John Roosevelt Boettiger, the grandson of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, is the 4-year-old blond-haired boy pictured on the far right in 1943. Boettiger’s parents, John and Anna, resided on the North end at that time. Don Gulliford, a longtime Mercer Island resident, bottom left, remembers attending the Emmanuel Church Nursery School in the old Guild Hall.
“Johnny pulled me out of ‘class’ (we shared a desk) and out we went to meet his grandfather in a snow storm. When Winston Churchill said meeting FDR for the first time was like your first glass of champagne ... he was 100 percent right,” Gulliford said.
by Mercer Island Reporter Staff