December 8 is the 64th anniversary of Franklin Roosevelt's "Day of Infamy" speech, in which he asked Congress for a declaration of war against Japan, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

The phrase "Day of Infamy" is so vivid and striking, and has become so familiar to us, that it is difficult to believe that FDR ever had it in mind to say anything else. But he did. He received word of the Japanese attack in the early afternoon of December 7. Shortly afterwards, after conferring with his military advisors, he dictated his request for a declaration of war to his secretary, Grace Tully.

Originally, he had begun, "Yesterday, December 7, 1941, a date which will live in world history ..." But when he reviewed the draft that Tully had typed for him, he altered that critical first line to use the word that would make it immortal.

At least a dozen speechwriters assisted FDR during his tenure in the White House. Pulitzer Prize-winning authors Archibald Macleish and Robert Sherwood contributed to some of his most important addresses. But insiders' accounts agree that that the final products were very much Roosevelt's own. In reviewing speech drafts, he never hesitated to trust his instincts, as he did when he changed "history" to "infamy."

Nearly always, he found the words he wanted and, nearly always, they were the right words. When FDR died, in 1945, an unknown GI spoke for millions of his countrymen when he said, "America will seem a strange, empty place without his voice talking to the people whenever great events occur."