Franklin Delano Roosevelt A Man of the Century

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“My dear Roosevelt: Now that you are back in private life and in a suburb of your own home town, I want you to join the Century. Tell me who will propose and who will second you, and I will write them and tell them to do it. W.C. Brownell, the literary critic of Scribner’s, was in an elevator at the New York Athletic Club and he heard one man say to another: “Did you ever hear of the Century Club? “Yes, it’s down in 43 rd Street. “What sort of a club is it? “It’s a club of eminent men. “Ain’t that a hell of a club!” 2 Sincerely yours, C.C. Burlingham” The next day, FDR wrote Mr. Burlingham that he accepted the invitation to be proposed as a member of the Association, writing that he felt “very highly honored… for in spite of the remark of the man in the elevator, there is only one Century Club in the world.” On February 16, Burlingham sent FDR the Club book so he could mark those members he knew well, leaving it then to CCB to ask a proposer and seconder to do their duty. Among those FDR marked as known friends were George Blagden, William Chadbourne, Frederic Coudert, Augustus Hand, Thomas Lamont, George Putnam and Robert Grier Monroe whom Mr. Burlingham chose as FDR’s proposer. John G. Milburn, a senior partner of the law firm where FDR had served his legal apprenticeship [Carter, Ledyard and Milburn] agreed to be his seconder “because I know him well and am very fond of him.” It was in Milburn’s home in Buffalo, New York that President McKinley died and Theodore Roosevelt had taken the oath of office twenty years before. FDR was certainly familiar with the Century before he became a member. In May 1921, for example, he was a guest of Edward Bok, the creative and business genius of the Saturday Evening Post and the Curtis Publishing Company – whose grandson,
Derek Bok, later became President of Harvard University. Edward Bok, who gloried in his success having come to the United States as a 14 year old immigrant from Holland, used that meeting at the Century to found the Netherland-America Foundation with the purpose of advancing mutual understanding and active exchange between the two countries. Because the Netherlands was neutral in World War I and because Queen Wilhelmina gave reluctant sanctuary to the defeated Kaiser, the normally warm and cordial American feelings for the Dutch were under pressure. The Roosevelts – all of them—were directly descended from Claes Martenson van Rosevelt who had come in 1648 to New Amsterdam from the province of Zeeland in the Netherlands. FDR always took pride in his Dutch forebears. At the Century meeting, he agreed to be an officer of the Foundation. Franklin Roosevelt was elected as a Centurion on January 14, 1922 at the monthly meeting of the Association. Elected at the same time as a non-resident member was Hiram Bingham, the Yale professor who discovered Machu Picchu, the ancient Inca kingdom in Peru, and served eight years as U.S. Senator from Connecticut. At this point, FDR was 39 years old. He had been married for 16 years. When Franklin married Eleanor in 1905, the President of the United States – Theodore Roosevelt, gave the bride away and dominated the event by his presence. There was probably no one whom FDR admired more than Theodore Roosevelt. The extraordinary parallel of their careers was undoubtedly influenced greatly by that admiration. Those parallels include the following: both TR and FDR, separated by a generation in time, were elected to the New York State legislature (TR at 23, FDR at 28); both were appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy (TR at 39, FDR at 31); both were Vice Presidential candidates (TR at 41, FDR at 38); both knew political defeat, TR as a candidate for Mayor of New York (1886) and in his Bull Moose campaign for President (1912), FDR in the Democratic primary campaign for the United States Senate (1914) and as the running mate of James Cox in the 1920 presidential election; both married at a young age, TR at 22, FDR at 23, and both had four sons as brave participants in the two 3
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Franklin Delano Roosevelt A Man of the Century

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