14 May Warm Springs
In late April while I was at Calloway Gardens, GA for a District 6900 Rotary Conference I slipped away one day to visit nearby Warm Springs and President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Little White House. This little side trip was significant for me on so many levels.
FDR Garage under the Servant's Quarters
It is a cottage, really, and I was amazed at its small size. I came in through the kitchen. It reminded me of a rustic church camp.
There are two bedrooms. And no king sized beds. The President’s bedroom was so small that I couldn’t get a picture. His bed is 3/4 size. The 2nd bedroom has two twin beds … one for Eleanor and the other for her secretary.
In the living room is the same leather chair the President was sitting in when he had his fatal stroke on April 12, 1945. He was in the process of having his portrait painted, and the actual unfinished portrait is hanging in the FDR Memorial Museum, on the site of the Little White House.
Steve, the park ranger there when I toured, answered all my questions and more. Out the back deck were two small guard houses. I asked Steve where on earth did the secret service agents and FDR’s aides stay while they in Warm Springs. There were two only tiny rooms in the nearby Guest House.
He pointed out toward the back and explained that there was a camp through the woods.
“Barracks?” I asked.
“Tents.” He replied.
Warm Springs is a charming little town, probably not that much different than it was when Roosevelt visited it, except that now the roads are paved. I also visited the Historic Pools Museum which is almost exactly like it was when FDR was there. The pool is dry for preservation purposes except during select periods during the year.
Nearby is the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute Rehabilitation Center whose mission is to provide services to individuals with disabilities. There is a newer 25-meter swimming pool fed by the historic warm springs.
Warm Springs, movie starring Kenneth Branagh and Cynthia Nixon
As I left the Little White House I walked through the gift shop and bought a copy of the wonderful award winning HBO movie filmed there in 2005. It was the story of Roosevelt as he changed from a New York aristocrat to a man with polio who sought the warm healing waters in south Georgia. He made it possible for polio victims from all over to come to Warm Springs for physical therapy and for hope.
The people he met there had very little. They taught him and prepared him for the job he would soon have, leading our country out of the depression and through a horrendous world war.
While I watched this movie I couldn’t help but think of my mother’s good friend Lee Bean who had contracted the disease as a college student. Then when he was a law student he tutored the President’s son and got to meet Roosevelt in person.
Recently I read that perhaps Roosevelt’s disability was caused not by polio, which was endemic in our country at that time, but by Guillain–Barré syndrome. Nevertheless, I will always think “polio.” That was his disease. He founded the March of Dimes as the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis. He said that anyone can give a dime, and so many people did that they clogged up the White House mail system.
More than twenty years ago, Rotary International took on the challenge of eradicating polio from the face of the earth. We have been fund raising non-stop for this cause, and recently received assistance from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. This video shows what an overwhelming task it is to cover just the last four endemic countries: Afghanistan, India, Nigeria, and Pakistan. We can’t stop now because as long as polio is anywhere it can come back to bite us.
The couple who speak so passionately in this video are Robert and Charlene Hall, members of the Dunwoody (GA) Rotary Club.
No Comments