Harry L. Hopkins

August 17, 1890 – January 29, 1946

Harry Hopkins should have been dead before World War II even broke out, but as if through pure resolve, he beat the odds of his 1939 stomach cancer diagnosis. Franklin Roosevelt’s right hand man for over a decade, Hopkins, a man of humble Iowa roots, was a social worker in New York City when he joined Roosevelt’s Temporary Emergency Relief Administration. He rose to become one of the most visible leaders of the New Deal as the head of the Works Progress Administration and spent nearly two years as Secretary of Commerce. After his cancer diagnosis. Hopkins had three-quarters of his stomach removed, but for the next six years, he continued to serve as the President’s legs, traveling to London and Moscow to build goodwill among the Allied nations, as well as to the major wartime conferences. But Hopkins also knew tragedy. He had three sons, David, Robert, and Stephen, from his first marriage, which ended in divorce, and Diana, a daughter from his second. Diana was only a toddler when her mother died from cancer. During the war, tragedy struck for Hopkins again when his son Stephen was killed fighting in the Marshall Islands in 1944. But the war also brought Hopkins and his son Robert closer together. Like Churchill, Roosevelt, and Harriman, Hopkins too was able to bring a child to Yalta. Twenty-three year-old Robert was a photographer in the US Army Signal Corps, and he was selected by Roosevelt to serve as the official photographer for the Yalta Conference.

Photograph: Wikimedia commons, public domain