FDR
grew up in a wealthy, civic-minded family in New York State. A
personable and vigorous young man, he followed the path of his cousin,
President Theodore Roosevelt, first in joining the Navy, then in
quickly becoming a successful politician. Unlike his older cousin,
FDR's first Presidential election was a losing one as the
Vice-Presidential candidate of the 1920 Democratic slate. Shortly
thereafter, his political future unclear, he contracted polio. Both his
legs became permanently paralyzed and he became a wheelchair-user.
FDR's wealth and contacts enabled him to pursue physical rehabilitation
anywhere he chose. He selected Warm Springs, Georgia. He poured much
of his energy and wealth into building a modern rehabilitation facility
there.
For many years, historical
accounts of FDR's polio treated it as a brief and isolated incident in
his life which probably proved to his political benefit. These
narratives contend that voters felt distanced from the healthy and
wealthy FDR. But polio became a great equalizer. It demonstrated that
even someone with FDR's breeding and riches could be brought down a
notch or two and in so doing would become more appealing to the voters
who would elect him. In addition, FDR turned to his wife Eleanor, whose
compassion is now legendary, to keep him in touch with everyday issues
and the average citizen. Finally, his long recovery enabled him to
write many
letters, entertain
visitors, and make numerous contacts in a concerted effort to reenter
the political scene. He did so with great success. FDR was elected
governor of New York in the latter part of the 1920s, setting the stage
for his quest to become President.
Hugh
Gregory Gallagher eloquently opposes this traditional narrative in his
groundbreaking study FDR's Splendid Deception. He argues that this
typical portrayal of a short bout with polio contains little
understanding of disability and its long-range effects.
FDR
took great pains to hide the extent of his disability from the public.
While the polio virus itself had disappeared and the consequent
impairments did not technically make FDR "sick," that was how both he
and the American public viewed disability. FDR fit the classic
description of an invalid.
The word
invalid describes someone who is incapable of caring for themselves.
Although illness or sickness is not necessarily a permanent aspect of
disability, it is an inherent concept of invalidism. Since no
distinction was made between an invalid and a disabled person, that
individual was considered to be sick.
FDR
refused to let that mistaken perception prevent him from resuming his
political career. The course he chose was to convince the American
public that he was neither sick nor in-valid, and therefore not
disabled in its classic sense. If he could persuade the American public
that he was still healthy and vigorous, then they would believe that
FDR could fulfill the duties of public office. To fool the American
public into believing that polio had only done minimal physical damage
required elaborate, conscious planning, massive assistance, and--from
today's vantage-- unbelievable media corroboration.
When
FDR appeared in public he did not use his wheelchair. He rose from a
seated position using braces and crutches. He was not stable or
graceful. Aides held him up creating an illusion that FDR walked
without assistance. Crowds "witnessed" FDR walking from his seat to a
podium or some other device that he could stand and lean against.
Rather than appearing as a sickly invalid, FDR gave the appearance of a
healthy politician.
The media
supported FDR's efforts to hide the extent of his disability. By
conscious yet informal agreement, radio, newspaper and film
correspondents simply did not discuss FDR's paralysis. Thirty-five
thousand photographs were shot of FDR as President, but only two show
him seated in his wheelchair, and these were never published (Hevey
102). This conspiracy of image makers extended as far as political
cartoonists who would never draw FDR in his wheelchair, but always
standing or walking--or running, or flying!
Although
many Americans knew on some level that FDR used a wheelchair, the
disguise was so successful that many other Americans professed their
ignorance of his disability. As recently as the mid-1990s, this author
encountered an individual working at an independent living center who
yelped with astonishment upon learning that FDR had a disability.
According to Gallagher, this was FDR's "splendid deception" because it
enabled him to rise to the Presidency during a time in which everyone
was convinced that no one with such a disability could even aspire to
that position.
What did FDR's cloaking
of his paralysis and wheelchair use mean for people with disabilities?
The conclusions are diverse and murky. For many people with
disabilities, FDR was a hero, a person who had overcome his disability
and acquired the nation's most coveted office. He developed Warm
Springs into an international rehabilitation facility. There he drove
his car with hand controls that some credit as the first ever designed.
Even some people who do not like what FDR did to gain the Presidency
believe that he had no choice: given the climate of the times he was
forced to hide his disability to succeed politically. Others bemoan his
massive cover-up, suggesting this meant that FDR, too, harbored his
generation's beliefs about disability meaning illness and invalidism.
He was unable to take his own personal situation and generalize it to
others in similar circumstances. This, some argue, not only
demonstrates FDR's acceptance of disability as illness, but it also
contributed to future generations harboring those same beliefs. But,
as we will see in the next section, FDR's ambivalence about disability
not only affected future generations, but had a significant impact on
people who might have been called his peers. (Brown Investigating
42-45)
