Q. What was Chattanooga’s connection to the attempted assassination of President-elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933?
A. On the evening of Feb. 15, 1933, Franklin Moore, manager of the Read House, was talking with Chief Clerk Frank H. “Pete” Woods about a gunman’s attempt to shoot President-elect Franklin Roosevelt (presidents were inaugurated in March in that era) as he spoke that evening in Miami, according to a report in the next day’s Chattanooga Daily Times. One on the men mentioned that the mayor of Chicago had been shot during the same incident, to which a woman standing at the front desk replied, “My God. That’s my father.” Helena Cermak Kenlay, the youngest daughter of Chicago Mayor Anton J. Cermak, and her traveling party had stopped in Chattanooga on their way to her father’s winter home in Miami, the paper said. In fact, she had been writing a telegram to her father when she overheard Moore and Woods. Moore immediately escorted Kenlay to his office, where she made some phone calls, then left that night via train in an effort to reach Miami as quickly as possible, according to the paper. Her traveling party, including two friends, her 2-year-old daughter and a maid, left the next day via car. The shooter, Giuseppe Zangara, missed Roosevelt but hit five other people, including the mayor, who was shot in a lung, according to Chicago Magazine, and died March 6. Zangara was convicted of Cermak’s murder and was executed March 20, 1933.
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