"[28]
Roosevelt's father died in 1900, causing great distress for him.[29] The following year, Roosevelt's fifth cousin Theodore Roosevelt became President of the United States. Theodore's vigorous leadership style and reforming zeal made him Franklin's role model and hero.[30] Franklin graduated from Harvard in 1903 with an A.B. in history. He entered Columbia Law School in 1904 but dropped out in 1907 after passing the New York Bar Examination.[31][c] In 1908, he took a job with the prestigious law firm of Carter Ledyard & Milburn, working in the firm's admiralty law division.[33]

Marriage, family, and affairs
Eleanor and Franklin with their first two children, 1908
During his second year of college, he met and proposed to Boston heiress Alice Sohier, who turned him down.[21] Franklin then began courting his child-acquaintance and fifth cousin once removed, Eleanor Roosevelt, a niece of Theodore Roosevelt.[34] In 1903 Franklin proposed to Eleanor, and after resistance from his mother, they were married on March 17, 1905.[21][35] Eleanor's father, Elliott, was deceased, and her uncle Theodore, then the president, gave away the bride.