The Four Freedoms: What makes me thankful

FDR's 1941 speech and Norman Rockwell's art still resonate

The painting is familiar to many people. An elderly couple places a huge turkey on a dining room table amid family members leaning into the frame.

It looks like a traditional Thanksgiving meal. But “Freedom from Want,” one of a series of four Norman Rockwell 1942 paintings inspired by Franklin Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” State of the Union speech a year earlier, has a meaning that goes deeper than paint and canvas.

Norman Rockwell’s “Freedom from Want,” from the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. (Photo by John Naughton.)

Roosevelt was reelected in 1940 as America watched Europe and Asia at war. Isolationists supported American neutrality. Others suggested getting involved. (Those arguments became one-sided on December 7, 1941.)

Rockwell lived in Vermont in 1942, but was a New Yorker by birth, like Roosevelt. His museum is located in Stockbridge, Massachusetts — less than 70 miles from Roosevelt’s museum and estate in Hyde Park, New York.

Roosevelt delivered his famous “Four Freedoms” speech January 6, 1941.

The Four Freedoms outlined by Roosevelt: Freedom of speech; of worship; from want and from fear.

Our world has changed so much since 1941. But we, as Americans, still want the ability to share our views as protected by our Constitution; to worship in the way we see fit; to feed ourselves and our families despite economic instability; and for our families to go to bed with a spirit of peace.

I contemplated this message on Thanksgiving Day as I spent time with family and friends.

Statues of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Historic Site in Hyde Park, New York. (Photo by John Naughton.)

Roosevelt crafted his speech with the help of a number of trusted advisors, including Iowan Harry Hopkins. The “Four Freedoms” phrase didn’t emerge until the fourth draft of the speech.