The news broke 60 years ago, late in the afternoon of April 12, 1945. The bulletin was shocking even to a nation hardened by years of war. President Franklin Roosevelt was dead. He died in Warm Springs, Ga., a town he’d been drawn to because of what happened to him years before on an island just off the coast of Maine.

In 1921, Roosevelt was relaxing at his family’s home on Campobello Island near Lubec, where he had spent summers since he was a baby. The days were long and unhurried, filled with picnics, sailing, and swimming.

On Aug. 10, Roosevelt did not feel well. A long swim in the cold waters of Passamaquoddy Bay failed to reinvigorate him. “I didn’t feel the usual reaction, the glow I’d expected,” Roosevelt recalled. Fighting off aches and a chill, he went to bed early.

Two days later, Roosevelt could not move his legs. His family summoned a doctor from Lubec, then a specialist from Bar Harbor. There was nothing they could do. Roosevelt had contracted polio. Never again would he stand or walk without braces or support.

Despite his infirmity, Roosevelt became president and in 1945 was sworn in to an unprecedented fourth term. But leading the United States through the Depression and World War II had drained him. Friends and aides were increasingly worried by FDR’s obviously failing health. His face was gray and drawn; his weight had dropped 15 pounds below normal.

“All I need is some early spring sun and I’ll be fine,” Roosevelt told a friend the day before he left Washington for a vacation at the small cottage he had designed in Warm Springs, Ga. For more than 20 years, the waters had attracted him, waters that flowed at a steady 88 degrees year-round and soothed his crippled legs.

Not even FDR knew how sick he was because his doctor had chosen not to tell him about his worsening coronary disease. The previous November, while running for a fourth term, his blood pressure was a shocking 260/150. Doctors gave him medication to try to lower his hypertension. It was ineffective.

As he arrived in Warm Springs at the end of March, Roosevelt told a friend he wanted to “sleep and sleep and sleep.” The agent at the train station, stunned by FDR’s haggard appearance, said later, “The president was the worst-looking man I ever saw who was still alive.” The plan was to get some much-needed rest, then leave for San Francisco for the founding meeting of the United Nations.

FDR first visited Warm Springs in 1924, three years after he contracted polio. Splashing and swimming in the mineral-rich waters left him energized and optimistic. “The legs are really improving a great deal,” he said. “This is really a discovery of a place.”

Every morning at Warm Springs he would go to the pool for fun and therapy, swimming about, throwing a ball, playing with other patients. From the first visit, his goal was to make a complete recovery. “I’ll walk without crutches,” he told a reporter. “I’ll walk into a room without scaring everyone half to death. I’ll stand easily in front of people so they’ll forget I’m a cripple.”

The waters made him feel better, relaxing muscles drawn taut by polio. But they were no cure.

On April 12, Roosevelt sat in the pine cottage known as the Little White House, catching up on work. Among his companions was Elizabeth Shoumatoff, an artist who was painting a portrait of him. “Mr. President, you look so much better than yesterday,” she told him, noting that his “gray look” had

disappeared and been replaced by “exceptionally good color.”

Far from indicating improving health, that ruddiness was a sign of an impending cerebral hemorrhage. Shortly after lunch, as Shoumatoff dabbed her brushes on her canvas, Roosevelt said, “I have a terrific pain in the back of my head,” and slumped in his chair.

Two hours later, the president was dead.

Back in Washington, Vice President Harry Truman was hastily summoned to the White House, where Eleanor Roosevelt broke the news to him. For several moments Truman could not speak.

Finally, he gathered himself and asked the first lady, “Is there anything I can do for you?”

“Is there anything we can do for you?” Mrs. Roosevelt replied. “For you are the one in trouble now.”

Rob Caldwell, co-anchor of WLBZ2’s 5:30 p.m. newscast, recently visited Warm Springs, Ga.