Whose image is on the dime?

Franklin D. Roosevelt's image is on the obverse (front) of the U.S. dime (10-cent coin), where it has appeared since 1946, the year after his death. Roosevelt (1882 to 1945) served as the 32nd President of the United States from March 4, 1933 until his death from a cerebral hemorrhage on April 12, 1945, the longest tenure of any U.S. president (he won four elections, in 1932, 1936, 1940, and 1944). The Twenty-Second Amendment, ratified February 27, 1951, now limits presidents to two terms, partly in response to Roosevelt's four-term presidency.

He led the country through the Great Depression with the New Deal, a sweeping series of federal programs (including the Social Security Act of 1935, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and the Civilian Conservation Corps), and through World War II from December 1941 to his death four months before V-J Day. Roosevelt was personally affected by polio, having contracted it in August 1921 at age 39 and largely losing the use of his legs. He helped found the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (later renamed the March of Dimes Foundation) on January 3, 1938 to fund research into a polio vaccine; the organization's signature fundraising drive, the March of Dimes, asked Americans to mail dimes to the White House to support polio research.

After Roosevelt's death in 1945, Congress and the public swiftly endorsed redesigning the dime with his portrait as a tribute to him and to the dimes that had funded the polio fight. The Roosevelt dime was designed by John R. Sinnock, then Chief Engraver of the U.S. Mint, and entered circulation on January 30, 1946 (Roosevelt's birthday). The reverse of the Roosevelt dime, also designed by Sinnock, shows a torch (signifying liberty) flanked by an olive branch (peace) and an oak branch (strength).

The Roosevelt dime composition is now copper-nickel-clad copper (since 1965; before then it was 90 percent silver). Roosevelt's other major memorials include the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., dedicated May 2, 1997, and his presidential library and home in Hyde Park, New York. Jonas Salk's polio vaccine, made possible in part by March of Dimes funding, was announced as effective on April 12, 1955, exactly ten years after Roosevelt's death.