Warm Springs, Georgia, April 12, 1945: 74 Years Ago Today

I hold that Abraham Lincoln was the greatest American president, for reasons that I assume to be obvious. I place George Washington second, because he had to take what the Constitution listed as his responsibilities, and put them into effect out of nothing. No precedent. No tradition. Just how his vision for America led him to set things up. 
Franklin Delano Roosevelt comes third on my list. He inherited the Great Depression from a republican who believed that the thing would eventually just work itself out. Hoover did nothing.
Nothing.
FDR, basically, did everything. He tried. If it worked, he kept it. If it didn't, he ditched that, and tried something else. He held the country together, did all he could to put it back to work, and worked to keep America's spirits up through one of lowest times we'd ever known.
Then, on the heels of the Depression, we landed squarely in the middle of World War II. He supported Great Britain. He inspired us to rise from Pearl Harbor. He fixed the vision. He led the fight.
But he didn't live to see the victory.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt died 74 years ago today, in Warm Springs, Georgia, his retreat that renewed him throughout his years of struggle against the effects of the polio that robbed him of the use of his legs, six weeks before the war ended in Europe; four months before the war ended in Asia. But he had agreed to put on his fourth ticket a man, plain, plainspoken, simple, and direct, to lead the nation through to the end of the war in both theaters: Harry Truman.
We would not be the nation that we are today, the one whose institutions fascists are still working to destroy, had it not been for the strength, intelligence, persistence, hope, expectation, and sunny disposition, always believing in the future of America, that comprised Franklin Roosevelt.
We are a fortunate people that there was such a leader at such a time. We will remain profoundly indebted to him, just as to Lincoln and Washington, as long as this country endures.