Life-changing disasters have shaped our modern presidents

Americans often look to presidents during crises, perhaps because the electorate has tended to view them as paternal comforters since George Washington earned the moniker “Father of Our Country.” But how have personal tragedies shaped our chief executives in the modern era?  

Starting with Theodore Roosevelt, one of the first 20th-century presidents, occupiers of the White House seem to have endured trials of Biblical proportions on par with Job’s calamities.

Loss of parents, spouses, siblings, children, military comrades, businesses and health have dogged many of the men who eventually moved into the Oval Office. Notably, our most esteemed presidents, ranked “great” or “near great,” have persevered through painful experiences from early childhood to young adulthood.

Franklin Roosevelt’s father was 54 at the birth of his son, suffered from heart disease, and died when FDR was 18. The only child of an adoring mother, Roosevelt gained self-confidence from her and empathy for the ill from his sickly father. Ronald Reagan’s father, an alcoholic, contributed to an unstable homelife, but the future Hollywood actor learned at an early age to play the part of an optimistic hero, and his persona carried him all the way to the White House.

Bill Clinton’s father died in a car accident before the 42nd president’s birth, and his stepfather was a raging and violent abuser of alcohol. Clinton’s famous expression, “I feel your pain,” seemed genuine because it was his authentic understanding of life’s challenges. Barack Obama’s Kenyan father abandoned him in early childhood and died two decades later in an automobile crash. The future president’s mother married an Indonesian, giving Obama the international experiences that propelled him to the presidency in an era of globalization.

Theodore Roosevelt and Joe Biden surely suffered the most incomprehensible pain when they lost multiple family members on the same day. TR’s first wife and his mother succumbed to illnesses within 24 hours, and Biden’s first spouse and baby daughter died in a 1972 car crash just after his first election to the Senate. In addition, Biden’s two young sons were severely injured.

Teddy Roosevelt escaped to the Dakotas, leaving his infant daughter, Alice, with relatives, while Biden followed Sen. Edward Kennedy’s advice to soldier on with life and accept his new Senate seat. Yet every night, Biden took the train home from Washington to Delaware to be with his motherless sons. Not coincidentally, Roosevelt and Biden are well known for the progressive policies that support society’s most unfortunate members.

Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower welcomed their first baby, nicknamed “Ikky,” and doted on him constantly. At age 3, however, the lad contracted scarlet fever and died in Ike’s arms. Every year his bereaved parents sent fresh flowers to his grave in Colorado.

George H.W. Bush and his wife Barbara adored their first daughter, Robin. When she passed away after a painful battle with leukemia, they suffered profound grief. Both presidents, touched by these heartaches, devoted themselves to leading the fight against polio (Eisenhower) and AIDS (Bush), which had taken such severe tolls, including among children. 

Young George W. Bush would never forget seeing his parents’ car drive up to his elementary school and thinking they had brought Robin home from the hospital. Instead, they had to convey the news that his beloved sister had died. His mother suffered from depression after the tragedy but pulled herself out of the depths of bereavement when she heard 7-year-old “Georgie” tell a friend that he couldn’t play with him because he needed to stay with his mother.

John F. Kennedy, still recovering from his own brush with death in World War II’s Pacific Theater, was spending the summer with his boisterous clan at their Cape Cod compound in 1944, when word reached them that the family’s golden boy, Joe Jr., had died when his Navy plane exploded over the English Channel on a dangerous mission.

If that wasn’t enough pain to endure, four years later, Congressman Kennedy received the devastating news that his favorite sister, Kathleen, had perished with her fiancé in a plane crash abroad. Despite his cool public persona, JFK always exhibited deep sympathy for those facing family tragedies. When he visited his dying infant son, Patrick, in August 1963, at Boston’s Children’s Hospital, he stopped to leave a note for two young sisters with severe burns suffered in a house fire.

From our first chief executive, through the last World War II veteran-president (Bush 41), American voters have found men with military experience, especially genuine war heroes, to be attractive presidential candidates. Teddy Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Eisenhower, John Kennedy, and the first George Bush experienced the loss of their comrades in the Spanish-American conflict, World War I, or World War II and, although all of them as commander in chief had to commit troops to harm’s way, they never did so without personal understanding of the price that defending our country can exact.

When Truman returned from his World War I experience as an artillery officer on France’s battlefield, he and a fellow vet opened a haberdashery in Kansas City. Its eventual failure was a blow to the poor farm boy from Missouri but it propelled Truman into politics, where he never lost his connection to small business owners and maintained his “common man” approach to government.

TR, FDR, and JFK experienced potentially fatal illnesses as children and young adults. The first Roosevelt suffered from childhood asthma, awaking at night with the sensation of smothering. He was determined to overcome his weakness by bodybuilding and boxing while a Harvard undergraduate. His cousin, Franklin, contracted polio at age 39, paralyzing his legs for life, but he never lost hope that his physical therapy regimen, especially swimming at Warm Springs, Ga., where he founded a treatment center, would restore his mobility. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) credits Warm Springs with saving him from polio-induced paralysis as a toddler.

Before vaccinations stymied childhood diseases, young Jack Kennedy caught them all, including a near-fatal case of scarlet fever when he was only 2. With no antibiotics to vanquish the highly contagious bacterium, he spent months recovering in a Maine sanitarium, away from his family. All three of these illness-prone presidents portrayed an indomitable spirit that bolstered Americans even in their darkest hours.

Although political science might not draw a direct correlation between presidents’ painful losses and their subsequent toughness, independence, empathy, progressive social policies, and careful approach to war, modern leadership theory teaches that addressing adversity with positive affect can overcome even the most dreadful experiences — and inspire others to adopt this optimistic attitude toward life’s inevitable challenges.

Barbara A. Perry is Presidential Studies director and Gerald L. Baliles Professor at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. Follow her on Twitter @BarbaraPerryUVA.