This April 13, 1945, front page evokes the massive shock and mourning at Franklin Roosevelt's death.

Saturday’s gorgeous weather showed off our coastline. My wife and I drove south to Manzanita. The parking lot at Oswald West State Park was teeming with surfers, hikers and others. Bicyclists in low gear made their way up the grade to Neah-Kah-Nie Mountain, which presents the most awe-inspiring vista on the entire Oregon Coast.

She and I had not played the Manzanita Golf Course since more than 20 years ago. I suspect we played the course during its first year, in 1987. It was 79 degrees as we left the first tee. The fifth hole presents a special challenge, with the tee some 80 feet above the fairway. Neah-Kah-Nie looms in the north as the duffer works his way toward the green.

The course has matured nicely and is well maintained. We’ve made a vow not to let so much time elapse before our next visit to this gem.

October is one big earth-shift, with trees bursting into color and dropping their leaves and land going fallow. My random sample suggests that most of us pick autumn as the favorite season.

In the years I shared an office behind the U.S. Supreme Court building, my evening walk home was a treat – historically and visually. On my block, around the corner on A Street Northeast, was a small home bearing the sign of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, the group that gave us Prohibition in 1917. Like its cause, this headquarters showed little sign of use.

The street was lined with very mature elms, oaks and even a chestnut or two. In October, their color scheme became arresting.

About 30 feet beyond the antique WCTU headquarers was a Capitol Hill home, where I would see two men sitting on the front stoop, drinks in hand, as I passed between 5 and 6 in the evening.

As summer faded into fall’s brisk air, the two guys continued to appear with their gin and tonics. I can’t say that I ever timed when they admitted to the turn of season and went inside.

During the national grief following the assassination of President John Kennedy, my mother said: “This is nothing compared to what followed President Roosevelt’s death in the midst of World War II.” She noted that Roosevelt’s 12 years in the White House made him the only president that many Americans had known. Later I realized she was describing herself.

When I recounted her description to Don Haskell of Astoria, he remembered his mother’s weeping in the days following FDR’s passing.

After a few weeks’ of watching, I finished Ken Burns’ 14-hour documentary The Roosevelts. It is a deep look at Theodore, Franklin and Eleanor as well as their children and extended families.

Burns’ great accomplishment was to humanize these people – to show, through correspondence and personal recollections, the emotions that drove them to great accomplishment.

— S.A.F.

Many who mourned Franklin Roosevelt had known no other president.