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

“And at that moment the tenseness broke, and the crowd applauded. The president’s back was to the crowd, and he did not look around. It was brief and restrained applause.

“I don’t know, but I doubt that that has ever happened to the president before. It was the tenderest, most admiring tribute to courage I have ever seen. It was such a poignant thing, so surprising, so spontaneous. It was as though they were saying with their hands, ‘We know we shouldn’t, but we’ve got to.’

“When I turned from the window there was a lump in my throat, and there would have been in yours, too.”

Franklin as a teenager, posing with his father and mother, James and Sara Delano Roosevelt. He was close to both parents, but James, who was 26 years older than his wife, died when FDR was in his first year of college at Harvard.

FDR holds his second-eldest son, Elliott, at Campobello Island around 1912.

A portrait of the Roosevelt family in 1919. Seated, from left, are Franklin Jr. (on his father’s lap), FDR, Eleanor, John (on Eleanor’s lap), and James. Standing, from left, are Anna and Elliott.

FDR waves to supporters during his 1920 campaign for vice president. He was a golfer, sailor, and tennis player. Friends recalled that he jogged from one meeting to the next as assistant secretary of the U.S. Navy.

Eleanor Roosevelt sat for this portrait not long before poliomyelitis struck her husband. She was just beginning her own work as an activist in the Democratic Party.

FDR in 1924, the year he reentered the public arena as chair of Al Smith’s campaign for president. Even under a suit coat, the expansion of his upper body is evident.

Before the Democratic National Convention, FDR practiced for days to be sure he could walk on crutches to the podium at Madison Square Garden in New York.

His speech nominating Al Smith for president electrified the delegates, resurrecting his own chances to run for office. But the enthusiastic response of his fellow Democrats doubled the pressure he felt to regain the ability to walk unaided.

After the convention, FDR, on crutches, greets John W. Davis, the Democrats’ nominee for president (center), and New York governor Al Smith (right) at the Roosevelts’ home in Hyde Park.

Louis Howe, a cantankerous newspaperman turned behind-the-scenes political operative, saw FDR’s early promise and stuck with him through his greatest ordeal.

Frances Perkins—the labor advocate who was Roosevelt’s friend, aide, and close observer throughout his career—said the core of his character was “a capacity for living and growing that remained to his dying day. It accounts for his rise from a rather unpromising young man to a great man—not merely a President but a man who so impressed himself upon his time that he can never be forgotten.”

Roosevelt poses at Warm Springs with two boys on bicycles.

The mineralized water in the Warm Springs pool felt so good that FDR cried: “I don’t think I will ever get out!”

Roosevelt’s rave reviews attracted other polio survivors to Warm Springs from across the U.S. Soon he was calling himself “Old Doctor Roosevelt” and directing their exercises.

In the company of others who had been paralyzed, FDR lost his self-consciousness about his atrophied legs.

These leg braces were one of several sets made for FDR. Leather straps with buckles at the waist, buttocks, hips, knees, and thighs were attached to frames made of aluminum or steel. Locks at the knees kept the braces rigid when FDR was standing.

Roosevelt struggled to find braces that suited him but was never satisfied. This receipt includes his note to the maker of a new set: “Braces don’t fit. Will have to alter them when I get back in Sept. FDR.”

Roosevelt cried, “I can walk!” then was held up for a photo by his assistant, LeRoy Jones (left), and Dr. William McDonald. (His wheelchair is just behind him.) The doctor had urged FDR to pursue a new exercise program without wearing braces, but the workouts damaged his legs.

FDR developed strength and coordination by endless back-and-forth practice on a long set of planks with handrails. Here he practices at Warm Springs with two other polio survivors, including his friend, the popular Fred Botts, who had trained to be an opera singer.

On a hot day at Warm Springs, a photographer captured FDR fishing alone. He had traded long trousers for shorts, revealing his leg braces.

Roosevelt was delighted with his design of hand controls for a used Ford. The contraption worked, and from then on, he often drove around his properties in Georgia and Hyde Park—his only means of movement entirely within his own control.

Marguerite LeHand, nicknamed “Missy” by the Roosevelt children, rose from a working-class background to become not only FDR’s personal secretary but his close political adviser and friend. “Missy is my conscience,” he often said.

Early in his 1928 campaign for governor of New York, FDR shifted from a railroad car to the back seat of an automobile, where he could greet voters and even give a speech without leaving the car.

Just elected governor, FDR poses with his political ally Al Smith, who soon came to resent FDR’s determination to run his own show in the state capital of Albany. (Note the leg braces exposed at FDR’s feet—a rejoinder to those who claimed he shielded all signs of his disability from public view.)

FDR’s victory in the 1928 governor’s race had been razor-thin. But in 1930 he won reelection in a landslide, as the next day’s New York Journal reported. His victory made Roosevelt the leading Democrat in the race to challenge President Herbert Hoover, whose popularity had plummeted in the onset of the Great Depression.

As the economic crisis