Anton Cermak place of death Miami
Death
On February 15, 1933, while shaking hands with President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt at Bayfront Park in Miami, Florida, Cermak was shot in the lung and mortally wounded by Giuseppe Zangara, who was attempting to assassinate Roosevelt. At the critical moment, Lillian Cross, a woman standing near Zangara, hit Zangara's arm with her purse, and spoiled his aim. In addition to Cermak, Zangara hit four other people: Margaret Kruis, 21, of Newark, NJ, shot through the hand; Russell Caldwell, 22, of Miami, hit squarely in the forehead by a spent bullet, which embedded itself under the skin; Mabel Gill of Miami, shot in the abdomen; and William Sinnott, a New York police detective, who received a glancing blow to the forehead and scalp. All four of those injuries were minor.
Once at the hospital, Cermak reportedly uttered the line that was engraved on his tomb, saying to Roosevelt, “I’m glad it was me, not you.” The Chicago Tribune reported the quote without attributing it to a witness, and most scholars doubt that it was ever said.Zangara told the police that he hated rich and powerful people, but not Roosevelt personally. Later, rumors circulated that Cermak, not Roosevelt, had been the intended target, as his promise to clean up Chicago’s rampant lawlessness posed a threat to Al Capone and the Chicago organized crime syndicate. One of the first people to suggest the organized crime theory was reporter Walter Winchell, who happened to be in Miami the evening of the shooting.  According to Roosevelt biographer Jean Edward Smith, there is no proof for this theory.Long-time Chicago newsman Len O’Connor offers a different view of the events surrounding the mayor’s assassination. He has written that aldermen Paddy Bauler and Charlie Weber informed him that relations between Cermak and Roosevelt were strained, because Cermak fought Roosevelt’s nomination at the Democratic convention in Chicago.Author Ronald Humble provides yet another perspective as to why Cermak was killed. In his book Frank Nitti: The True Story of Chicago’s Notorious Enforcer, Humble contends that Cermak was as corrupt as Thompson, and that the Chicago Outfit hired Zangara to kill Cermak in retaliation for Cermak’s attempt to murder Frank Nitti.Cermak died at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami on March 6, partly due to his wounds. On March 30, however, his personal physician, Dr. Karl A. Meyer, revealed that the primary cause of Cermak’s death was ulcerative colitis, commenting, “The mayor would have recovered from the bullet wound had it not been for the complication of colitis. The autopsy disclosed the wound had healed ... the other complications were not directly due to the bullet wound.” Doubts were raised at the time and later concerning whether the bullet wound directly contributed to his death. A theory raised decades later contended that the bullet had actually caused damage to his colon which led to perforation which was undiagnosed by his doctors. It alleged that "but for [the] physicians' blunders" Cermak might have survived. This theory was refuted by a later medical analysis of the event.Zangara was convicted of murder after Cermak’s death, and was executed in Florida's electric chair on March 20, 1933.Cermak was interred in a mausoleum at the Bohemian National Cemetery in Chicago. The mayor’s death was followed by a struggle for succession both to his party chairmanship, and for the mayor's office.A plaque honoring Cermak still lies at the site of the assassination in Miami’s Bayfront Park. It is inscribed with Cermak’s alleged words to Roosevelt after he was shot, “I’m glad it was me instead of you.” Following Cermak’s death, 22nd Street—a major east–west artery that traversed Chicago’s West Side, and the close-in suburbs of Cicero and Berwyn, areas with significant Czech populations—was renamed Cermak Road. In 1943, a Liberty ship, the SS A. J. Cermak was named in Cermak’s honor. It was scrapped in 1964.
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