FDR and Wilkie

Letters to the Editor

FDR and Wilkie

Mayor Seymour Gelber is a distinguished public servant, but his memory of history in Sunday’s Miami Herald (“I’m with her,” Oct. 2) is inaccurate. Many in the Republican Party of 1940 were avowed isolationists — as were the majority of Americans — but Wendall Wilkie was not. He was an Anglophile who supported FDR’s quiet efforts to help England and publicly supported FDR’s Lend Lease.

During the 1940 campaign, both Wilkie and FDR publicly stated a desire to keep American out of World War II. To say otherwise would have been political suicide in 1940.

Private correspondence showed that FDR was relieved that the Republican Party had nominated Wilkie instead of Sen. Robert Taft so that aid to England would not be a political issue. FDR made Wilkie his envoy during the war to help the American war efforts in London.

Lang Baumgarten, Miami

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Letters to the Editor

Vote for civility and ethics for better local governments

By Jim Cason, former mayor, Coral Gables, Merrett R. Stierheim, former Miami-Dade County manager

February 20, 2019 01:36 PM

There are many important municipal elections scheduled this year throughout Miami-Dade County. The impact of those elections on local residents spans across many issues, like personal safety and security, taxation, and neighborhood recareation programs.

Because these issues often affect the quality of residential life and the delivery of municipal public services, residents should take more than passing interest in who their candidates are and what they stand for. It is most important for all of us to become informed and vote.