On April 12, 1945, Elizabeth Shoumatoff was painting a portrait of President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the Little White House, President Roosevelt's home in Warm Springs, Georgia. While sitting for the portrait, Franklin Roosevelt suddenly said, "I have a terrific headache," and slumped in his chair. A few hours later, at 3:35 P.M., the President of the United States was dead.

Franklin Roosevelt died from a cerebral hemorrhage. Although President Roosevelt began to show the strains of war during the last year of his life, his death was both shocking and devastating to the American people and people all over the world. For many, Franklin Roosevelt was the only president they had ever known. When British Prime Minister Winston Churchill heard of his ally's death, he said, "I felt as if I had been struck a physical blow."

Within hours after President Roosevelt's death, Vice President Harry S. Truman was sworn in as the next President of the United States. President Roosevelt's body was brought by train from Warm Springs, Georgia, to Washington, DC, and then up to the President's home in Hyde Park, New York, where he was buried in the family's rose garden.