WESTWOOD—In this look at our political past we turn to October 1940 for a photograph snapped in Westwood. The borough did not have a local election that year, and so the people poured their enthusiasm into the candidates on a national level.
Wendell Willkie was a longtime Democratic activist who had switched affiliations in 1939 to become a Republican. He faced off against incumbent President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940. (This, after Roosevelt, a Democrat, had decided to run for an unprecedented third term.)
Willkie-for-President clubs sprang up all over the country, and Westwood had its own local chapter. Our featured photograph shows a Willkie campaign rally held Oct. 12, 1940 on Washington Avenue. The building in the background is now The Tavern @ Iron Horse, formerly the Iron Horse, and back then the Park Tavern.
The Westwood club organized a torchlight automobile parade that was held on the night of Nov. 1, 1940. A procession of cars traveled through Montvale, Park Ridge, Woodcliff Lake, Hillsdale, Emerson, and Westwood drumming up support for Wendell Willkie. It ended with a rally outside the Westwood train station.
In the end, Willkie lost by a wide electoral margin to President Roosevelt. At a time when America had just emerged from the Great Depression, and with the looming threat of another world war, voters favored the stability of the sitting president.
Roosevelt served four terms—from 1933 until his death, in 1945—making him the longest-serving U.S. president in history. While limiting presidents to two terms had always been tradition, in keeping with the precedent set by George Washington, it was not enshrined in the U.S. Constitution until the 22nd Amendment, in 1951.
Willkie holds a more somber distinction. A heavy smoker and drinker who ate a poor diet and eschewed exercise, he died in October 1944 at just 52 years old. Had he won the election he would have still been in office at the time.
Strangely, his running mate, Charles McNary, had died eight months earlier. This is the only instance in U.S. history where both members of a major party presidential ticket died during the term they had sought.