Fala (dog) - After Roosevelt's Death

After Roosevelt's Death

Fala attended Roosevelt's funeral and went to live with the widowed Eleanor Roosevelt at Val-Kill. Roosevelt often mentioned Fala in her newspaper column, "My Day."

It was Fala, my husband's little dog, who never really readjusted. Once, in 1945, when General Eisenhower came to lay a wreath on Franklin's grave, the gates of the regular driveway were opened and his automobile approached the house accompanied by the wailing of the sirens of a police escort. When Fala heard the sirens, his legs straightened out, his ears pricked up and I knew that he expected to see his master coming down the drive as he had come so many times. Later, when we were living in the cottage, Fala always lay near the dining-room door where he could watch both entrances just as he did when his master was there. Franklin would often decide suddenly to go somewhere and Fala had to watch both entrances in order to be ready to spring up and join the party on short notice. Fala accepted me after my husband's death, but I was just someone to put up with until the master should return. —Eleanor Roosevelt, On My Own

Fala died in 1952, two days before his twelfth birthday, and is buried next to the Roosevelts in the rose garden at Springwood.