I just read an interesting book. After hearing about it and
thinking about it, I asked for it for Christmas. It’s called The Man
He Became, How FDR Defied Polio to Win the Presidency. The book is a
biography focused on the period between the summer of 1921, when FDR contracted
polio and his inauguration as President in March of 1933.
It begins by unraveling the notion that FDR “hid his illness from
the public." Instead, it was an ever-present condition that people
knew but simply didn’t focus upon every day.
It reveals that he dealt with the effects of his bout with polio
by forcibly trying one thing after another. He began with denial, a
path all of us know well. It's a temporary one, but, in its best form, it
buys us time to adapt to new and challenging realities. He tried
others, beginning with exercising the muscles of his upper body alone and
trying constantly to transmit the message from his brain to his legs to
move. Those pathways no longer existed, it seems.
He tried braces to stiffen his legs and allow him to stand, but he
could not raise himself. He worked himself to exhaustion many times over
trying to restore the ability to walk without assistance.
He was willing to follow doctors' orders only when they shared his
goal--to walk again. If their goals were, in his view, too paltry, he
would overdo it, at times to his detriment. Upon learning that warm water
baths seemed to ease the painful contractions that came with his paralysis in
most but not all of the muscles in his legs, he rented a houseboat and cruised
around the Florida Keys in search of places where he could get in more time in
the water and the warm sun which seemed to help him
He found, in Warm Springs, Georgia, that the mineral
springs afforded him the temperature and the buoyancy to stay in the
water long enough to allow him to get in much more exercise time. He
invested money and time, and found resources to turn a failed resort into
a place there where others similarly afflicted could come to try to
restore ability where polio had left only disability.
Further, in that same process, he developed a feel for the concerns
of those around him in Georgia and the rest of the American South that a
wealthy scion of a New York family would never have had otherwise.
He remained committed to becoming able to walk unaided again because
he believed he could never realize his ambition of becoming president
without overcoming it all the way. In those days (and society still
hasn't completely shed this attitude) a cripple was someone to be shunned, and
if not shunned, then pitied. This would hardly befit a candidate for
president. Through it all, he kept his "game face" on and to
those outside his inner circle and family he was incessantly buoyant
and cheerful.
But he began to move forward again only when he came around to
accept the reality that others had tried to push upon him from the
beginning--that complete recovery was not possible. He amended his world
view and simply wanted to recover sufficient "So that they'll forget
that I'm a cripple." When this became his goal, he could move on in
his life, continuing to work on battling the effects, but focusing as well
on the political life he loved.
The story goes that Al Smith, then Governor of New York and
Democratic nominee for President in 1926, pressured FDR to accept the party's
nomination for Governor of New York to enhance Smith's chances of carrying New
York in his (Smith's) run for President. When asked, FDR was making
meaningful progress in Warm Springs, and declined to accept on that basis.
He said he needed two more years in Warm Springs to complete his recovery
and realize his goal of walking unaided. In fact, he had indeed walked
five steps across the living room unaided just a few days before. When
Smith and other NY Democrats he could not afford to lose for good
continued the pressure, FDR "walked" away from the Warm Springs work
and agreed to run for Governor. In the end, Roosevelt won, and Smith
lost--failing to carry New York in his failed bid for the presidency.
Did FDR learn how to arrange his movements, meetings and
appearances as Governor so that he avoided the embarrassment for himself
(and those who might be present) of a fall or spill in front of them?
Yes, but his disease and its effects ere never "hidden" from
the people.
In the years to follow, FDR became, not an object of pity, but a
hero who overcame being "knocked to the canvas (by polio) and got back up
to knock out the other guy." His image as someone who never
quit and made the comeback made him a man that people looked up to and who
might just be able to bring them out of the Depression. That image
carried him even further when America was attacked by Japan and faced the
Second World War.
Did FDR become a different man in the process? Of course.
Would he have become the President he did without facing polio?
All of the trials involved shaped the man. He drew power from
his doing something that was extremely difficult. He defeated the stigma that people with
disability faced. Such an achievement required a fierce will, a lot of
wiles and a lot of help. In the words of author James Tobin, "He might
have retreated into a comfortable retirement. Instead he chose to
exert his will and exercise his wiles, and that act of choosing, more than anything
else, revealed who he was.”[1]
[1]A major concern I have these days is what I will do/have done with my life
since I was diagnosed with PD. I realize, in part due to some persistent
commentary from my dear wife, that I have become a little wrapped up in it, but
it is difficult not to have it dominate my thoughts each and every day.
With that said, here I am looking at a story with some possible
application to my own life, which I had convinced myself was only half over when
I reached retirement (second half of life is what I was referring to when I
chose the name for my blog—What’s on 2nd).
Believe it or not, I went to a life expectancy
calculator a short while ago and, after responding to several dozen questions
about diet, lifestyle, history of disease in my family; it calculated 90 years
of age. Think about that for a minute. I “retired” at age 62,
and had 28 years ahead of me. That means, I will have had 68 total years
of adulthood (defining adulthood as the year I graduated college) and that more
than 40% of my adult years lie ahead of me.
So, I am asking myself, do I have time to get
on with living that life I have imagined? While I don’t expect to become
President (or even, if you’ve read any of my poetry, Poet Laureate), I suspect
there are some lessons I (in fact, all of us) can learn to apply here.
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