It’s a well-known but remarkable phenomena that U.S. presidents seem to age in dog years while they are in office. They typically emerge from a 4-year or 8-year term looking decades older.

I came across some pictures of Franklin Delano Roosevelt long before he became our president. It might be these specific photos, but he seemed to age faster before he was the president than during his time in office.

Would you like some musical accompaniment as you peruse these photos?  Happy Days are Here Again! was the song FDR selected for his first presidential campaign.  In the midst of a years-long Depression, it was a bold choice. But Franklin’s instincts were correct. The country was weary of hunger and uncertainty. This was the message they longed to hear.

We get our first glimpse of Franklin at age 18, in 1900.

Here he is 16 years later, at age 34. Sixteen years is a long time and, during that period, all the boyishness seems to have melted away. In 1916, FDR was serving as Assistant Secretary of the Navy. He looks dapper in his suit and bowler hat!

Two years later, when Franklin was 36, he posed for his passport photo.  FDR seemed to have aged quite a bit in the two years since the last picture.

Franklin contracted polio in 1921, which had a devastating effect on his body for the remainder of his life. Here he is, age 45, with  Eleanor at home in Hyde Park, New York in 1927.

We catch Franklin again in 1939. Twelve years have passed and he’s 57 now, but he doesn’t look like he’s aged that much since the last photo, though he had been in office for six years by this point. It could be the camera angle.  This is  my favorite photo of him!

The last photo is from 1941, when FDR was 59.  He doesn’t seem to have aged from the last photograph.

Here’s one other FDR-related image I found in the National Archives. It’s a photograph of a massive dust cloud approaching a small village in Rolla, Kansas on May 6, 1935.

It was apparently used as a postcard and mailed to President Roosevelt.

The message read:

Dear Mr. Roosevelt,

Darkness came when it hit us. Picture taken from water tower one hundred feet high.

Yours Truly, Chas. P. Williams

Going back to Happy Days are Here Again!, it goes to show FDR had a remarkable understanding of human psychology.