If With Us Today, He Would Approve

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt didn’t want a memorial in his honor. He also didn’t want to be known as the president who led the country while in a wheelchair. He hid his polio disability as best he could, so few pictures exist that show him in his wheelchair.

But our presidents belong to history. And history shapes memories and legacies more than personal desire. So Thursday, a memorial was dedicated to Roosevelt in Washington, D.C. President Clinton said last week he would ask Congress to add a sculpture to the memorial, which shows Roosevelt in a wheelchair. The appropriateness of this addition has been debated in recent months. Disability activists are insisting on it. Others argue that Roosevelt’s wishes should be respected.

Acknowledging the disability at the memorial site is a progressive idea, one we speculate Roosevelt would have applauded if he lived in these modern times. Hugh Gallagher, author of the book “FDR’s Splendid Deception,” says Roosevelt downplayed his disability in reaction to the times, not because it didn’t influence his life in a profound way.

“Dragging his legs through life helped (FDR) understand people who had to drag things like poverty and illiteracy and could never escape them,” Gallagher told the Washington Post.

He also said that FDR was the product of “an Edith Wharton world of high Victorian manners in which people were not supposed to make people uncomfortable … Polite invalids stayed upstairs out of sight.”

Not anymore. People with disabilities are mainstreamed into schools and they insist on equal opportunities in education, jobs and advancement. They are making invaluable contributions to our society. And, their number grows as our population ages.

Roosevelt was a man of possibilities. He asked men and women to dig deep, down into their souls, for the strength and courage to survive the Depression and World War II. The people listened and found that strength. Our country rose out of poverty, despair and the trials of war to become a world leader.

The potential of those among us who have disabilities to lead, to role-model, to use talents for a greater good, is endless. Roosevelt would have liked that possibility. He lived it.

So any memorial to his life should reflect the whole man, wheelchair included.

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