The American President on a wheelchair – a President with a large heart

Source: Heartmenders Magazine
By Okechukwu Okugo

Today's world is filled with afflictions and adversities that many people are in despair and without hope. Even now lots of people are faced with bad conditions so colossal that they are feeling they'd come to the end of the world. But the examples of men who had passed through extra-ordinarily difficult situations and faced it with good cheer, with such a courage and conquering, should imbue such traumatized ones with hope and reecho the truism that what one passes through does not matter but what matters is one's attitude towards the situation. The case of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the 32 President of the United States of America is such a powerful one that it can stir the desire to endure everything with hope and achieve the unthinkable no matter what kind of situation one might be at the moment. Those who had always defied their perceived limitations and do the unthinkable had shown there's nothing that cannot be achieved by a determined and courageous person. Those who had not allowed situations set limit for them but had decided their own limits themselves had always come out victorious in the most difficult circumstances. 

FDR was America's first president with a major physical disability. He was stricken by Polio at the age of 39 in 1921. While vacating in their family cottage at Campobello Island, Canada, sailing in his yacht he was suddenly hit by the illness that he fell off overboard into the waters of the Bay of Fundy. From that day he became weaker and weaker that in three days he was totally paralyzed and in great distress. 

On August 25, 1921 Dr. Robert Lovett diagnosed him with Infantile Paralysis or Polio at a time when it had no known cure. That was how a crippling disease wanted to cut short the dreams of a once “never-resting” astute man and politician. He quickly cut off from public life and went into full rehabilitation at his Hyde Park home in New York. 


President Roosevelt's wheelchair. Photo credit: Twitter

For several years, recovering from the paralysis was his focal point. Realizing that his leg could easily support his body weight in water, he made swimming his chief exercise. He exercised so vigorously that in the same 1921 by winter, his arms regained strength, his nervous system started functioning normally and his stomach and lower back started getting stronger. By 1922, he was fit with braces that ran from the hip downwards. And by the spring of that year he was able to stand with assistance. From 1924 he started visiting Warm Springs, Georgia, to make use of the facility. The water of Warm Springs is supplied directly from the Pine Mountain, pure and rich in mineral content. 

Because the wheelchair of those days were bulky and cumbersome, he designed a smart looking and fast moving wheelchair for himself. FDR faced the bias and ignorance of the 1920's with insurmountable courage. A time when disability was frowned upon, disabled family members were put into asylums and banished from the family. And generally, in the society then, the disabled were considered not employable and were often removed from society. This was the time FDR was afflicted, but he neither allowed the ill-treatments nor the trauma of the illness becloud his bright personality. Not only that, he was able to rise up and pursue his political dreams. Sprouting from the unalloyed support he got from his wife, Eleanor and his close friend, Louis Howe, also his political advisor, he ran for governor of New York in 1928 and won. 

Not only that he won, he held the governorship for two terms until he decided to take a shot at the highest political office and ran for President in the 1932 election. He never allowed the words and names his opponent often called him hoping to break his stride get him discouraged or distracted. In the face of adversity and bitterest challenges, FDR's kindness and charisma never faltered which made the American public love him more and he won and became the President of the United States of America. It could be recalled that in 1926, when the Warm Springs he frequently visited in Georgia became financially troubled, he wouldn't allow the facility close down. He bought it for $200,000 and transformed it into a rehabilitation center for polio patients like himself. In 1927 the Warm Springs Foundation became considered as a permanent hydro-therapeutic center by the American Orthopedic Association.        

His Warm Springs became the prime place for polio patients to receive therapy. He set up the Warm Springs Foundation and also the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis in 1938. He initiated their annual fundraisers in which all its proceeds went to the Foundations. And it was the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis that funded the research for the Salk vaccine that became a cure for Polio, though he had died before the discovery of this polio treatment. Historically FDR was one of the greats America had as presidents. 

His disability never interfered with his role as president. He mentored thousands of Americans many of them children as young as six years of age and below who were afflicted by the disease. They flooded him with letters and asking him to write them back personally to encourage them face their challenges. And that he painstakingly did. His words and actions gave many courage and made them live with hope. His life was an inspiration to thousands and millions of Americans. FDR was an extraordinary man with an extraordinary heart.     

How do you view adversity in life? The end of the road? FDR's wife, Eleanor had always viewed and called her husband's disability a “blessing in disguise.” It is always possible to view life's hardest battles this way if only one would be able to devise “a way of looking at the big picture instead of worrying over the small stuff,” as written by Amy Berish in her well-researched article. Amy is a Library Science major at Southern Connecticut State University, Class of 2014 whose article was used in preparing this column. She went on to say in the article, “FDR's illness threw him into a category frowned upon by most American population. The way he viewed himself as a person, father and politician despite his limitations helped others change the way they viewed others crippled by disease or disability. Disability or not, FDR became a symbol of strength and perseverance to Americans.” 

And this goes a long way to show that one's attitude in the face of adversity can do a lot in changing one's world. Hanging on with valor and trying out hard the things you had been thinking you cannot do is a sure way of living above every limitations imposed by circumstances on you. This fact was brought out clearly in the book You Learn by Living, written by Eleanor Roosevelt thus, “You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.'…You must do the thing you think you cannot do.” 


President Roosevelt's car with the constructions that enabled him to drive without legs. Photo credit:  todaysdocument.tumblr.com

For example, let us say your condition makes you think you cannot fly an airplane, and probably many people around you are assuring you that you cannot; what you may need to do is to find the facts about what people who fly the airplane did to fly it, and start doing exactly the same thing, you will be surprised how you may succeed and surpass every expectations.

 Maybe your circumstance is the one in which you have been told you cannot live beyond 6 months, instead of worrying and thinking about how you will die in 6 months and wanting to end your life now, you may want to surround yourself with good cheer and learn to live each day to the full doing all the positive things you love doing, taking it one day at a time. You will be surprised how you may live far beyond the time you were told you'd die; and even if you should die by that time, you will die fulfilled because your cheerful outlook of life would be affecting the loved ones surrounding you positively and imbuing them with courage.     

The experience you gain as you pass through difficult situations might be the one burner that can refine and bring out the best you never knew you had; and may be teaching you a valuable lesson you really needed to succeed in life. A fact buttressed by the words of FDR's wife in her autobiography, “Franklin's illness proved a blessing in disguise for it gave him strength and courage he had not had before. He had to think out the fundamentals of living and learn the greatest of all lessons–infinite patience and never-ending persistence.” 

Instead of worrying over situations be attentive to learn the vital lessons of life it might be teaching you because no condition can really stop you if you will.


Note that there's a slight difference with the way this article was originally published in Heartmenders Magazine, September, 2015 edition.
Opening image credit: Washington Times.


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