Presidents Day: From FDR to Truman to Trump, Florida has list of presidential landmarks

Donald Trump's 30-plus visits to Mar-a-Lago during his White House term are far from the only presidential history in Florida.

The Sunshine State, which has not seen a favorite son ever elected to the Oval Office, nonetheless has a robust connection to White House administrations over the years.

"There is more than people realize. Some presidents have used Florida for vacation. Others came for vacation but also working," said Robert Watson, a professor at Lynn University who has published more than 40 books on history and politics, plus hundreds of journal articles and chapters. "And, of course, not now, but over a period of several election cycles, Florida was the swing state. As Florida goes, so went the country … Florida was the bellwether."

Many times, the notable presidential visits, defined as more than a stop for a policy or campaign speech, were for rest and relaxation. President George H.W. Bush enjoyed fishing off Jupiter Island and in the Florida Keys, for example.

But like Trump's, many other presidential stays included significant moments in U.S. and state history, and at least one could have changed the course of the presidency, the Great Depression and World War II.

Let's start with that moment in our Presidents Day tour of some landmarks in Florida.

FDR's close call

Before President Franklin D. Roosevelt discovered Warm Springs, Ga., he found soothing relief from polio in the warm waters off the Florida Keys.

Roosevelt was paralyzed by the since-eradicated disease in 1921, when he was 39 and a rising star in New York state politics. In hopes of comfort, if not healing, the future president spent winter months during the 1920s in the archipelago off the mainland Florida peninsula. He lived aboard a rented houseboat, the Weona, fishing and bobbing in the calming waters, where he was able to relax and entertain guests.

One of his final stays in Florida was 91 years ago this month when President-elect Roosevelt spoke in downtown Miami on Feb. 15, 1933 — 17 days before his scheduled inauguration at the U.S. Capitol.

One of the onlookers listening to FDR as he spoke standing on the back of an automobile was Giuseppe Zangara, a local who proceeded to fire a .32-caliber revolver in FDR's direction. Zangara missed FDR, but struck Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak and four others.

FDR cradled the mortally wounded Cermak as the car sped to a hospital, and the mayor subsequently died from the wounds. Zangara pleaded guilty and was executed on March 20, 1933.

Sixteen days before, FDR indeed took the presidential oath of office and reassured the country that there "is nothing to fear but fear itself."

"FDR almost shot. Think of the timing," Watson said. "Had FDR had been killed there, that whole era would have been different. He came within a foot of being shot there."

Truman's Little White House in the Keys

In the late 1940s, Harry S. Truman became a virtual citizen of the Conch Republic. The 33rd president made 11 visits, totaling 178 days, to a retreat in Key West, which today is the Harry S. Truman Little White House historic site.

Historian Watson, who has studied Truman's time here, said the visits were far from relaxing sojourns under the sun and poker games late into the night.

It was during his time in Key West, Watson said, that Truman "listened to experts and the science" on the importance of protecting South Florida's wetlands and hydrological ecosystems and agreed to establish Everglades National Park in 1947.

Among those who spent time talking and debating policy with Truman in Key West was top national security aide George Elsey, a former Navy intelligence officer who ran the map room during World War II. Another guest was U.S. Sen. Arthur Vandenberg, the powerful Michigan Republican who served as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The Little White House visits were pivotal in building support for NATO, the Marshall Plan and the Berlin Airlift. And, Watson said, a consequential political move was made in Key West: Truman's decision to not run for re-election in 1952.

Watson notes that other presidents, including Dwight Eisenhower, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, visited and spent time at the Little White House, too.

"You could argue it's the most important presidential location in the state of Florida, easily, because of the sheer number of presidents that have been there, and the sheer amount of time Truman spent there and the type of decisions that were made there," said Watson.

JFK's bunker

Before Trump, it was John F. Kennedy who was most associated with Palm Beach. The Kennedy family had owned a seaside mansion, at 1095 N. Ocean Blvd., since 1933.

The 35th president worked on his 1961 inaugural address, where he called on Americans to "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country," on the property.

But the mansion is not the only relic of the Kennedy years in the county.

Farther north, on Peanut Island, is a nuclear bomb shelter built for JFK. Known as the "Kennedy bunker," it was established to protect Kennedy and allow the commander-in-chief to conduct defense and other government operations in the event of a nuclear conflict with the Soviet Union.

At the time, entry and exit to the bunker was through a narrow torpedo tube-like access point, raising questions about whether the structure's designers knew about JFK's severe back pain and injuries.

The Palm Beach mansion, by the way, is no longer among the Kennedy family's holdings. It was sold for $70 million in June 2020.

Rare Photos: JFK's last Easter in Palm Beach

Nixon mulled Mar-a-Lago

Before Trump bought the estate in Palm Beach, Mar-a-Lago was a possession of the U.S. government.

General Foods heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post bequeathed the property to the feds in hopes the sprawling compound would become another presidential retreat, a sort of southern Camp David. On July 7, 1974, President Richard Nixon boarded Marine One from his own home in Key Biscayne and flew to Mar-a-Lago to survey the property and, presumably, decide its future role.

Or more precisely, as the entry in Nixon's diary for that date described, the president "looked over the property" during his 31-minute tour "to determine its potential for possible use by U.S. presidents for visiting foreign dignitaries."

Nixon ultimately did not make a decision about Mar-a-Lago's use. Later that July, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered him to release the so-called Watergate tapes and then, on Aug. 9, the 37th president resigned.

There was an interesting footnote to the Nixon visit to Mar-a-Lago that day. Along for the ride was Nixon close friend Charles "Bebe" Rebozo, a Miami banker.

Nixon's home at 500 Bay Lane, which he bought in 1969, was just a short walk from Rebozo's place and the latter later claimed Nixon was swimming in his pool when he learned of the arrests of the burglars at the Watergate complex in June 1972.

The break-in led to Nixon's role in the cover-up, for which he lost the White House, and Rebozo was with Nixon when the president arrived at the decision to step down.

Presidential history: President Nixon toured Mar-a-Lago. Then he resigned a month later.

Trump's Southern White House

Mar-a-Lago, Trump's private club and, since 2019, his official residence, too, is to date the state's most ubiquitous connection to the American presidency.

As president, Trump visited over dozens of weekends and holidays, principally during Palm Beach's winter society season, and brought global figures with him, such as Chinese leader Xi Jingping and the late Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Trump and Abe made for an early and one of the most iconic moments of Trump's Palm Beach presidential stays. In February 2017, barely a month after his inauguration, the president and Abe huddled with key aides in the middle of the private club's opulent dining hall, surrounded by onlookers, as they discussed a response to a North Korean ballistic missile test.

Five years later, the congressional committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol revealed how Trump spent much of his 2020 Christmas holiday at Mar-a-Lago promoting baseless theories of election fraud and seeking to undo that November's presidential voting results.

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Antonio Fins is a politics and business editor at The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach him at afins@pbpost.com. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Presidents Day: From Truman to Trump, Florida has presidential landmarks