In private, FDR used a special wheelchair he designed himself. Most buildings during his era were not wheelchair accessible; therefore Roosevelt needed something small, appealing, efficient, and discreet.
To accomplish this, he used a dining chair and replaced the legs with bicycle-like wheels. The chair was small and could move around tight corners and narrow hallways with ease. His wheelchair did not call a lot of attention since it was made out of something people were used to seeing in their own homes. Masking his disability in his home was one thing, but the real challenge arose when he was asked to appear in public or deliver a speech.
Often he was required to navigate to a podium or area in which he would greet listeners. Of course FDR could have simply chosen to remain in his wheelchair during public events, but he wanted to assure America that he was capable.
He never wanted Americans to get the impression that he was helpless, so it was important to him to at least seem as if he could walk. He would maneuver his hips and swing is legs forward in a swaying motion to make it appear as if he was walking. Stairs were also a challenge for FDR, he learned to support his weight with just his arms, holding himself up as if he were on parallel bars, and swing his way down toward the next step.
FDR requested that the press avoid photographing him walking, maneuvering, or being transferred from his car. The stipulation was accepted by most reporters and photographers but periodically someone would not comply. Although FDR made the choice to put his paralysis on the back burner in order to return to political life, he never gave up on the cause. Throughout his presidency, FDR made sure that he put effort into assisting those who suffered from polio. After ten years of setting up Warm Springs so that it became the prime place for polio patients to receive therapy, FDR faced funding issues with the foundation.
He urged people in his honor to make monetary donations to the facility and ended up raising one million dollars for the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation. The fundraising for the National Foundation evolved into what we now know as the March of Dimes. This was a fund-raiser in which all of its proceeds went to the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis. The annual continuation of this occasion eventually funded the research for the Salk vaccine to treat polio; unfortunately FDR never lived to see it.
Eleanor had a way of looking at the big picture instead of worrying over the small stuff. She understood that the battles her husband fought in life were often more than what they seemed. The way he viewed himself as a person, father and politician despite his limitations helped others to change the way they viewed others crippled by disease or disability. I can take the next thing that comes along. The Library's mission is to foster research and education on the life and times of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, and their continuing impact on contemporary life.
FDR and Polio. Introduction Franklin D. Recovery and Rehabilitation It was during fall of , when FDR made the decision to remove himself from political life in order to begin his rehabilitation process at his home in Hyde Park, New York. Prescription from Dr. Linder Inc. July 5, File: "Infantile Paralysis". Gallagher 20 As FDR made his way back into political life, he was unsure how the public would react to his disability.
Legacy Although FDR made the choice to put his paralysis on the back burner in order to return to political life, he never gave up on the cause. Primary Sources Franklin D. Roosevelt Family, Business and Personal Papers. Roosevelt President's Personal File. Secondary Sources Gallagher, Hugh Gregory.
On misimpressions of FDR's openness about his condition. When I've talked to people in the past I've always asked them, "Did you know about FDR's condition?
What they say is, "We realize later that he was more disabled than we knew, but we certainly knew he was disabled, we knew that he couldn't walk. And then in the debate over the Roosevelt memorial in Washington that took place in the s, that theme got repeated over and over again by various advocates in that argument. And then it got put into a couple of television documentaries, and so it just had a viral effect.
All you have to do is go back to the newspapers of the time, especially from the s when Roosevelt was making his political comeback, and his disability was discussed constantly.
He was very frank about it. So there's no question that people knew about it. And you see during his presidency, people who were themselves disabled, people who had polio, their children had polio, writing to FDR in the White House by the hundreds and talking about his disability. The March of Dimes [nonprofit] itself, which came about during Roosevelt's presidency, he was the leader of it, was an effort to fight polio.
The polio campaign that was waged every year had Roosevelt as its figurehead. On how FDR's condition affected his marriage to Eleanor. I think at first the polio brought the two of them closer together.
It was only a few years earlier, , that Eleanor Roosevelt had discovered that he had had this affair with her own social secretary, Lucy Mercer, a situation that everyone knows about. So the marriage had been deeply damaged. Her trust for him had been destroyed. But polio sort of called upon her to give him all the care that she possibly could give him. That was the sort of wife that Eleanor saw herself as: somebody bound by duty to help her husband.
And she absolutely did for many months. She cared for him, she sort of organized his care with physical therapists and nurses at the same time that she was looking after five children and a couple of different households.
She really did devote herself to his case. As he began to pursue his recovery in other places where he could go for treatment, she increasingly saw that she couldn't devote the rest of her life to him and didn't care to. She wanted to express her own individuality, and she wanted to pursue a position of politics of her own, and so she increasingly did that. On January 3, , President Eisenhower signs a special proclamation admitting the territory of Alaska into the Union as the 49th and largest state.
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