On March 12, 1933, eight days after his inauguration, President Franklin D. Roosevelt gives his first national radio address—or “fireside chat”—broadcast directly from the White House. Roosevelt began that first address simply: “I want to talk for a few minutes with the people of the United States about banking.” He went on to explain his recent decision to close the nation’s banks in order to stop a surge in mass withdrawals by panicked investors worried about possible bank failures. The banks would be reopening the next day, Roosevelt said, and he thanked the public for their “fortitude and good temper” during the “banking holiday.” At the time, the U.S. was at the lowest point of the Great Depression, with between 25 and 33 percent of the workforce unemployed. The nation was worried, and Roosevelt’s address was designed to ease fears and to inspire confidence in his leadership. Roosevelt went on to deliver 30 more of these broadcasts between March 1933 and June 1944. They reached an astonishing number of American households, 90 percent of which owned a radio at the time. Journalist Robert Trout coined the phrase “fireside chat” to describe Roosevelt’s radio addresses, invoking an image of the president sitting by a fire in a living room, speaking earnestly to the American people about his hopes and dreams for the nation. In fact, Roosevelt took great care to make sure each address was accessible and understandable to ordinary Americans, regardless of their level of education. He used simple vocabulary and relied on folksy anecdotes or analogies to explain the often complex issues facing the country. Over the course of his historic 12-year presidency, Roosevelt used the chats to build popular support for his groundbreaking New Deal policies, in the face of stiff opposition from big business and other groups. After World War II began, he used them to explain his administration’s wartime policies to the American people. The success of Roosevelt’s chats was evident not only in his three re-elections, but also in the millions of letters that flooded the White House. Farmers, business owners, men, women, rich, poor—most of them expressed the feeling that the president had entered their home and spoken directly to them. In an era when presidents had previously communicated with their citizens almost exclusively through spokespeople and journalists, it was an unprecedented step. History.com The Sun Bay Paper Page 23 March 11, 2022 - March 17, 2022 FDR Broadcasts First 'Fireside Chat' During the Great Depression Cont from pg 18 First St. Patrick’s Day Parade The first recorded parade honoring the Catholic feast day of St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, is held in what is now St. Augustine, Florida. Records show that a St. Patrick’s Day parade was held on March 17, 1601 in a Spanish colony under the direction of the colony's Irish vicar, Ricardo Artur. More than a century later, homesick Irish soldiers serving in the English military marched in Boston in 1737 and in New York City on March 1762. Saint Patrick, who was born in the late 4th century, was one of the most successful Christian missionaries in history. Born in Britain to a Christian family of Roman citizenship, he was taken prisoner at the age of 16 by a group of Irish raiders who attacked his family’s estate. They transported him to Ireland, and he spent six years in captivity before escaping back to Britain. Believing he had been called by God to Christianize Ireland, he joined the Catholic Church and studied for 15 years before being consecrated as the church’s second missionary to Ireland. Patrick began his mission to Ireland in 432, and by his death in 461, the island was almost entirely Christian. Early Irish settlers to the American colonies, many of whom were indentured servants, brought the Irish tradition of celebrating St. Patrick’s feast day to America. The first recorded St. Patrick’s Day parade in New York City was held in 1762, and with the dramatic increase of Irish immigrants to the United States in the mid-19th century, the March 17th celebration became widespread. Today, across the United States, millions of Americans of Irish ancestry celebrate their cultural identity and history by enjoying St. Patrick’s Day parades and engaging in general revelry. Long COVID Who do you believe? Who do you trust? When it comes to COVID19, the answer for many of us, now two years in, is no one. The problem is that it's not just COVID-19. Losing trust in government extends, albeit to varying degrees, to everything government does. And that is especially true of foreign policy. When it comes to education or health care or even the economy, most of us have more opinions than we need. These are, after all, the bread-and-butter issues of our lives. But NATO? Dealing with Russian aggression? A worldwide recession? Let's face it. Most of us don't have a clue. We read the papers, listen to the news, watch the terrible pictures on television. But solutions? How in the world would we ever know what to do? You need intelligence, and as we have also learned painfully, even the top-secret intelligence can be simply wrong. Think weapons of mass destruction. Which leaves us in the state we are in. Uncertain. Confused. And divided. There is an old saying -- very old, sadly -- that partisan politics ends at our country's borders, that in dealing with the rest of the world, we are, literally, the truly United States. Of course, that has never been entirely true, at least since World War II. But as an ideal, it is a worthy goal. And in dealing with the likes of Russian President Vladimir Putin, it should even be true. But that kind of unity demands a level of trust that we have lost. The challenge for President Joe Biden is not only to deal with the mad man from Moscow but also to rebuild the trust in government that empowers him in the eyes of the world. It means recognizing that government is us, we the people, coming together to do what we cannot do as individuals. Security is the business of government. Ensuring our personal security, our economic security and our national security is its most basic function. To do that requires trust, and restoring that kind of faith and trust seems, in these times, almost as difficult as dealing with Putin. But we must try. There is no other choice, as Putin has so painfully proven. Susan Estrich
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