On April 12, 1945, I expected the telephone call to be from my mother congratulating my husband and me on our fourth wedding anniversary.  We were living in Ottawa, Canada, and finally the eighteen inches of ice on the sidewalks was beginning to melt. 
    "I suppose you heard the news," my mother said.
    "What news?"  I had spent the day, as usual, trying to keep ahead of two small boys while also trying to keep up with the household tasks and pretending to be an artist. 
    "Your Uncle Franklin died this afternoon."
    Like a good portion of the world population, I was stunned.  Uncle Franklin was not far into his fourth term as president.  He had gone to his "Little White House" in Warm Springs, Georgia, for a few days of rest and died suddenly of a massive cerebral hemorrhage: a stroke.  The world lost its leader just as the Second World War was coming to a close.  I lost a friend.
    The telephone rang again.  It was Mackenzie King, the prime minister of Canada.  We had become friends on the few occasions when I had met him in Ottawa.  He was a sincere and honest person, a friend of Uncle Franklin and a popular leader.  He said he planned to go to the burial service in Hyde Park and asked if I would go along with him in his private railway car.  I hear myself say yes even as I wondered how I would arrange to leave my two young boys.
    I never traveled with Uncle Franklin on his campaign whistle-stop tours of the United States, so I was curious about what it would be like to travel in a private railway car.  Today, the only place to see on is in a museum.
    It was late afternoon, a day or two later, when Mr. King's sedan drove up to our duplex.  The prime minister himself came up the snowy walk to carry my bag to his car.  When I was seated, the chauffeur put a fur lap robe across my knees to warm them.  At the Ottawa station, we walked along the platform to the special car that had been attached to the train bound for New York City.  It was a fairy tale house on wheels.  It had a little living room complete with comfortable sofa and chairs and an open fire in an iron fireplace.  It also had a study for the prime minister, three tiny bedrooms with toilet facilities, a dining room for six, and a kitchen.
    The Roosevelts taught me to embrace new experiences, so despite feeling numb about the death of Uncle Franklin, I was fascinated by my adventure.  It was a tribute, in some way, to his lively, unrelenting spirit.