FDR - Jean Edward Smith [129]
Kathleen Lake, Franklin’s physical therapist, examined him shortly after he returned and found him “immensely improved, looking at least ten years younger.” But the improvement was short-lived. The hectic pace of FDR’s life in New York soon wiped out the gains from the Florida trip. “If only his wife could be persuaded that he does not need urging on all day and entertaining all evening,” Mrs. Lake wrote Dr. Lovett. “He himself begins to understand how the city affects him … but he is so surrounded by family, all giving him advice and ordering him round that he gets quite desperate.”67
In May 1923 FDR traveled to Boston for a final examination by Dr. Lovett. The doctor told Eleanor he was satisfied that Franklin “handles himself better than he ever had” but there was no improvement in his condition. His arms and neck were normal. So were his bowel, bladder, and sexual functions. Yet he remained paralyzed from the waist down. He was unable to flex his hips; there was no motion in his hamstrings and very little in his toes.68 Six months later Dr. Draper confirmed Lovett’s diagnosis. “I am very much disheartened about his ultimate recovery,” wrote Draper. “I cannot help feeling that he has almost reached the limit of his possibilities. I only hope that I may be wrong on this.”69 FDR refused to accept the medical judgments as final. He continued to search for miracle cures, devoting himself increasingly to swimming and exercise, but other than improving his ability to get around, his efforts effected no change in his condition.
Roosevelt believed that cruising the warm waters of the Florida Keys held the secret to recovery. “The water got me into this fix,” he was fond of saying, “and the water will get me out.”70 Shortly after returning from his 1923 trip, he convinced John Lawrence to join him in purchasing a secondhand houseboat, the Roamer, for which they paid $3,750. They renamed it the Larooco—a contraction of Lawrence, Roosevelt, and Company—and planned to sail off the Florida coast each winter.
FDR went aboard for the first time on February 11, 1924. The Larooco was seventy-one feet long and according to John Lawrence looked like a floating tenement. The paint was peeling, the bulkheads leaked when it rained, and power was provided by two recalcitrant 35-horsepower engines that looked as though they might have been invented by Robert Fulton. “A great little packet,” Roosevelt proclaimed, believing that the boat simply suffered from “lots of bad luck.”71
Franklin’s stateroom, with an adjacent bath, was on the port side. Across a narrow passageway were two smaller cabins for guests, each with two beds. On the deck above was a large stateroom that doubled as wheelhouse. Above that was a broad deck, shaded by a ragged canopy. The ship’s crew consisted of an elderly couple from Connecticut, Robert and Dora Morris, who were paid $125 a month. Robert Morris sailed the ship; Dora did the cooking and housekeeping. They were assisted by George Dyer, a young mechanic who labored to keep the engines running.72
Before FDR went south, Louis Howe presented him with an elegant black leather logbook embossed in gold letters: “Log of the Houseboat Larooco, Being a More or Less Truthful Account of What Happened (Expurgated for the Very Young).” It was dedicated to St. Ananias and St. Sapphira, “the patron saints of liars and fishermen.” Not to be outdone, Livingston Davis sent Franklin his old ensign as assistant secretary of the Navy. “A million thanks for the old astnav flag,” Roosevelt replied. “I will take it south with me and some day … ‘hist’ the old rag to the mast-head and salute it with 17 rum swizzles.”73*
Franklin was accompanied on that first voyage by his Negro valet, LeRoy Jones, and