FDR - Jean Edward Smith [137]
For FDR, Warm Springs offered the opportunity to be in complete charge of a significant undertaking—a means of reestablishing his self-esteem. Warm Springs would be his alone, a haven much like Val-Kill was for Eleanor: a place where he could do as he pleased, when he pleased, free from the formality of Hyde Park and East Sixty-fifth Street. More to the point, it provided an opportunity to participate in the fight against polio. Roosevelt had no special training in physiotherapy, but he became an authentic pioneer in its application. His infectious enthusiasm galvanized polio victims hitherto without hope. By instinct and example he infused others with his own unconquerable spirit as he led exercises at the pool or lolled in the sun, chatting happily with anyone who passed by. He called himself “Old Doctor Roosevelt” and took a genuine interest in those who came to Warm Springs to exercise under his care.
In April 1926 FDR completed his negotiations with Peabody and purchased the Merriweather Inn, its cottages and pools, plus 1,200 acres of undeveloped land for $201,667.83—approximately two thirds of his fortune.15 Shortly afterward he bought an additional 1,750 acres. With the help of Sara—who organized exclusive dinners for potential donors—and the indefatigable Louis Howe, Roosevelt organized the Warm Springs Foundation (later the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis) with a panel of distinguished backers, including Wall Street bankers George Foster Peabody and Russell Leffingwell; businessmen Herbert Straus and William H. Woodin; his friends Henry Morgenthau, Jr., and Basil O’Connor; and John Jakob Raskob of General Motors.* Edsel Ford personally contributed $25,000 to provide a glass enclosure for the swimming pool.16
Warm Springs provided a challenge, and Roosevelt threw himself into every detail. He persuaded Dr. LeRoy Hubbard, a respected orthopedic surgeon who supervised rehabilitation care for the New York State Department of Health, to come down and take charge of the patients’ treatment. Hubbard brought with him a trained nurse and physiotherapist, Miss Helena Mahoney, who hired a dozen young phys ed graduates from Peabody College in Nashville to work with the patients in the pool. “Our rate is $42 a week,” FDR wrote Paul Hasbrouck, a polio victim in Poughkeepsie. “This includes board, lodging, medical and therapeutic treatment, pool charges, etc.—in fact, everything except your traveling expenses and cigarette money.”17 But no one was turned away for lack of money. Indigent patients were supported by a Patients’ Aid Fund that Roosevelt established, and when that was depleted, he asked that the bills be sent to him personally at Hyde Park.18
From the fall of 1926 until the autumn of 1928, FDR spent well over half of his time at Warm Springs. He ordered a cottage built for himself, all on one level with a driveway designed so he could enter the house directly at grade level. He also engineered an ingenious set of hand controls for an automobile to drive through the Georgia countryside. A local mechanic converted an old Model T Ford to Roosevelt’s specifications, and by the end of 1926 Franklin was whizzing about Warm Springs at twenty-five miles an hour. Roosevelt was a confident driver and controlled the car with ease. And after five years of being dependent upon others, nothing gave him greater pleasure. He became as familiar to the people along the dusty roads of Merriweather County as the rural mail carrier—except, one resident remembered, “the mail carrier did take Sunday off.”19
Roosevelt became the leading citizen of Merriweather County, thrilled at his exposure to the life of ordinary people in rural Georgia. When he ran for president, he carried the county