of the FDR era will find that this volume fills some gaps in the general Roosevelt story (and a lot of fun). Jim Bishop gave it his best shot in 1974, with "FDR's Last Year", but for the most part this narrative has been told elsewhere in bits and pieces.

Living now in an era when the President can't go out for an ice cream cone without a full Secret Service investigation of the route, venue and source of product; reading how most all of the Federal government was transported from Washington to Hyde Park (and back again!) on two funeral trains organized in about 48 hours seems more like fantasy. Friends and enemies alike wanted to be there, and the machinations employed to get some on (and keep a couple off) the trains to Hyde Park is well told. In the words of FD: "I love it!".

Although FDR &/or WWII readers are the natural market for this book, the book is so well written that others will also find this a good entree to the person and the times.

Robert Klara writes a book which is in several ways a paean to a by-gone era as much as it is to the death of one of the most loved President's in U.S. History. Klara spends a good amount of time reviewing how the end of Roosevelt's life spelled the end of a certain type of management and how Harry Truman came into his own completely unprepared for what he had to face. Great detail is given by Klara to how FDR's death's impacted those around him, starting with his wife but also his staff and those who had devoted their lives to him. What is most interesting, and Klara does point it out, is how the leadership of the country basically shut down for 24 hours during war time and followed the train to Hyde Park. Basically unthinkable today!

Klara also does a great job of describing the atmosphere of high end train travel which no longer exists today. It is possible to almost imagine the parlor cars and how the layout was done. It is a throwback to another era which has been surpassed but thankfully not forgotten. For anyone with an interest in this period, I would recommend this book.

Serious train buffs and those who have an interest in the detailed conduct of presidential funerals will especially enjoy this book.

The emotional and political transfer of power at FDR's death to Harry Truman is a main theme of Robert Klara's highly focused history, which covers less than three weeks of time and tells of events on or nearby the railroad trains carrying a live, dead, or recently delivered President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Mr. Klara is an unabashed admirer of FDR, Mrs. Roosevelt, and Mr. Truman. One example of the author's political views: Henry Wallace was "...one of liberalism's most eloquent voices before and during his years as FDR's vice president..."

I think Mr. Wallace was a muddle-headed politician of the extreme left who richly deserved to be thrown off of the Democratic Party's presidential ticket in 1944.

Also, in my view, two major public disservices by FDR were for him to even run for office in 1944 for a fourth term of office given his ill health and, after he won reelection, not to lift a hand to prepare his new vice president, Mr. Truman, for the supreme war-time leadership position that, in the event, was so quickly thrust upon him.