Master of His Fate by James Tobin (books to read for teens .TXT) 📕

interests in widely divided places, but that may be because I’m old and rather overwhelmed by what there is to do in one place and it wearies me to think of even undertaking to make new ties.” (That was ironic coming from Eleanor, who juggled as many ties and responsibilities as FDR did.)

Her objections hurt his feelings, and she didn’t hold out for long.

“He feels … that he’s trying to do a big thing which may be a financial success & a medical and philanthropic opportunity for infantile,” she wrote to a close friend, “& that all of us have raised our eyebrows & thrown cold water on it. There is nothing to do but to make him feel one is interested.”

Loyless died in March. By then FDR had made an irrevocable promise to purchase Warm Springs.

It was an enormous commitment, both financial and moral. People who came to the resort for help would now depend on his ability to keep the place alive. From this point on, he would have to consider his obligations for Warm Springs—and to those deeply hopeful people—in every decision he made.

In his first seven days as owner, he started at least seven major projects.

He drew up a plan for moving buildings.

He bought trees to fill the compound with greenery.

He gave orders to refurbish the Meriwether Inn.

He called contractors to see about a new water and sewage system.

He sketched a map of new roads and an artificial fishing pond.

He worked up a campaign to raise money for new buildings.

He organized a committee to plan sports and recreation indoors and outdoors.

And he saw to it that a certain rowdy contingent of locals known for “unseemly conduct at weekly dances, drinking, and carousing” were invited to “save themselves trouble by remaining away from Warm Springs.”

Anna, now nineteen and about to be married, came down to get a look at her father’s new domain. His enthusiasm amused and delighted her. “The one & only topic of conversation” at Warm Springs, she wrote her mother, “is Warm Springs!”

To attract polio patients over the long term, he would have to prove the water was special. Claims for miraculous water cures were a dime a dozen, and he was a politician, not a scientist. He needed doctors to back up his claims.

So it was something of a miracle when he learned that just then, in nearby Atlanta, the American Orthopedic Association was about to hold its spring 1926 convention. Bone doctors from all over the country would be there—he could get their backing! So he dashed off a telegram asking if he could speak to the group. Wouldn’t they jump at the chance to support an extraordinary new treatment for polio?

The answer came back: No, thank you. The schedule was full, and it was for experts only.

Quite undaunted, FDR raced over to Atlanta. Within a couple of hours, a roomful of startled doctors found themselves shaking hands with the recent Democratic nominee for vice president, who was being pushed around the room in a wheelchair and telling them about all the extraordinary things he was doing for polio patients at a backwoods village they’d never heard of.

The president of the orthopedists’ group was plainly irritated. He wrote to a friend: “I thought it was pretty clear that Mr. Roosevelt was more interested in the advertisement of his property in Georgia … than he was in idealism and philanthropy.”

But now came another stroke of luck. At the conference there was a doctor named Robert Osgood, who had replaced Robert Lovett as head of orthopedics at Children’s Hospital in Boston. (Lovett had died suddenly on a trip to Europe.) Dr. Osgood knew all about Roosevelt’s case, and he urged his colleagues to join him in calling for a scientific study of FDR’s claims. Three orthopedists agreed to review any evidence that might be gathered.

FDR was delighted. He wrote immediately to a doctor he knew back home—Leroy Hubbard, the chief orthopedic surgeon in New York State’s Department of Public Health. Hubbard had been treating polio patients since 1917, and was nearly as well known in the field as Dr. Lovett had been. “I am confident that Warm Springs can be made useful,” FDR told Hubbard. “The need for it is so imperative. I want to get your ideas.”

Hubbard soon agreed to set aside his work in New York and travel to Georgia, where he would supervise polio patients in a study of therapeutic treatments in the special water. If, as FDR expected, Hubbard could prove that warm-water therapy brought marked improvements, then FDR would turn over the evidence to his panel of experts. And then, as he told one of the doctors, “if you gentlemen are thoroughly and 100% convinced that it is worthwhile,” he would take the next step in his plan—to raise several hundred thousand dollars to construct new buildings and pools to treat one hundred patients by the summer of 1927.

Until now, no one could say for sure whether FDR had been reporting real improvements in his legs or just a pleasant fantasy born of desperate optimism. Was the pool really just an agreeable place to take a bath? Or was it the means of changing lives?

When Dr. Hubbard’s survey of patients was done, they would know.

He was now so busy at Warm Springs that he hardly had time to do what he had come there for in the first place.

Every day he had bundles of mail to go through, letters to dictate to Missy, checks to write, contractors to see, long-distance calls to make, telegrams to send, sewer diagrams to study, building plans to approve, facts to check, townspeople to reassure, doctors to consult, patients to advise. To make sure the compound remained un-fancy and rustic, as he insisted it must be, he dictated every detail of the planning. Each cottage was to be painted white; no cottage would have more than two bedrooms; and not a single road was to be paved. He jotted his own list of the