FDR - Jean Edward Smith [125]
When summer came, Franklin was moved to Hyde Park, where it was cooler and he would have easier access to the outdoors. Sara installed ramps (“inclined planes,” she called them) and removed all the thresholds so her son’s wheelchair could roll smoothly.* The old trunk elevator, operated by rope pulleys and designed to move heavy trunks to the attic, made it possible for FDR to move easily from floor to floor. He resisted having it electrified, believing a power failure would leave him trapped, whereas he could always manipulate the ropes manually. “Mr. Roosevelt seems to be cheerful and I should say that he has gained considerably in the tricks of handling himself,” Dr. Draper reported. “There is no question but that the change of scene has had a very beneficial effect … and I look forward to the continued stretch of quiet at Hyde Park with great hopefulness.”41
FDR’s routine rarely varied. He slept late, breakfasted on a tray sent to his room, and worked out on a set of rings mounted over his bed. Three days a week Mrs. Lake came to oversee his exercises, after which he went downstairs and was pushed out onto the porch, where he read and worked on his stamp collection. He swam in Vincent Astor’s heated pool in Rhinebeck and exercised with parallel bars on the lawn. Progress remained slow. “I think it is very important for you to do all the walking that you can within your limit of fatigue,” wrote Dr. Lovett on August 14. “Walking on crutches is not a gift, but an art, acquired by constant practice just as any other game, and you will have to put in quite a little time before you get about satisfactorily.”42 Franklin devoted his afternoons to struggling up the gravel driveway to the Albany Post Road, awkwardly pushing his braces, his hips swiveling, his crutches working, as he inched ahead, a little farther each day until he reached the brownstone gateposts a quarter mile away. At the end of the summer he reported to Dr. Lovett, “I have faithfully followed out the walking and am really getting so that both legs take it quite naturally, and I can stay on my feet for an hour without feeling tired.”43
Franklin saw the bright side. His daughter, Anna, back from a summer in Europe, was aghast at the effort FDR put in. “It’s a bit traumatic,” she noted, “to see your father, who took long walks with you, sailed with you, could out-jump you, and suddenly you look up and you see him walking on crutches—trying, struggling in heavy steel braces. And you see the sweat pouring down his face, and you hear him saying, ‘I must get down the driveway today—all the way down the driveway.’ ”44
As FDR convalesced, the New York Democratic party once again found itself in disarray. The GOP occupied the governor’s mansion, and all bets for the November election were off. William Randolph Hearst, the flamboyant publisher of the New York American and Evening Journal, had begun corralling delegates for the Democratic nomination and appeared to have a clear track unless Al Smith could be coaxed back from private life. Following his defeat in 1920, Smith had found safe haven as chairman of the United States Trucking Corporation, a largely symbolic position that paid the princely salary of $50,000 a year. That, plus the sizable fees he earned as a director of other firms, made Smith reluctant to run again. But Smith loathed Hearst. He soon agreed with party leaders that the maverick publisher did not have a chance of prevailing in the general election and would likely pull the entire ticket down with him. To save the party, Smith privately agreed to run. And to get the ball rolling he asked Franklin, as the most prominent upstate Democrat, to issue a public appeal for him to do so.
Delighted to be called on, if only to play a symbolic role, FDR wrote a “Dear Al” open letter on August 13. “The