FDR spent his entire presidency hiding the fact that he needed a wheelchair, and he wanted a memorial that would do the same. Future generations disagreed.

Four years before his death, Franklin Delano Roosevelt told Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter that if he had to have a memorial, he wanted it to be about the size of his desk and placed on a patch of grass in front of the National Archives -anything more would be too showy and too costly a remembrance (a granite table fitting the description was placed there in his honor in 1965). Frankfurter may have heard what FDR wanted, but Congress didn’t seem to have been listening. One year after Roosevelt’s death in 1945, Congress felt the need to commemorate him on a larger scale and passed a resolution authorizing the creation of a grander memorial, one comparable to the other presidential memorials located around the Tidal Basin. There was just one problem: FDR’s wheelchair.

POWERFUL MAN, INVISIBLE CHAIR

Despite being completely unable to walk, President Roosevelt led the country out of the Great Depression and through World War II during his unprecedented four terms in office. He was the first disabled leader to be elected in American history, but most Americans of the 1930s and 1940s didn’t even know their president required a wheelchair. They were aware that Roosevelt had contracted polio in 1921 and were under the impression that he wore braces or used a wheelchair occasionally for convenience. And that’s just what FDR wanted them to believe because he was afraid that otherwise the world would perceive him as weak.

(Image source: The U.S. National Archives)

Roosevelt went to great lengths to deceive the public regarding his paralysis -he even created a method to make it appear he was walking. With his legs in locked braces, he would lean heavily on a cane with one hand and on someone else’s hand with the other. Then he’d swing each leg forward while leaning on the opposite hand, throwing his upper body forward. When he sat down the braces had to be unlocked. The braces caused Roosevelt to fall in public three different times, but the cooperative press never reported these incidents. In fact they never photographed him in his wheelchair at all. Of the 125,000 photos housed in the FDR library in Hyde Park, New York, only two private photos show the president seated in a wheelchair.

(Image source: Library of Congress)

The Secret Service built permanent ramps at all the places he visited often. They’d get him into cars by putting his back to the door and helping him vault himself with the strength of his arms; so it would appear he was getting in on his own steam. The act even included events at the White House. Dinner guests were first escorted upstairs and greeted by FDR seated in front of drinks. Then Mrs. Roosevelt would lead them downstairs for a tour of the house. By the time they arrived in the dining room for dinner, FDR would already be seated in his chair, ready to eat.  At outdoor receptions, gardeners would set up a tall seat, like a bicycle seat, for FDR to lean against and appear to be standing. Then they’d hide it with ferns. With all this help, Roosevelt managed to maintain his active image -both politically and in bearing, with a constant broad smile and a strong voice.

A WHEELCHAIR FOR EVERYONE TO SEE

(Image credit: Flickr user Paul Seegers)

More than fifty years after FDR’s death, President Bill Clinton finally dedicated the FDR Memorial in 1997. Located between the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials along the famous Cherry Tree Walk surrounding the Tidal Basin, the memorial consists of a red South Dakota granite plaza with a series of outdoor galleries that each depict the chronological events of one of Roosevelt’s four terms. Alcoves, shady trees, plants, and soft water cascades give the statues and educational engravings the feel of an expansive, reflective garden. The memorial includes a larger-than-life statue of Roosevelt covered with his characteristic cloak as he sits in a chair with an oversize sculpture of his beloved Scottie dog, Fala, beside him. If you look closely, you can see two tiny wheels in the back of the chair, just visible beneath the cloak’s edge.

(Image credit: Flickr user Wally Gobetz)

Even though the monument had officially opened, the controversy over FDR’s wheelchair continued. By depicting the wheelchair subtly, rendering it almost invisible in the memorial, the FDR Memorial Commission decided to underplay the president’s infirmity. They did this despite angry complaints that doing so was a denial of the achievements of people with disabilities and a harmful continuation of the fiction President Roosevelt felt forced to maintain because of the prevailing attitudes of his time. The commission and its supporters argued it would be wrong to revise history and portray what FDR went to such great lengths to actively hide from the world. Activists for the disabled argued that his tremendous achievements in spite of his condition couldn’t be properly celebrated or understood without accurately portraying it. Many observers pointed out the fight was largely symbolic: FDR was one of the greatest American presidents and potentially the greatest hero disabled Americans ever had. A memorial recognizing FDR’s own private struggle with his paralysis could never undermine the greatness of his personal and public achievements.

(Image credit: Flickr user Charles Pence)

After six years of protests and debate, groups championing those with disabilities finally won approval from the National Park Service to add a new statue, and they raised $1.65 million to do it. Placed near the entrance of the memorial in in July 1998, the life-size, bronze statue features FDR sitting in a wheelchair he himself designed and lived in for more than twenty years. In this statue the president wears his customary fedora and gazes upward. Positioned low enough so that those in wheelchairs can touch it, the statue is the first ever to depict a world leader seated in a wheelchair.

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The article above was reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges Into the Presidency.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!

It’s also the number that prompted FDR to alter his own travel plans on any day of the week that landed on the 13th.

"FDR would not depart on a (train) trip on the 13th," said Thomas Fernsler, a University of Delaware mathematician who has studied the number enough to earn the moniker "Dr. 13." He recounted a story that originated with FDR’s personal secretary, Grace Tully, who said the former president would order the train to leave the station before midnight on the 12th or after midnight on the morning of the 14th.

In a final act, FDR died in 1945 on April 12. Thursday, April 12.

"He avoided traveling to the beyond on the 13th," joked Bob Clark, head archivist at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum.

More about Friday the 13th phobia in this article by Don Babwin of AP: Link

Elvis, of course, loved his mama Gladys. In fact, his love for his mom may be the reason he first set foot in a recording studio – the story goes that he wanted to record a very belated birthday present for Gladys and went to Sun Records’ Memphis Recording Service to lay down a couple of songs for her – “My Happiness” and “That’s When Your Heartaches Begin.” Gladys was obsessed with her son, probably with good reason – as most people know, his twin brother was stillborn and Gladys was unable to have children after that, so Elvis was all she had. She walked him to school and he rubbed her feet; she later lived with him at Graceland until her death in 1958. Rumor even has it that they slept in the same bed until he was in his teens, which really would be no surprise – Elvis grew up in a two-room shack.
Photo from Random House

Douglas MacArthur

Douglas MacArthur was the youngest of three sons and apparently his mom didn’t want to deal with empty nest syndrome when he left for the United States Military Academy at West Point: she camped out in a hotel room overlooking the Academy grounds for two years. Supposedly she even bought a telescope so she could make sure he was studying instead of getting up to shenanigans, but that smells like an urban legend to me. But one book does say that he met with his mother for at least half an hour every night after dinner, and if he couldn’t get away, she would meet him so they could walk and talk on school grounds instead.
Photo from the Smithsonian

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

You’d have to be a pretty formidable women to intimidate Eleanor Roosevelt, and FDR’s mom Sara was just that. Franklin was her only child (I’m sensing a trend here) and she was quite protective of him. She even homeschooled him until he went to boarding school, and when he was admitted to Harvard she followed him there. She was upset when Franklin got engaged to Eleanor, but when he got married against her wishes, she committed herself to controlling both of them. Sara picked out the newly-married couple’s first house, had it decorated, and bought herself a house just three blocks away. In 1908 she gave them a townhouse in Manhattan which conveniently connected to her own townhouse – it had adjoining doors on every single floor. Franklin later admitted he had been terrified of his mother his whole life.
Photo from the National Park Service

Liberace

Liberace, like Elvis, had a twin who died at birth. He was devoted to his mother, and it showed: one newspaper described him as “a deadly, winking, sniggering, snuggling, chromium-plated, scent-impregnated, luminous, quivering, giggling, fruit-flavored, mincing, ice-covered heap of mother love.” He talked about her so much in his act that she became “Mother” to his fans as well; when she had a heart attack his fans flooded her hospital room and house with flowers and cards and well wishes. But like Franklin, it turns out that Liberace was actually quite scared of mommy dearest: when she died in 1980, he confessed, “I’m finally free.” He was well into his 60s at the time.
Photo from the Sacramento Bee

Sigmund Freud

Surprise, surprise. As his mother’s firstborn, he was her “Golden Siggie” and she very obviously played favorites, even giving him his own room and making her other children share. She doted on him to the point that he started to experience sexual desire for her (hey, he documented it!) and wished he could get rid of his father and have his mother entirely to himself. According to Freud, a wise old woman had told his mother that her firstborn son was going to do great things, so her adoration of him may have had something to do with that.

Robert E. Howard

Perhaps the biggest mama’s boy of all, for quite disturbing reasons. Robert Howard was a playwright and an author who created the character of Conan the Barbarian. His mother, Hester, was a particularly selfless woman who was passionate about instilling a love for literature and the arts in her children. She was known for caring for sick friends and relatives to fault – it was because of this compassion that she caught tuberculosis and fell extremely ill. She was in poor health for the rest of his life. Howard himself suffered from bouts of extreme depression; he was talking about suicide as early as his teens. He told friends the only thing keeping him from killing himself was his obligation to his poor mother, who wouldn’t be able to cope with such an ending. Despite his writing success, when his mother slipped into a coma in 1936 and her nurse told him she would never open her eyes again, he saw his chance. He went immediately to his car, took a gun from the glove compartment and shot himself in the head. He died eight hours later and his mother died the next day.