Governor Roosevelt Visits Oneonta On Road To Glory

2-12-10

By JIM KEVLIN : ONEONTA

He was two years away from his rendezvous with destiny – 12 years battling the Depression, first, then the Nazis – but Franklin D. Roosevelt’s problem-solving bent was evident when he was greeted by an “enthusiast throng” in front of the Oneonta Hotel at 10 a.m. Aug. 28, 1930.
His visit to Otsego County was part of a statewide tour, the governor (and future president) said, to determine whether state institutions were up to snuff.
“We find much of the equipment out of date and the buildings inadequate,” he said.  “We find our prisons, some of them built back in 1830, only allowed a space of 6 1/2 by 6 1/2 by 3 1/2 feet for a prisoner.
“...Now we have come to realize that these same prisoners, or at least 94 percent of them, are coming back into our communities to live, and it is far more creditable to treat them as human beings and endeavor to save them to society,” the Oneonta Herald reported FDR saying that day.
Before the session on the Oneonta Hotel steps, he paid a visit to the state Normal School – the future SUNY Oneonta – and “conferred with President Bugbee relative to a new building.”
The night before, the governor had spent the night at The Otesaga.
Roosevelt was serving his first term, and Black Tuesday, Oct. 29, 1929, when the stock market crashed, starting what would become the Great Depression.
Two years hence, he would be elected president and declare “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”