Franklin D. Roosevelt: Autograph Note Signed as President....

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A terrific autographed note of some thirteen words in FDR's own hand when FDR was President, a reply to a letter dated October 13, 1937 on O'Connor & Farber Counselors at Law New York letterhead, signed by Basil "Doc" O'Connor. FDR's reply, all in his own hand, is written below Doc's signature on the original letter, concerning FDR's beloved Georgia Warm Springs Foundation to battle infantile paralysis. Doc writes to FDR: "My dear Mr. President:/ Will you be good enough to sign the enclosed nine letters for Trustees for the new Foundation, so that Richard of my office can bring them back?/ I will telephone you in the morning and bring you up to date on this situation./ Faithfully yours,/ Doc." FDR writes back in his own hand, in boldly penned black ink: "Am holding Warburg and will have it rewritten when you tell me which?/ FDR." FDR is writing back to Doc O'Connor mentioning a family of eminent bankers, philanthropists, and scholars, one of the Warburgs. A Jewish family apparently of Italian origin, the Warburgs settled in the German town of Warburgum in 1559, and branches subsequently settled in Scandinavia, the United States, and Britain. Simon Elias Warburg (1760–1828) founded the first Jewish community in Sweden. Among the family's bankers were Moses Marcus Warburg (d. 1830) and his brother Gerson (d. 1825), who founded the Hamburg bank of M.M. Warburg & Company (1798), and James Paul Warburg (1896–1969), a member of FDR's Brain Trust, but who split with FDR concerning Warburg's disdain of FDR's liberal economic policies, well before this letter was written. Could this have been an attempt by FDR to reestablish relations with James Paul Warburg, could this be the Warburg to which FDR is referring in his reply to Doc O'Connor written in his own hand? Further, the Warburg family  sat on the boards of directors and owned huge chunks of stock of German General Electric and I.G. Farben, two corporations that poured millions of marks into the coffers of Adolf Hitler's National Socialist Party as early as 1928. So perhaps FDR was wary of asking a member of the Warburg family to serve on his new Georgia Warm Springs Foundation Board? The Warburg family's scholars included Nobel Prize-winning biochemist Otto Warburg. Among the American philanthropists of the Warburg family were Frieda Schiff Warburg (1876–1958) and her sons, patrons of art and music. On September 23, 1937 a few weeks before this letter to FDR was written by Doc O'Connor, President Roosevelt announced the creation of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis appointed O'Connor as its first President. Eddie Cantor, a Tammany Hall Democratic fund-raiser from Manhattan's Lower East Side turned vaudeville star, came up with the catchy tide, March of Dimes, a play on words of the popular newsreel feature, "The March of Time." The Foundation's first office was located in O'Connor's law office building at 120 Broadway in New York City. The declared mission of the March of Dimes was to eradicate polio from the face of the earth. The new foundation sought to bring together the scientific expertise of medical researchers, the administrative and public relations skills of trained professionals, and the enthusiasm of state and local volunteer solicitors. An interesting letter, with a reply mentioning a Warburg in FDR's own hand related to the new arrangements for the Trustees of the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation.