FDR - Jean Edward Smith [123]
Franklin’s arms and back muscles recovered first. “I was delighted to find that he had much more power in the back muscles than I had thought,” said Draper in early October.25 Dr. Lovett came down from Boston to see the patient on October 15. FDR was now able to sit up. “He is cheerful and doing an hour or so of business each day. He has been in a chair once and I recommended pushing him around, and letting him go home when he wanted to.”26
On October 28, 1921, Roosevelt was discharged from hospital and taken home to East Sixty-fifth Street. He was now able to pull himself up by a strap and, with some assistance, swing himself into a wheelchair. “The patient is doing very well,” Dr. Draper noted on November 19. “He navigates about successfully in a wheel chair. He is exceedingly ambitious and anxious to get to the point where he can try the crutches, but I am not encouraging him.”27
In December, FDR began a carefully constructed exercise regimen with Mrs. Kathleen Lake, a trained physiotherapist. The tendons behind his knees had tightened to the point that it was terribly painful to stretch his legs. Mrs. Lake had him exercise on a board. Some paralytics found this so stressful they could endure it just three days a week. FDR insisted that Mrs. Lake come every day. “Mrs. Lake works so long now every a.m.,” Eleanor reported to Sara, “that F. does not get up till after noon at least, except on Sundays when she doesn’t come.”28
Progress was slow. In mid-December Mrs. Lake reported to Dr. Lovett that Franklin
feels his legs growing stronger all the time. He is perfectly satisfied to remain as he is now and not get up on crutches as he says he has plenty of occupations for his mind, everything is going well in the city, and he would rather strengthen his legs this way than try to get up too soon.
He is a wonderful patient, very cheerful, and works awfully hard and tries every suggestion one makes. He has certainly improved since he started the board which he insists on calling “the morgue!”29
FDR did his utmost to reassure his children, displaying his withered legs and reciting the anatomical names of the muscles affected. “How we loved to talk about Pa’s gluteus maximus,” James recalled.30 When Christmas came, Franklin presided as always, carving the turkey and reading Dickens’s Christmas Carol. He could no longer trim the tree himself but supervised every detail. “Father was a perfectionist,” said one of the children. “Though fear of fire was his only phobia, [he] insisted on decorating the tree with candles rather than electric bulbs.… I still don’t know how he did it, but Father kept us completely at ease. He cushioned the shock for us. He made it possible to participate in various festivities that Christmas without feeling any depression or guilt.”31
As was usually the case with the Roosevelts, the double town house on East Sixty-fifth Street was jammed to capacity. Franklin was ensconced in the large back bedroom on the second floor, the quietest in the house. Louis Howe, who had committed himself irrevocably to FDR’s fortunes, took the big front room, while the children filled the fourth floor and spilled over into Sara’s adjoining house. Live-in servants occupied the rooms on the fifth and sixth floors under the roof. Eleanor slept on a cot in young Elliott’s room and dressed in her husband’s bathroom. “In the daytime I was too busy to need a room for myself,” she recalled.32
By this time, Eleanor had become fiercely attached to Louis Howe. “She had called for help and Louis came,” said Frances Perkins.