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Polio Plus One President

With Rotary’s help, the Smithsonian Institution’s polio exhibit finds a home at the same place Franklin Delano Roosevelt strengthened his legs and social conscience.

It’s likely that the fight against polio would have been drastically slowed had not a 42-year-old politician come to Georgia, USA, in October 1924, seeking treatment for his disease.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt had served as assistant secretary of the navy under Woodrow Wilson, and in 1920, he was the vice-presidential nominee on the failed ticket of Democratic candidate James M. Cox. Roosevelt’s political future grew more dubious when, the following year, at the age of 39, he suddenly faced a diagnosis of polio and the possibility of life without the use of his legs. Roosevelt’s good friend, banker George Foster Peabody, urged him to try the hot springs at the Meriwether Inn in southern Georgia, which Peabody partly owned. A young man with polio had supposedly found the waters beneficial.

Although the run-down resort was a far cry from the luxurious surroundings the wealthy Roosevelt was accustomed to, he soon came to believe that the spa and
springs could work miracles. Bubbling from the ground at the rate of 900 gallons a minute, geothermally heated at 88 degrees, the waters appeared to strengthen muscles. It was a wonderful feeling to be in the pool, where Roosevelt found that he could stand, move his legs, even walk. He grew enchanted with the Meriwether Inn, a rambling Victorian hotel and centerpiece of a sprawling property – so enchanted that
he invested two-thirds of his personal fortune and bought the place.

“We seem to have purchased the Meriwether Inn,” he wrote to his wife, Eleanor.

Eleanor was not pleased. His mother was appalled. But the young politician stuck to his guns. He was determined to turn the Meriwether Inn and its pools into a therapeutic spa for people with polio and a vacation retreat, despite the fear that gripped the country over the then-mysterious affliction. But no one wanted to risk infection by living – or vacationing – among polio patients, so FDR scuttled plans for a vacation spot. Instead, he and four friends from New York established the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation in 1927.

Fast-forward 70 years. Today, polio is but a distant memory for many in the United States. But next month, if all goes as planned, the Whatever Happened to Polio?
exhibit from the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History will go on display at what’s now known as the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation. The Rotary Foundation’s PolioPlus Fund gave $300,000 to finance the initial development and construction of the exhibit, also backed by the March of Dimes and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.

The opening of the exhibit at Warm Springs, which remains a large, vital facility, is happening in a period of exciting growth. Doctors and therapists here still work with hundreds of patients who have been disabled for a variety of reasons, including accidents and cardiac disorders. The institute’s Frank C. Ruzycki Center for Therapeutic Recreation includes a basketball court, 25-meter pool, and a bowling alley. A tennis center was funded to the tune of $100,000 by District 6900 (Georgia) and dedicated in 1999. Six tennis courts, all accessible to people with disabilities, are a major highlight of the campus and the locus of international
tennis tournaments.

Healing tradition

“Keep your head up now. Lift your leg,” urges a therapist as an elderly woman with a three-pointed walker makes her way across the floor of a large therapy room. “Lift your leg. We’ll just go to that blue spot. Keep your head up, dear.”

The facility serves about 5,000 people each year. Much of the care takes place in buildings that enclose a large, grassy quadrangle designed, per Roosevelt’s mandate, to look like a college campus. Elsewhere on the grounds, winding forest paths lead to assorted outbuildings and cottages dating back to the days of the Meriwether Inn. The inn was torn down as a firetrap in the early 1930s, but walls throughout the complex hold vintage photographs, and the warm waters, today in indoor pools near the entrance, remain a useful form of therapy. The engineering shop continues to
turn out braces, and an airy building that once served as a children’s area still exists. (It was named “The Birdcage” because Eleanor Roosevelt filled a large cage
in the middle with exotic birds to keep a cheery ambience.)

In Roosevelt’s day, the institute became the premier place to treat the symptoms of polio, attracting patients, doctors, and researchers from around the world. The prestige had a lot to do with the politician’s growing political prominence: He was elected governor of New York in 1928 and U.S. president in 1932 (the first of four terms). Roosevelt visited the institute 41 times and even built a three-bedroom
cottage, known as the “Little White House,” on the premises.

Much, of course, has changed here since FDR first found he could stand, and then walk, in the warm waters. In 1974, the institute sold its 940 acres to the state of Georgia. The once-separate vocational and medical rehabilitation facilities were merged in 1980, and Warm Springs remains a U.S. National Historic Landmark District.

Today, the institute anchors what has become a popular tourist destination. The nearby town of Warm Springs is all Southern charm, its streets lined with boutiques, galleries, and restaurants. Roosevelt’s Little White House drew over 100,000 visitors last year.

“It’s no accident that the exhibit’s coming here. This is not serendipity,” says Bob Patterson, a Baptist minister and 2006-07 president of the Rotary Club of Meriwether County (Warm Springs), who’s active at the institute. “It is very, very appropriate.”

“It is just the biggest thing for Rotary,” chimes in Mary Chapman, 2006-07 president of the nearby Rotary Club of Peachtree City. “I am so thrilled that Rotary has helped bring this history here. It’s a piece of our history that we need to know – and a piece of Rotary history. Immunizing the world! This is the biggest project Rotary has ever done. It shows, too, that we are not just a service club but have partnered with international agencies, like WHO and the United Nations.” Along with the World Health Organization, UNICEF and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have joined Rotary as spearheading partners in the Global Polio
Eradication Initiative.

After strolling the grounds, Chapman and Patterson stand near Georgia Hall, which leads to the quadrangle. On this very spot, a photograph was taken that conveys all that needs to be said about Roosevelt’s legacy here. It was 15 April 1945, three days after FDR’s sudden death from a stroke at the Little White House. As the car transporting his body left the grounds, polio patients came out to pay their respects, lining the drive in their wheelchairs. Decades later, the facility would be renamed the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation.

Polio vaccine

For many people born in the United States after the mid-1950s, the Smithsonian exhibit is as close as they will come to experiencing the fear and dread that polio engendered just one generation ago.

At its peak, in the late 1940s and early ’50s, the disease affected between 13,000 and 20,000 people in the United States each year, many of them children. Thousands died. Many others were permanently paralyzed. It wasn’t until the mid-1950s that Jonas Salk and then Albert Sabin developed vaccines that stopped polio in its tracks. In the United States, by 1960, the number of cases dropped to 2,525.

Globally, however, the disease continued to run rampant. Rotary took on the cause in October 1985, the 40th anniversary of the United Nations. It pledged an extraordinary $120 million to fund the PolioPlus program, a commitment to vaccinate every child in the world against polio. Three years later, Rotary had more than doubled that amount – and declared its intent to rid the world of the disease.

With the Whatever Happened to Polio? exhibit, visitors this summer will be able to experience much of this extraordinary history. The exhibit was originally intended to run for one year at the Smithsonian, but many Rotarians were reluctant to see this important retrospective shut down completely. The Rotary Foundation’s International PolioPlus Committee immediately began to hunt for a new home, with
Warm Springs at the top of the list.

To help fund the relocation, the Foundation’s Board of Trustees allotted another $37,000, and District 6900 offered $13,000, covering not only transportation but an entire refitting of the new site to meet the rigorous demands of the Smithsonian. (Though technically still owned by the Smithsonian, the exhibit will be on permanent loan here.) “We are so happy that the exhibition is going to Warm Springs,” saysKatherine Ott, who was project director of the exhibit for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. “It’s the perfect place. So much of the history in the exhibit has taken place in Warm Springs. It’s wonderful to be working with them.”

Whatever Happened to Polio? will be on view in the lobby of the 400-seat Roosevelt Hall Auditorium, a venue whose entire front half is tiered with ramps for wheelchairs. (The auditorium was dedicated in 1954 by the actress Helen Hayes, who was involved with the March of Dimes.) As in Washington, D.C., its original location, the exhibit consists mostly of free-standing kiosks that tell the story of
the disease through photographs, newspapers, and artifacts. Items on view include FDR’s leg braces, the actual syringe and vaccine used by Salk during the 1954 clinical trials, and an iron lung with a miniature tank respirator into which visitors can insert an arm and feel the pressure change. There’s even a piece of 70-year-old cake from one of the Birthday Ball fundraisers held by the March of
Dimes in honor of Roosevelt.

Rotarians will be especially proud of one entire area devoted to Rotary’s contribution to the fight against polio, including photos of volunteers with the Rotary emblem.

“It’s like the Indy 500, and we’re in our last lap,” offers Foundation Trustee Carolyn Jones. “We stuck our neck out deciding to eradicate polio. When we finally succeed, this will be our significant contribution to the world.”

“It’s a big job; it’s a hard job,” says Carol Pandak, manager of RI’s PolioPlus Division. “It’s very important for the public to see our efforts.”

A few months ago, Pandak returned from Karachi, Pakistan, which remains one of several areas where polio is still a threat. Others include parts of Afghanistan, India, and Nigeria, each presenting its own challenges.
Lasting legacy

Visitors to the exhibit may find it worthwhile to pause at the dramatic Polio Hall of Fame on the front of Founders Hall, unveiled on 2 January 1958. Here, 17 sculpted bronze-relief busts memorialize the doctors, researchers, and scientists who worked to wipe out polio in the United States. Sabin and Salk are here, naturally, but so are a dozen lesser-known names, including Isabel Morgan, who initiated research on a
killed-virus vaccine that Salk would eventually adopt and develop.

In Patterson’s opinion, none of this might have happened if Roosevelt had not ventured to this small town in southern Georgia and decided to invest his life
here.

For all that Roosevelt did for Warm Springs, many feel he was equally indebted to
the place, and not just for its healing waters. As Patterson sees it, Roosevelt was
a very different person when he first set foot on the property. He was a
Northeasterner from a family of privilege and money. Joining a community of people
with similar disabilities was a leveling experience that “humbled him,” Patterson
says.

Patterson is among those who feel that Roosevelt’s visits to Warm Springs helped
inform his character and forge his social conscience. “He learned not only to cope
with his illness,” he says, “but he saw what it was like to live in rural South Georgia. He saw what it was like for a bank to crash, for a farmer to lose his cash crop.”

“Some people think it was the reason he became president,” says Chapman.

“You know, there are lots of things about Franklin Delano Roosevelt that are very Rotarian,” says Patterson. “He was all about Service Above Self.”