How U.S. presidents have visited, inspired, battled and shaped the Sunshine State
By Jim Clark
Not every United States president visited Florida, but all have interacted with the state—some in anger, others to seek election victories, and a few to expand the nation’s size, resources and influence. Those who did come in person came for the same reasons most visitors do: to fish, to enjoy tropical nature or to enjoy balmy days and sunshine while the rest of the country shivered.
During the Revolutionary War, George Washington struggled with a Florida that remained loyal to King George and became a staging area for British troops. Washington and other early presidents also dealt with pirates based in Florida, enslaved people who had escaped to freedom, and Seminole warriors who raided homes in Georgia and then returned to the safety of Spanish Florida.
Presidents Andrew Jackson and Zachary Taylor came to fight Native Americans, while Donald Trump, Richard Nixon, and John Kennedy relaxed at their Florida homes; and Harry Truman made Key West his favorite vacation spot.
Fishing attracted some presidents, including Chester Arthur, Herbert Hoover, Warren G. Harding and George H. W. Bush. And two presidents, John Quincy Adams and Richard Nixon, helped protect the Florida environment.
All left their mark on Florida, along with dozens of stories. In this year of inaugurating a United States president, we look back on just a few.
Healing Waters— and a Brush with Death
Franklin Roosevelt came to Florida in 1921 looking for a cure for poliomyelitis, which had left the formerly robust 39-year-old paralyzed from the hips down. He believed he would walk again, despite what the doctors said, and had a theory that swimming would help him.
That search for a cure brought him to Florida on board the family yacht, Larooco. He swam in the warm waters off Fort Lauderdale, trying to regain movement in his legs. By 1926, he realized that his condition was not improving; and besides, he said, “The sharks made it impossible to play around in the deep water for any length of time.”
He put his yacht up for sale, but before he could find a buyer, the hurricane of 1926 reduced the boat to kindling.
After his 1932 election as president, Roosevelt returned to Florida to cruise on the yacht of his friend, Vincent Astor. People in Miami wanted Roosevelt to make a public appearance, but he was reluctant. A compromise was reached: His Buick convertible would arrive at Bayfront Park, and Roosevelt would slide onto the back of the car and say a few words.
Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak was vacationing in Miami and arranged to meet with Roosevelt at the park. Cermak had opposed Roosevelt for the Democratic nomination and wanted to mend fences.
Also in the crowd was Giuseppe Zangara, a mentally troubled Italian immigrant.
At 9:30 p.m., Roosevelt gave one of his shortest speeches, just 143 words. Cermak approached the car to speak with Roosevelt as Zangara climbed onto a chair, pulled out his $8 pistol and began firing.
Bystander Lillian Cross, the petite, 100-pound wife of a Miami physician, grabbed Zangara’s shooting arm, and he fired five shots wildly. The bullets hit four people around Roosevelt, including Cermak.
Roosevelt’s driver began to speed off, but Roosevelt saw that Cermak was badly wounded. He ordered the car to stop and pulled Cermak into the back seat. He held Cermak in his arms until they reached Jackson Memorial Hospital. The president stayed at the hospital until 2 a.m., then returned to Astor’s yacht. The next morning, he headed north.
After the shooting, people in the crowd grabbed Zangara and threw him to the ground. Secret Service agents had to rescue him and took him to the Dade County Jail. Zangara was convicted of attempted murder within days. After Cermak died, Zangara was retried, and just five weeks after the shooting, he was executed.
Roosevelt invited Lillian Cross to his inauguration and sent her a telegram: “It is hard for me to find words to convey to you my appreciation for your heroism and my gratitude for your prompt and courageous action.”
The President and the Poet
In 1933, Joseph P. Kennedy purchased a sprawling estate in Palm Beach. The Kennedy family began spending a month at the estate each year as the family grew to nine children.
For John Kennedy, the home was more of a hospital than a resort. He came in 1934 to recuperate after falling ill at his prep school, Choate, and as a senator, he came to recover after back surgeries and other ailments.
During one of these recovery periods, he and Ted Sorensen wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning Profiles in Courage.
Robert Frost came to Florida during the Great Depression and settled in Key West for the winters. He grew unhappy with the local government and decided to move his winter home to Gainesville. It was assumed he would develop a relationship with the University of Florida.
He and his wife found a house to purchase, but before they closed, Frost’s wife suffered a fatal heart attack. Gainesville now held bad memories, and Frost instead built a house in Coral Gables and began lecturing at the University of Miami.
After Kennedy’s election in 1960, he told friends he wanted to ask Robert Frost to write a special poem for the inauguration. Frost said he did not want to write a new poem, so Kennedy asked him to read an existing Frost poem, “The Gift Outright,” which Frost described as a “history of the United States.”
Kennedy did have one request: Would Frost change the last line of the poem about the United States from “Such as she was, such as she would become,” to “such as she will become?” Kennedy said he thought it sounded more optimistic.
In Palm Beach, Kennedy went to work on his inaugural address, once again helped by Sorenson, who was still in Washington.
In Coral Gables, Frost spent hours rehearsing his speech, but as the inauguration approached, he had second thoughts: Perhaps he should write a new poem. He went to work on a poem he called “Dedication.”
It began:
Summoning artists to participate In the august occasions of the state Seems something ought to celebrate. Today is for my cause a day of days. And his be poetry’s old fashioned praise Who was the first to think of such a thing. . .
He planned to begin with the new poem, “Dedication, then recite “The Gift Outright.”
The eve of the inauguration brought a massive snowstorm and bitterly cold weather. There was talk of moving the inauguration inside. Kennedy had not considered Frost’s age—86 years old—and the length of the ceremony. After an hour in the cold, windy weather, Frost rose to recite his poems. Although he knew “The Gift Outright” from memory, he had not memorized “Dedication.”
The sun was in his eyes, and as he began to read the poem, he lost his place as the wind threatened to blow his manuscript away. Vice President Lyndon Johnson rose and used his hat to block the wind.
Unable to continue reading, Frost abandoned “Dedication,” and began reciting “The Gift Outright.” Hardly anyone noticed, and Frost received deafening applause.
The applause was so loud that few heard Frost thank “President-Elect John Finley.”
Thank You, Richard Nixon
The two words most people think of in relation to President Richard Nixon are “Watergate” and “Vietnam.” But for Floridians, a better choice might be “Thank you.”
Richard Nixon became a champion for the Florida environment, halting work on two major projects with the backing of the state’s most powerful people.
In the 1960s, Miami was booming, and new developments in aviation led to predictions that supersonic planes would carry 1,000 passengers. Miami’s airport was a combination of three airports, and promoters claimed it could not accommodate future flights and that the ever-increasing noise would bother nearby neighbors. Their idea was to build the largest airport in the world and put it in the Everglades.
The city purchased 39 square miles of swamp land close to Everglades National Park. The airport would serve all of South Florida, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf. It would not be just an airport, but a city of 100,000 people.
Environmentalists were alarmed at the potential devastation such a massive development would wreak on the Everglades systems, from disrupting wildlife and water flow to massive pollution. Their opposition drew the attention of the Nixon administration, and an environmental study was ordered. The study was highly critical of the jetport, and early in 1970, the Nixon administration halted construction. Nixon called it “an outstanding victory for conservation.” He followed that by proposing acquiring land around what was to have been the jetport site to create the Big Cypress National Freshwater Preserve.
The Everglades victory heartened environmentalists, who had also been fighting the Cross Florida Barge Canal. Ever since the Spanish arrived in the 1500s, people had dreamed of a canal that could create a short route from the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf . Pedro Menendez de Aviles first suggested it in 1567, and in the 1800s planners conducted half a dozen studies, but all found the canal to be too expensive and not worth the effort.
In the 1930s, President Franklin Roosevelt proposed the canal as part of a New Deal jobs program. The canal would start near Palatka, follow the St. Johns River past Silver Springs, and enter the Gulf near Yankeetown.
After three years of work, the project ran out of money, but Lyndon Johnson revived it in 1964 when he visited Palatka and took part in a ceremonial explosion to start the work.
Environmentalists continued the fight and found an ally in Nixon. In 1970, he said, “Any program by the federal government … whether a barge canal or anything else, will not go into a place unless we are given assurance that it is not going to affect the environment.”
A few months later, he ordered construction stopped “to prevent potentially serious environmental damage.” Even appeals from Republican leaders and his best friend, Miami businessman Bebe Rebozo, failed to change his mind. Nixon’s refusal to dredge through the heart of unspoiled Florida means that today natural waterways, wetlands and many thousands of acres of green space offer beauty, recreation and environmental protection to Floridians.
A—Literal—Battle for the Ballot
Early in 1864 it looked as though Abraham Lincoln might lose his bid for reelection.
Lincoln—like all presidential candidates—was looking at the electoral college map. Florida had just three electoral votes, but in a close election, they could be vital. If Union troops could retake the state, the three electoral votes could be his.
Union troops controlled Key West and a fort in Pensacola, with control of St. Augustine and Jacksonville passing back and forth during the war.
In an effort to capture Jacksonville, Lincoln dispatched Major General Quincy Gillmore and his troops from Hilton Head, South Carolina, without telling his secretary of war. Confederates fled as the Union troops approached. Union General Truman Seymour was told to hold the city, but he ignored his orders and headed toward Lake City, then Florida’s 10th largest city, with a population of just 650 people.
At Olustee, he was met by Confederate troops from Georgia and Florida, along with volunteers who had responded to a call for arms.
The Union had 5,500 soldiers, a few hundred more than the Confederates, but the South had better leadership, and the battle turned into a rout as soldiers dropped their guns and fled. The Union suffered its highest casualty rate of the war, 40 percent, and it marked the last time the Union tried to capture Florida.
As it turned out, Lincoln easily won the election and did not need Florida’s electoral votes. Tallahassee remained the only Confederate capital east of the Mississippi that did not fall to the Union.
Election Interference, 1876-Style
Florida was overlooked in the presidential elections before 1876. The state had just three electoral votes, was solidly Democratic, and its size and widely spread population made campaigning difficult.
In the 1860 election, just 13,000 voters faced limited choices. The state had refused to allow Republican Abraham Lincoln on the ballot.
That all changed in 1876. On election night, Samuel Tilden, the Democrat, had a healthy lead in the national popular vote and was just one electoral vote short of becoming president. The Republican, Rutherford B. Hayes, was ready to concede but advisors urged him to wait.
The Republicans saw a chance in three Southern states: Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida. Hayes would win by a single electoral vote if they could take all three states.
The day after the election, Republican Senator William Chandler sent a telegram to party officials in Florida: “The Presidential election depends on the vote of Florida, and the Democrats will try to wrest it from us. Watch it, and hasten returns.”
One of the Republican operatives sent from Washington was Civil War General Lew Wallace. The party wanted to reward him for doing such a good job. Wallace wanted a job where he would have plenty of time to write and Hayes named him territorial governor of New Mexico.
In New Mexico, Wallace wrote Ben Hur.
In 2000, Florida again found itself in the middle of an election controversy. This time, the Supreme Court stepped in to stop election challenges and gave the election to George W. Bush.
Preserving the Pelicans
Teddy Roosevelt came to Florida in 1898 to lead his Rough Riders to Cuba. While he waited for a ship to take him to Cuba, he was struck by Florida’s beauty. He learned of a significant threat to the beautiful pelicans, whose feathers were prized for women’s hats. The feathers were literally worth their weight in gold, and hunters killed the birds by the thousands.
President Roosevelt signed an executive order making Pelican Island near Tampa the first federal bird reservation, the first of 550 wildlife refuges. He also created the Ocala National Forest, the oldest national forest east of the Mississippi.
When the Twin Towers Fell
No presidents had a closer relationship to Florida than George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush. In the 1960s, former Senator Prescott Bush purchased a home on Jupiter Island, which became a gathering place for the extended Bush family.
The Bush family often spent a quiet week after Christmas in Boca Grande, usually staying in the Gasparilla Inn and shopping at Hudson’s Grocery. George H. W. Bush was also a regular visitor at the Cheeca Lodge in Islamorada, where he was considered a skilled fisherman. His son, Jeb, served two terms as governor of Florida.
The most famous Bush visit to Florida was made by George W. Bush on September 11, 2001. He visited Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota to listen to second graders reading The Pet Goat. He was promoting his No Child Left Behind Act aimed at helping underprivileged schools.
As he entered the school, an aide told him an airplane had crashed into one of the World Trade Center buildings. At first, it was thought that a small plane had hit the building.
Bush entered the classroom and sat down. As the students began reading, his chief of staff, Andrew Card, approached and whispered news of a second attack.
Maria Tsataros, a WINK-TV reporter in the classroom, recalled that all around her pagers began to go off. Her news director sent her a message, “It appears America is under attack.”
Bush’s expression changed, but he said nothing. One student saw the change of expression and worried that a student had “read something wrong.”
He let the students continue reading.
Some thought Bush should have done something immediately, but 20 years later, a student in the class, Dinasty Brown, told Sarasota Magazine, “I’m glad he let us finish. It made us feel calm and appreciated.”
Bush went to another room to meet with aides. He then met with reporters and said there had been “an apparent terrorist attack.” He asked for a moment of silence and left for the Bradenton-Sarasota International Airport. Witnesses said they had never seen a plane leave the ground so quickly, speeding almost straight up into the air.
Plans to return to Washington were scrapped, and Bush flew to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, then to another base in Nebraska, and finally back to Washington.
Back at the elementary school, a small television was found in a closet, and students and faculty watched quietly as the Twin Towers poured black smoke and collapsed.
The nation would learn that three of the hijackers took flying lessons at Huffman Aviation in Venice, about an hour from the school.
James C. Clark is a senior lecturer in history at the University of Central Florida. He earned a doctorate in Florida history at the University of Florida. He is author of a dozen books on Florida history, including Presidents in Florida.