Master of His Fate

by James Tobin

  The earliest news reports about FDR’s illness had been muddled. So it was up to Dr. Draper to tell everyone the truth.

  He did—mostly.

  Hard as it was to believe, he said, the vigorous politician of the 1920 campaign had come down with infantile paralysis. For the time being, Roosevelt was unable to walk.

  But there was good news, too.

  “Power is already beginning to return to the affected muscles,” Dr. Draper said, “and this is a promising sign. His general condition is exceedingly good and he is in the best of spirits.”

  What about the future? the reporters asked. Would Roosevelt be permanently paralyzed?

  “I can say definitely that he will not be crippled,” Dr. Draper declared, “and no one should have any fear of permanent injury in any way from this attack.”

  Like Dr. Lovett, Dr. Draper knew perfectly well that it was too early to make that promise. No doctor could predict whether FDR’s muscles would recover a lot or a little or not at all.

  So why would he say that?

  Probably because he wanted his patient to read it in the next day’s newspapers.

  For a physician of his era, Dr. Draper had some unusual ideas. In his own lifetime, scientists had made huge strides in understanding the causes of disease. But Dr. Draper believed the human body still concealed imponderable mysteries.

  He thought it wasn’t enough for a doctor to know which germ could be killed by which medication. A lot depended on the patients—their upbringings, their immune systems, even their minds. Draper urged his fellow doctors to study their patients’ personalities. Too many doctors had lost track of “the powerful agencies of faith and hope,” he wrote. If he had two patients with exactly the same physical problem but different attitudes toward that problem, he believed the patient who was fighting for a comeback stood a much better chance than the patient who gave up in despair.

  Dr. Draper wanted FDR to hope for what Dr. Lovett had spoken of—“spontaneous improvement” in his damaged muscles. Maybe it would happen; maybe it wouldn’t. But Draper wanted FDR to be in a fighting mood.

  So the doctor spoke words to the reporters that he knew FDR would read in the newspapers. The words set a goal: “He will not be crippled.”

  * * *

  An able-bodied person like Dr. Draper could talk about what it’s like to be paralyzed. But only someone who is actually paralyzed really knows.

  It was bad enough that FDR couldn’t get up and walk, let alone run or play sports or drive a car. But it was a lot worse than simply losing those abilities.

  Some paralyzed people can’t control the muscles needed to go to the bathroom. If so, they have to use tubes called catheters that carry waste out of the body. FDR had needed a catheter right at first, but in this one small way he was lucky. In his case, those muscles regained their strength in just a few weeks. But he still needed help when he had to urinate or defecate.

  In fact, he needed a helper nearby day and night. When he wanted to eat, someone had to bring him food. When he wanted to read a book, someone had to fetch it from the shelf. He couldn’t change his clothes without assistance. If he were to fall, he would stay on the floor until someone came. If there were a fire, he couldn’t escape by himself. So he could never enjoy total solitude and privacy. He may have felt as many people feel when paralyzed—like an infant in the body of an adult.

  A historian named Daniel Wilson, who had polio himself, talked to many men who, like FDR, had been struck by polio as adults. “In their own eyes,” Wilson wrote, “and often in the attitudes and words of their nurses and attendants, they had been reduced to the condition of babies. Like babies, they could do little for themselves, but they never completely lost their sense of manhood, and the incongruity between their treatment and a sense of self added to their pain.”

  When you’re paralyzed, even loved ones begin to treat you differently, as if you are some strange new person they hardly know. People who talk to you, even good friends, don’t know what to say. After polio struck FDR, a friend of the family couldn’t even compose a letter to Eleanor. “I have tried hard to write you,” she finally explained after months of delay, “but I simply did not know how to express my feelings.”

  People with permanent paralysis seldom want their loved ones to know how frightened they feel. Many cover up their feelings with jokes and cheerfulness that’s only half-sincere. FDR did that a lot, and Eleanor knew it. She once wrote: “There were certain things that he never really talked about—that he would just shut up, and it made him very, very much alone in some ways.”

  * * *

  The normal and natural thing to do in this situation is simply to say, “Well, I guess I have to live with this for a while, but it’s only going to be temporary. I’ll get over it.”

  That’s exactly what Dr. Draper had told the reporters. So that’s what FDR said to everyone in the letters he dictated while lying on his back in his hospital bed.

  “I am well ahead of the record-breaking schedule I have set out to maintain in recovery,” he wrote to a good friend in Hyde Park. To a friend in Washington, D.C., he wrote: “I am still just as much of an optimist as ever, and I appear to have inspired the doctors with a certain amount of optimism as well, as they are most encouraging as to the future.”

  It was the same with visiting relatives and friends. A reporter who talked to several of them later remarked that “Roosevelt gaily brushed aside every hint of condolence and sent them away more cheerful … None of them heard him utter a complaint or a regret or even acknowledge that he had had so much as a bit of hard luck.” When his old boss at the Navy Department, Josephus Daniels, came to FDR’s bedside, Roosevelt threw a playful punch at Daniels’s chest. “You thought you were coming to see an invalid!” he said with a laugh.

  But in one joking letter from the hospital, there was a hint that he knew the truth might not be so rosy. FDR had just read an article in the New York Times about Dr. Draper’s remarks to the press. He dictated a note to the famous publisher of the Times, Adolph Ochs, whom he knew.

  “While the doctors were unanimous in telling me that the attack was very mild and that I was not going to suffer any permanent effects from it,” he told Ochs, “I had, of course, the usual dark suspicion that they were just saying nice things to make me feel good, but now that I have seen the same statement officially made in the New York Times I feel immensely relieved because I know of course it must be so.”

  Chapter 4

  “HE’S THROUGH”

  Every day, Dr. Draper dropped by Presbyterian Hospital to see how his patient was doing.

  Still too weak in his lower back to sit up, FDR would talk and talk and talk, telling Draper he planned to be up on crutches within a couple of weeks, leave the hospital, and then begin a hard program of exercise. He’d be walking on his own in no time.

  As he chattered on, Dr. Draper would listen, all the while watching the movements of Roosevelt’s arms and back, placing his hands on a muscle here and a muscle there, asking FDR to try moving this or that. The doctor had to be very gentle. It was now nearly two months since the poliovirus had struck, but many of FDR’s muscles were still painfully tender.

  Dr. Draper was looking for any signs that paralyzed muscles were coming back to life on their own. He was hoping that healthy nerve cells were starting to take up the slack for cells killed by the virus.

  The doctor saw promising signals in the arms and chest. His patient could now hold a pen and sign his name to a letter. He could reach up and grasp a heavy strap over his bed and pull himself up so the nurses could change his sheets or give him a sponge bath. This gave FDR “a great sense of satisfaction,” Draper noted. Still, certain muscles in the shoulders and arms remained weak.

  Below FDR’s chest, Dr. Draper saw only bad news. In the lower back and buttocks—essential for standing, walking, and sitting up—the muscles had withered. The legs, feet, and toes presented “a most depressing picture,” Dr. Draper wrote to Dr
. Lovett. FDR could make certain toes twitch just a little. But he couldn’t move his feet. In his calves he could make a couple of muscles twitch, but nothing more. Above the knees, the virus had devastated the muscles of his thighs.

  At Campobello, Dr. Lovett had told the Roosevelts to watch for signs of recovery in a couple of weeks. With the New York reporters, Dr. Draper had promised “he will not be crippled.”

  But if Dr. Draper had felt optimistic at first—partly because of what Dr. Lovett had said, no doubt—now he was not so sure.

  He detected one especially frightening possibility. The muscles in FDR’s lower back, critical to staying upright in a seated position, were too tender for Dr. Draper to examine carefully. But he suspected they were in very bad shape. He wrote about his concerns in a private letter to Dr. Lovett in Boston:

  “He is very cheerful and hopeful, and has made up his mind that he is going to go out of the hospital in the course of two or three weeks on crutches. What I fear more than anything else is that we shall find a much more extensive involvement of the great back muscles than we have suspected and that when we attempt to sit him up he will be faced with the frightfully depressing knowledge that he cannot hold himself erect.”

  Dr. Draper was worried about more than FDR’s paralysis. He was worried about his willpower.

  FDR would have to endure a long, difficult, and painful program of exercise. To get through it, he must pin his hopes to the vision of a strong recovery. But if he discovered that he couldn’t even sit up, how could he ever believe that he might walk again?

  “I feel so strongly after watching him for over a week that the psychological factor in his management is paramount,” Dr. Draper told Dr. Lovett. “He has such courage, such ambition, and yet at the same time such an extraordinarily sensitive emotional mechanism that it will take all the skill which we can master to lead him successfully to a recognition of what he really faces without utterly crushing him.”

  From this, it sounds as if Dr. Draper had begun to think that FDR’s legs would never work again. If that turned out to be true, could he summon the courage to live his life without the ability to walk? Or would he give up in despair?

  A few days later, on Dr. Lovett’s advice, Dr. Draper had the nurses lower FDR into hot baths. The heat soothed his back muscles, and FDR did sit up. So he would not be imprisoned in a bed. It was a crucial success.

  But below the waist, his legs were the same as ever.

  * * *

  Sara Roosevelt was keeping herself “very cheerful,” Eleanor noticed, though “it must have been a most terrific strain for her, and I am sure that, out of sight, she wept many hours.”

  At Campobello, Sara had tried to believe that Franklin would make a full recovery. But like her brother, Fred Delano, she had been raised to look hard facts in the face.

  Now, in her son’s hospital room, she could see what seemed the obvious truth: His legs simply were not getting any better. If he would never walk again, what should he do with his life?

  To Sara the answer was quite clear. He should retire to the family’s country home at Hyde Park. With her fortune, there was no need for him to worry about making a living. He could pursue his hobbies. He could add to his collections of books, fine art, and stamps. Perhaps he would write articles or even books. He loved Hyde Park. He could live out a pleasant life there in privacy.

  So she left New York City to make preparations in the big house overlooking the Hudson.

  While she was doing so, a friend of hers, Mrs. Lily Norton, visited for a few days and listened to Sara’s story of all that had happened. Then Mrs. Norton sat down to write a letter to a friend. Her thoughts probably reflected what Sara had been thinking:

  “Tragedy rather overshadows this once so happy & prosperous family, for Mrs. R’s only son, Franklin Roosevelt, was struck down in August with a terribly serious case of infantile paralysis. He is only 39 … He’s had a brilliant career … Now he is a cripple—will he ever be anything else? His mother is wonderfully courageous & plucky, but it’s a bitter blow.”

  * * *

  When the news of FDR’s illness appeared in the newspapers, his friends in politics were relieved to learn the doctors were predicting a full recovery. But as he stayed in the hospital week after week, they became curious about how he was really doing.

  One of these friends was James Middleton Cox, a wealthy newspaper publisher who had been the governor of Ohio and FDR’s running mate on the Democratic ticket in 1920. When he visited the hospital, Cox was shocked. He just couldn’t believe that FDR, the athletic young man who had campaigned so vigorously just a year earlier, had been cut down by a child’s disease.

  “Jim’s eyes filled with tears when he saw me,” FDR recalled later, “and I gathered from his conversation that he was dead certain that I had had a stroke and that another one would soon completely remove me … Jim Cox from that day on always shook his head when my name was mentioned and said in sorrow that in effect I was a hopeless invalid and could never resume any active participation in business or political affairs.”

  Other visitors saw that FDR was nowhere near walking, and they passed that news to friends. Young Roosevelt was putting up a good front, they said. He was a brave fellow, all right. But as for politics, the Democrats could forget about him.

  “The word had spread around,” said Frances Perkins. It was: “‘Poor Roosevelt, he’s through.’ ‘Too bad about Roosevelt, he’s through.’ ‘Too bad.’”

  * * *

  Why would a man like James Cox cry at the mere sight of his friend?

  Why would everyone think FDR was through in politics just because he couldn’t walk?

  Why would they think his life was ruined?

  The reason was that many people of that era thought a physical disability was something to be ashamed of, even something repulsive. The common word for a disabled person was cripple, which implied that the person was not a whole and normal human being. To be crippled by polio seemed especially unpleasant. Like the Roosevelts themselves, their friends heard the words “infantile paralysis” and thought of children with horribly twisted arms and legs. It was an awful disease, and many people just didn’t want to think about it.

  Maybe they wouldn’t say it out loud, but some still had wild notions that came out of the Middle Ages, when people with disabilities were thought to be children of the devil. Many took it for granted that disability was God’s punishment for sins. The word for cripple in several languages came from the ancient word for crawl, since that was the only way severely disabled people of ancient times could move around. Even in the twentieth century, the idea lingered that a disabled person was like a crawling animal.

  The treatment of disabled people had improved. But most disabled people in the 1920s lived lonely, boring lives, shut away in the homes of relatives. Very few could get jobs. Employers asked, Why hire a disabled man—let alone a disabled woman—over a non-disabled person, especially since people with disabilities were thought to be nervous, depressed, and unreliable?

  So it was just a matter of common sense that a “crippled” man could never be a leader. People weren’t even thinking about the sheer physical difficulty of moving around. Elect a crippled man to high office? It was as if someone thought a five-year-old should run for president. It just wasn’t going to happen.

  * * *

  In late October 1921, two months after the diagnosis of polio, Dr. Robert Lovett traveled from Boston to see firsthand how Roosevelt was doing. He and Dr. Draper discussed the case, then agreed the patient was ready to leave the hospital.

  With that, Sara Roosevelt announced that the house at Hyde Park was ready and waiting. But she had a surprise coming.

  No, Mama, her son said. (He gave it the upper-class English pronunciation ma-MA.) He would not be taking the train up to Hyde Park anytime soon, at least not for the reasons she had in mind. He was going straight back to East Sixty-Fifth Street, close to the doctors and nurses who would help him
with his recovery program. He meant to start right away.

  People who thought Franklin Roosevelt was a “mama’s boy” would have learned something from that short conversation.

  Uncle Fred had advised him to face facts and not fool himself.

  But FDR had decided he was going to make his own facts.

  * * *

  Louis Howe was thinking the same way.

  In the months before FDR became ill, Howe had been pondering his own future. He had been working under Roosevelt at Fidelity & Deposit, but he was now weighing a couple of offers for better positions with bigger salaries. He felt the deepest loyalty to FDR. But in the wake of the polio attack, did it make sense to keep working for a politician who suddenly seemed to have no political future? Howe had his family to think of. But he would not make his decision until Roosevelt made a decision of his own.

  As Howe told the story, the two men were talking one day when Howe remarked on the choice that FDR had to make.

  FDR could do what his mother was proposing, Howe said. He could retire to Hyde Park, live the life of a quiet country invalid, tinkering with this project or that, writing on subjects that interested him, and give up any thought of a life in politics.

  That would be perfectly all right, Howe said. It would be “a useful life engaged in literary work and other things that required no personal agility.”

  Or, he told FDR, “you can … gather up your courage and plunge forward as though nothing had happened.” Maybe he could learn to walk again; maybe not. He would have to find ways to climb the stairs to railroad platforms, get in and out of automobiles, cross stages in front of thousands of people. He would risk embarrassment, maybe even ridicule.

  If he wanted to do that, Howe said, “I will go along with you every inch of the hard way.”