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Day 53: May 8
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No Comment: Murray the Outlaw of Falahill
Né: Big Boy
Fala, a Scottish Terrier, was born on the 7th of April 1940. He would die April 5th of 1952 at the age of 11.Fala’s first owner was Margaret Suckley, a cousin of the 32nd president Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Fala was given as a Christmas present to the president in 1940….
(Source: argonautconference)
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Thanks Buzzfeed!
Fala: The Most Underrated Presidential Dog
Sure we all remember Socks and Barney and of course there is Bo, but Fala is the greatest presidential pet of all time.
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R.I.P. Presidential Pup Barney: Times Managing Editor Jimmy Orr, a staffer in George W. Bush’s White House, remembers the creation of the “Barney Cam.”
People liked our videos. People loved Barney. Why not strap a video camera to the first dog’s head, chase him through the White House so viewers can see the Christmas decorations from his vantage point, and stream it over the Internet?
Read more about Orr’s experiences in the Oval Office, and the passing of the 12-year-old Barney, here.
(Photo via Eric Draper / White House)
(via ourpresidents)
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Former First Dog Barney Bush Passes Away At Age 12
Former First Dog Barney Bush — a black Scottish terrier known for chasing golf balls and taking America on video tours of the White House — has passed away after a battle with lymphoma. He was 12.
Former President George W. Bush announced on Friday the passing of the “little fellow,” saying in a news release that “after twelve and a half years of life, his body could not fight off the illness.”
“Barney was by my side during our eight years in the White House,” said Bush, who also released Friday an oil painting he did of Barney (Image above). “He never discussed politics and was always a faithful friend. Laura and I will miss our pal.” (Dallas Morning News Trail Blazers Blog)
White House photo by Kimberlee Hewitt
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Daisy Suckley plays with Fala in FDR’s White House Study, December 20, 1941. (FDR Presidential Library & Museum)
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Margaret “Daisy” Suckley and Fala, the dog she gave FDR, at Top Cottage during the summer of 1941. This photo was taken by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
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April 21, 1945
Dear Fala,
You probably don’t remember me. But I knew you back in our kennel days when we were a couple of young pups—in fact we chewed our first bone together, remember? In writing you this letter, I’m speaking for dogs throughout the world. For we are all deeply grieved to hear of the death of your master. Your personal loss is felt by all of us. You know as well as I do that leading a dog’s life is no bed of roses. But a dog’s life is for dogs. Human beings shouldn’t horn in on our territory. But lately a lot of men and women and kids have been leading a dog’s life, and your master was one of the humans who didn’t like to see that sort of thing happening. That’s why we respected him—he wanted to keep human beings in their right place. And he did something about it. He made plans, and people had confidence in his plans because his integrity and sincerity were felt the world over. In other words, he made a lot of people see the light, or as we’d put it, he put them on the right scent. Let’s hope they can keep their noses to the ground and work it out for themselves, even though his personal guidance has been taken away from them.
With deepest sympathy,
Fido
(via Letters of Note)
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In 1941, the staff at the Roosevelt Library celebrated the new institution’s first Christmas by decorating President Roosevelt’s private study. This small, blue stocking for FDR’s beloved Scottish terrier, Fala, is hanging next to the President’s stocking in the photo to the right.
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Fala and FDR, ca. 1944 (Harry S. Truman Library and Museum)
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Franklin D. Roosevelt with Fala and Ruthie Bie in Hyde Park, New York, 1941 One of the few photographs of Roosevelt in his wheelchair.
Franklin D. Roosevelt contracted infantile paralysis, more commonly known as polio, in 1921 when he was thirty-nine years old. After several years of rehabilitation, he returned to politics. Concerned his disability would be used against him in the political arena, Roosevelt was reluctant to be photographed or filmed in situations that highlighted his disability.
More - Franklin D. Roosevelt and Polio
This week in history, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was signed. To honor the anniversary, The U.S. National Archives has created a space to explore disability history through Presidential records. Throughout the week, we’ll be featuring records and posting questions to explore disability history.
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omg soooooo cuuuuuuuute !
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How could you overlook FDR’s Fala?
Letter to the editor (Washington Post, May 4, 2012):
“I was surprised when reading the lineup of other presidential pets in the May 1 front-page article on Bo, the first dog [‘The dog days of a reelection bid’], to see no mention of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s beloved Scottish terrier, Fala.
“Fala was of such transcendent importance that not only is he the only presidential pet immortalized in our city’s monumental core, next to his master at the FDR Memorial near the Tidal Basin, but he also was invoked by Roosevelt in a campaign speech on Sept. 23, 1944, when the president declared to laughter and applause: ‘These Republican leaders have not been content with attacks on me, or my wife or on my sons. . . . [T]hey now include my little dog, Fala, as well. Well, of course, I don’t resent attacks . . . but Fala does resent them… . I am accustomed to hearing malicious falsehoods about myself. . . . But I think I have a right to resent, to object, to libelous statements about my dog!’”
Emily S. Goldman, Washington
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Even During WWII, Dogs Mattered in Campaigns
America faced challenges even more urgent in 1944, when President Roosevelt was running for re-election against his Republican opponent Thomas Dewey.
President Roosevelt’s dog was a Scottish Terrier that he named Murray the Outlaw of Falahill, and nicknamed Fala. The rumor at the time, spread by Republicans, was that the dog had accidentally been left on one of the Aleutian islands during a presidential visit — and that Roosevelt had ordered a Navy destroyer to retrieve the stranded pooch at great expense to the treasury.
On September 23, 1944, Roosevelt immortalized the kerfuffle by addressing it during a nationally broadcast radio speech:These Republican leaders have not been content with attacks on me, or my wife, or on my sons. No, not content with that, they now include my little dog, Fala. Well, of course, I don’t resent attacks, and my family don’t resent attacks — but Fala does resent them. You know, Fala is Scotch, and being a Scottie, as soon as he learned that the Republican fiction writers in Congress and out had concocted a story that I’d left him behind on an Aleutian island and had sent a destroyer back to find him — at a cost to the taxpayers of two or three, or eight or 20 million dollars — his Scotch soul was furious. (laughter) He has not been the same dog since.(laughter) I am accustomed to hearing malicious falsehoods about myself — such as that old, worm-eaten chestnut that I have represented myself as indispensable. But I think I have a right to resent, to object, to libelous statements about my dog!Dewey foolishly tried to respond with a point by point rebuttal of Roosevelt’s speech, prompting the Democratic National Committee to put out a statement declaring the election “between Roosevelt’s dog and Dewey’s goat,” and Roosevelt himself wrote in a private letter soon after, “I deliberately wrote out a speech with the objective in mind of making Governor Dewey angry. It worked.” (The Atlantic)
