Fordham: A History and Memoir, Revised Edition

9 From Oedipus to Dachau

9. From Oedipus to Dachau President Roosevelt’s Monday, October 28, 1940, visit to Fordham is a day that will live in irony and ambiguity. According to Gannon’s account, FDR’s campaign manager, pressed by Republican candidate Wendell Willkie’s surge in strength, called on him at the height of the fall campaign to request an honorary degree for the president of the United States. This was an odd request because FDR, as governor of New York, had already received an honorary LL.D. from Fordham in 1929. Gannon proposed in its stead a RooseveltWillkie debate on the steps of Keating Hall. When Roosevelt declined, Willkie asked for seats at the Fordham–St. Mary’s game for Saturday, October 26, and Gannon naturally invited the Republican candidate to share the president’s box. Alarmed, Fordham’s Democratic alumni got on the phone, and FDR, as commander in chief of the armed forces, was invited to Rose Hill to review the 525-man ROTC coast-artillery unit, which had been elevated the year before to the status of a regiment. This was, in fact, the climactic week of the campaign. A few months before, polls had shown FDR leading with 60 percent of the vote, but a series of events had forced the president, whose strategy had been not to formally campaign or even mention his opponent’s name, to come out fighting. 181 16950-05_Fordham_181-226 6/4/08 11:44 AM Page 181 The public mood had swung against any involvement in the war. John L. Lewis, president of the United Mine Workers, had delivered a vicious anti-Roosevelt speech, and Willkie, who had been calling FDR an isolationist and had accused him of not preparing America militarily, was now making wilder attacks on the “third term” issue, charging that “dictator ” Roosevelt would install his wife, Eleanor, or one of his sons as president in 1944. Roosevelt’s former friend Al Smith, grumbling that there were already too many dictators in the world, was supporting Willkie.To make matters worse, Joseph P. Kennedy, ambassador to Great Britain, returning to the United States on October 27, was rumored to be about to break with Roosevelt to back Willkie. With only a few weeks to go, FDR had announced that to “correct misrepresentations” by his critics, he would give five speeches.As he addressed each crowd he would add, to their delight, “I am an old campaigner and I love a good fight.” Gannon had mixed feelings about a Roosevelt visit. This was the eve of Fordham’s centennial year, and FDR would be the first president of the United Sates to set foot on the campus. Gannon’s anti-Roosevelt feelings were no secret; both Fordham historian Charles C. Tansill, later of Georgetown and the author of Back Door to War (1952), and Nebraska senator Edward R. Burke, member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, had written within the month to draw Gannon into a public role, to testify in the Senate in the “No Third Term” movement, but Gannon declined to go public as Fordham president. He told Tansill that “after the election I think every patriotic American should work for a single term of six years.” On Saturday, Willkie enjoyed a triumphant New York tour. He was thronged by enthusiastic crowds at the World’s Fair, booed in Harlem, and both booed and cheered, though mostly cheered, at the Polo Grounds by 34,500 spectators at the Fordham–St. Mary’s game that St. Mary’s won 9-6, depriving Fordham of another undefeated season. On Sunday, Italy invaded Greece. Roosevelt got hold of Kennedy and invited the ambassador and his wife to the White House for dinner that night. There, in the presence of Jimmy Byrnes and other guests he listened attentively to all of Kennedy’s complaints, told him how much he admired all he had done, and secured his endorsement for the third term. Monday morning, the presidential train arrived at Newark in the early morning. In Jersey City the president met with three hundred 182 F O R D H A M 16950-05_Fordham_181-226 6/4/08 11:44 AM Page 182 disabled children in wheelchairs and told them, “I know how it feels myself.” From Bayonne he crossed to Staten Island, then took a boat to Brooklyn, crossed to Manhattan, and made his way north through overwhelming crowds. At Hunter...