Ah, the wonders of computers and the possibilities made available for us through technology! I just listened to FDR’s infamy speech.

FDR was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, president of the United States during World War Two, which began for the U.S. with Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbour on December 7, 1941. On December 8, the President spoke, describing the events of the day before as acts that would forever be remembered in infamy and asking his government for a declaration of war.

Imagine! Who could have predicted on that sad, angry, apprehensive Monday that 65 years later I would hear the voice and the applause and see the man who many have called the greatest president the United States has ever had, next to Lincoln. I didn’t make that up; I read that in the copy surrounding the material I was researching.

The research is part of my continuous digging for information and insights into the screenplay I am working on. Earlier I found, printed and read Roosevelt’s declaration of war, ratified by the houses, at 3 p.m. on December 11. I had to get the chronology right, though, for the sake of my scene order, so I went back to look again, and that’s when I heard the famous voice. You won’t hear it in the movie, though (if and when it is produced), because my characters in Berlin who gathered around a radio to listen, got static.

Verisimilitude? Over-rated.