Transcript: Chapter 09

Narrator: In 1924 the former candidate for vice president was invited to the Democratic National Convention. He delivered a rousing speech, but he played no further part in the presidential campaign. He was still far too weak. That fall, there was talk of Franklin running for governor of New York, but he quickly rejected the idea. He would not seek public office, he said, until he no longer needed crutches. Determined to find a cure, he once again headed south.

He had heard of pools of steaming mineral water in Warm Springs, Georgia, whose marvelous healing powers were the stuff of local legend. Gushing out of the side of a mountain, the waters were 90 degrees and astonishingly buoyant. Some called them "miracle waters." Although the waters would never give Franklin back his legs, they would give new meaning to his life and new purpose. "I feel," he wrote his mother, "that a great cure for infantile paralysis and kindred diseases could well be established here."

Elmer Loftin, Warm Springs Resident: Well, there wasn't much here. There was only one hotel downtown, you know, and the grocery store. And they called it "Bullochville."

Robert Fulton Copeland, Warm Springs Resident: It wasn't considered a town, what I would call a town. I thought it took a lot of stores to make a town back in those days. But I just called it a greasy spot, and I think they named it Warm Springs, Georgia, after Mr. Roosevelt -- about the time he began to come here.

Narrator: On the outskirts of town, there stood a once-lovely vacation resort, a favored retreat for wealthy Southerners. By the time Franklin arrived, its glory had faded to a cluster of cottages in need of repair and a run-down hotel. Franklin dreamed of restoring its original charm and turning it into a modern rehabilitation center for those with infantile paralysis, but first he would need hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Geoffrey Ward: Roosevelt borrowed a lot of money from his mother and put in a lot of his own. His wife was absolutely opposed and thought it was a terrible idea.

Blanche Wiesen Cook: She thought it was going to cost too much money. She thought that it would give him something else to attend to and take him away from politics, that you couldn't do everything and Warm Springs was going to completely dominate his life. She worried about it.

Geoffrey Ward: One of the few times we know in which he really got angry at her was when she gently suggested that perhaps this was not a good idea. And he was furious.

Blanche Wiesen Cook: He really exploded and said, "This is something I really want. You either support me or you don't," And when that was sort of an emotional ultimatum, she did support it.

Narrator: Investing $195,000 -- two-thirds of his personal fortune -- Franklin created and designed the first modern treatment center for infantile paralysis in the country. Soon people with polio from across America were making the pilgrimage to the Georgia backwoods. As Franklin struggled to rehabilitate his own withered limbs, he devoted himself for the first time to helping others. "You would howl with glee," he told a friend, "if you could see the clinic in operation and the patients doing various exercises in the water under my leadership."

Hugh Gallagher: Warm Springs was a wonderful place. Roosevelt was a patient just like all the others. "Dr. Roosevelt," as the others called him, was really remarkably creative. He brought in blacksmiths and they designed braces and crutches -- a crutch design that's still used, the Warm Springs crutch. Roosevelt invented a muscle-testing technique -- a way of grading how strong a muscle is -- that is still in use, and it was a remarkably inventive time.

Narrator: Always he believed in recovery. His prescription: swimming, sunlight and belief on the patient's part that the muscles are coming back.

H. Stuart Raper, M.D., Warm Springs Foundation, Medical Director: He had charisma. He was just glowing with it and oh, that smile, and he'd laugh.

Janice Howe Raper, Physical Therapist: After everybody had treatment, they would all go out into what was called the "play pool" and they would play vigorous games of ball. He played with them and he was just as tough as any of the children. They loved him.

Geoffrey Ward: Whether or not people got better at Warm Springs, they felt that they were better and they felt that with him present, anything was possible.

Narrator: Warm Springs was Franklin's creation. For the rest of his life, in times of stress he would retreat to the piney woods and the warm waters. It became his second home.

Franklin loved to drive and he drove fast. He designed his car himself, with ingenious levers and pulleys so he could drive without his legs. For the first time since he was paralyzed, he felt free. Over the years, his drives through the Georgia countryside would provide him with a valuable political education.

Ben C. Fowler, Warm Springs Resident: He was interested in the people. He got out and visited with them. Even after he was president, he would slip away from his bodyguards and get out and ride the back ways and back roads and meet people, stop and talk with them. But he'd never met people like that before.

Elmer Loftin: He usually talked to you. He started the conversation. Whatever he wanted to know, he'd ask. He didn't hesitate about asking if he saw something he wanted to know.

Narrator: Everywhere he went he heard stories about the lack of electricity in the countryside and the exorbitant rates paid for it in town, about bad schools and low farm prices -- stories that left their mark on him.

Robert Fulton Copeland: I didn't know how come I loved him like I did. It wasn't ... he hadn't done anything for me personally. We would walk to Warm Springs just to see him just board the train. He'd come on down the ... "Hello, Warm Springs. Hello, Warm Springs." That's the way ... we wanted to see him greet the little town, and we walked four miles to see that. Well, he wasn't the president then. He wasn't even the governor of New York, I don't guess, but he was just Mr. Roosevelt in those days.

Janice Howe Raper: After he became president, they were very, you know, polite, but they used to call him, in the early days, "Rosie," which I think was a wonderful name.

Robert Fulton Copeland: Everybody loved him. Go beyond like -- they loved him.

Eleanor Roosevelt (archival): I don't think he changed completely -- there were certain things that were always there -- but he certainly learned to understand what suffering meant in a way that he'd never known before, because he could understand how people could suffer in ways that he had not experienced. And I think that grew out of his polio experience.

And he certainly gained enormously in patience. That gave him some of the patience that was needed to meet the problems both of the New Deal and the war. I've heard people say to him that, "If we do this, we don't know if we will be successful," and I've seen my husband time after time say, "There are very few things we can know beforehand. We will try and if we find we are wrong, we will have to change."

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