Master of His Fate James Tobin (free e books to read online .txt) 📖

where there had been none at all before. Fred Botts had seen “really extraordinary” changes. Even the most severely disabled patient—the man from Wisconsin who had overexercised too soon after his infection—was reporting a bit of progress in his toes and hamstring muscles. As for FDR himself, he cited his “rough and ready measure” of progress. The previous fall, he could stand without support in water that reached the tops of his shoulders. After making no more progress over the winter, he had exercised every day for six weeks at Warm Springs, and now he could stand with his shoulders four inches out of the water. This, he said, proved that “all [his] muscles had undoubtedly strengthened.”

FDR and the enthusiastic young Dr. Johnson had been talking. What if Warm Springs could be built up as an actual medical center devoted to the treatment of people with polio? In the short term, he wrote one of his doctors back in New York, “It is absolutely essential that the place have a doctor and ‘exercise lady.’” In the long run, “the place offers a wonderful opportunity for polyo [sic] cases from all parts of the country.” Some six hundred letters in all had reached him. If that many people had responded to a single newspaper story, surely there were thousands of Americans in need of the waters at Warm Springs.

Basil O’Connor thought the world of FDR. But when FDR started to talk about some big new idea, O’Connor, like Louis Howe, took it as part of his job to throw cold water on it.

So it was when Roosevelt asked O’Connor to meet with the attorney of George Foster Peabody.

Technically, Peabody did not own Warm Springs, but he had paid a sum of money to keep anyone else from buying it while he made up his mind. The price tag set by the owner was $100,000. Peabody’s lawyer told O’Connor that if anyone wanted to buy Warm Springs right now, it would cost twice that figure. And $200,000 was about two-thirds of all the money FDR had.

What did O’Connor think? FDR wanted to know.

O’Connor practically laughed out loud. Was Roosevelt crazy? Buy a falling-down resort a thousand miles from home and try to turn it into a treatment center for a bunch of cripples?

But FDR was falling in love with the idea of owning Warm Springs.

“It does something for me,” he said.

All that summer and fall of 1925, he kept thinking about it.

Chapter 10“THE ONE AND ONLY TOPIC OF CONVERSATION”

Again and again, FDR had listened and nodded as Dr. Robert Lovett explained why he must wear his metal braces whenever he stood up to exercise or to walk with his crutches. Braces were substitutes for failing muscles, Lovett said. They protected bones and joints from pressure, strain, and fatigue, and they kept limbs in their proper alignment. When polio patients exercised without braces, it made weak muscles even weaker and pushed bones out of their proper alignment. Dr. Lovett was well aware that braces were unpleasant. But wearing them was a lot better than suffering the damage they prevented.

FDR had obeyed orders. He had submitted to being measured for braces, and when one pair didn’t fit just right, he would be measured for another. He wore them when he had to. He knew they were essential to the only kind of walking he could manage right now.

But he detested those braces.

Jimmy Roosevelt said later, “He hated putting them on in the morning and he hated taking them off at night.”

To get the braces on, he would sit in his underwear on the edge of his bed. LeRoy Jones or some other helper would place the braces next to him with the belts, straps, and laces open. FDR would put his hands at his sides and push his buttocks up off the bed, then hitch himself sideways and lower himself into the big heavy belt at the waist. Then four sets of straps had to be buckled—at the hips, thighs, knees, and calves. Then—again, with another person’s help—his trousers had to be pulled up his legs over the braces. Next, he had to lift himself off the bed so the trousers could be pulled all the way up. At his feet, the braces were attached to specially designed shoes.

Once they were on, it felt as if his legs were trapped in metal cages. In warm weather his skin sweated under the thick leather straps. No matter how well designed, straps and metal rubbed against his skin and pressed into his flesh, which was just as susceptible to pain as ever. The braces rubbed so much they wore holes in his pants. When he felt the natural instinct to shift his weight, the braces pushed back.

Then there was the symbolism. One writer who went through polio, Paul K. Longmore, said the sight of braces on a polio patient reminded people of what they “fear most: limitation and dependence, failure and incapacity, loss of control, loss of autonomy, at its deepest level, confinement within the human condition, subjection to fate.”

When the time came to take them off, he went through the routine in reverse. He would sit on the bed and hoist his buttocks up so that his trousers could be pulled off. Then the straps would be undone. Then he would heave himself up and out as his helper pulled the braces out from under him. At last his legs would be out of their cages, but just as useless as ever.

With anyone who would listen—Eleanor, his mother, Howe, Dr. Draper—he tried to argue the braces did more harm than good. After one meeting with Dr. Lovett, he came away believing—or wanting to believe—the doctor had finally given him permission to use the braces only when they were convenient. Some weeks later, when Eleanor mentioned to Dr. Lovett that FDR had all but abandoned the braces, Lovett told her he was “horrified.” So FDR grudgingly resumed what he