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

Howe was at work at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in New York City. A party official named Adolphus Ragan looked up to see Howe coming into his office. Howe held a telegram in his hand. Without a word he handed the slip of paper to Ragan. It was from FDR, giving Howe the news about his decision to run, contrary to all Howe’s advice.

Ragan read the telegram, then looked up to see tears on Howe’s cheeks.

“Ragan,” Howe said, “they are killing the best friend I ever had in the world.”

Howe and Al Smith held entirely different views of Roosevelt. Smith still saw FDR as a fancy-pants political amateur. Howe admired and revered him and thought that with more time and physical therapy he could do anything.

But both men looked at FDR and could not believe he was up to the challenges of campaigning and governing. Despite all his progress at Warm Springs, all the improvements in his ability to walk, other people still saw him as a man deeply compromised.

That was how most people who knew him felt. Certainly it was the view of Missy LeHand, who spent more time with FDR than anyone. Strangers got the same impression. The reaction of Missy’s friend, Grace Tully, was typical. One day, in an office corridor, she saw Louis Howe walking slowly at the side of a man Tully recognized instantly as FDR. He “was moving on crutches and with the labored gait taught to infantile paralysis cripples at the Warm Springs Foundation. Louie stopped me and presented me to his boss … FDR smiled broadly and shook hands. The vitality in his face contrasted sharply with the helplessness of his legs and I couldn’t help but feel the tragedy of such a physical misfortune.” When Tully was brought onto FDR’s staff that fall, she got another shock. “The first time I saw him lifted out of his wheelchair and carried by valet and chauffeur to a place in his automobile, I turned away and cried.”

FDR was acutely aware of reactions like Tully’s. So now, whether by deliberate calculation or sheer instinct—probably a combination of the two—he set out to assert control over how he appeared to a vast public of ten million strangers.

Three weeks was only enough time for one long loop of the state. He would start with a westward trek across New York’s “lower tier” counties all the way out to Jamestown, just short of the Pennsylvania line; then north to Buffalo; then back east through Rochester and Syracuse to Albany; then down to New York City for the last few days before Election Day.

He started out on the morning of Wednesday, October 17, 1928, when he boarded the auto ferry that would take him across the Hudson to Hoboken, New Jersey. From there he would ride the Erie Railroad to the upstate town of Binghamton, where he would give his first major speech of the campaign that night.

On the auto ferry that morning FDR was sitting in a passenger seat in his car, chatting about the traffic of ships and boats on the lower Hudson. A few big-league Democrats down from Albany stood around talking with him. One of them was Maurice Bloch, leader of the Democrats in the state assembly, whom the party had installed as FDR’s campaign manager. Bloch had told FDR he could restrict his campaigning to a few speeches in the big cities to preserve his strength.

Quite plainly and firmly, FDR had said no to that plan.

His energy and strength were quite all right, he told Bloch and the others. In fact, he intended to make the most vigorous and energetic campaign anyone in the state of New York had ever seen. “There will be a lot of handshaking and close contact with the voters if I have my way,” he had promised reporters.

On the ferry that morning was a young lawyer named Samuel Rosenman. He had served five years in the state assembly, then taken a job drafting legislative proposals for the Democrats in Albany. Bloch had assigned him to accompany FDR on the campaign trip; he could bring the candidate up to speed on state issues, do research, and help with speechwriting. Bloch brought him over to meet Roosevelt.

Rosenman had seen FDR only once before, from a distance, at the 1924 convention in Madison Square Garden. Now he saw him up close.

As a member of Smith’s circle in Albany, Rosenman remembered later, “I had heard stories of his being something of a playboy and idler, of his weakness and ineffectiveness. That was the kind of man I had expected to meet.”

On the Hudson River ferry, he saw someone quite different. “The broad jaw and upthrust chin, the piercing, flashing eyes, the firm hands—they did not fit the description.” And the remarks about FDR as a weakling “became a joke within a week after I met him … I never saw a man who worked harder.”

That was the impression FDR intended to make on the voters of New York. In the recesses of his own mind, he might not have been sure he was ready to take on the physical challenge of the campaign. But he was going to do so, ready or not, and dare anyone who watched him to say he wasn’t up to it. And by doing so, he might just banish any doubts of his own.

His first public appearance was supposed to be that night in Binghamton. Instead, whenever the train pulled into a small-town station, he got up from his seat, walked to the platform of the last car, and talked to whoever showed up, starting with the depot at Port Jervis, the first town over the New Jersey line.

He beamed out at the crowd and called, “How do you do, neighbors?” He introduced a couple of people. Then he said, “I think I look pretty healthy for a sick man, don’t you?”

He heard appreciative laughter and applause. It was the right touch. In those