janeandbobandmore: THE LITTLE WHITE HOUSE, WARM SPRINGS, GA

In a bucolic setting near Pine Mountain in central Georgia lies the town of Warm Springs. When Governor of New York in 1924 and about three years after contracting polio, Franklin Roosevelt came here for its healing hot springs. He visited this retreat 41 times during his Presidency, suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and died in Warm Springs on April 12, 1945.

FDR built the Little White House -- a handful of pine paneled rooms -- a small office, a smaller kitchen with an early version of an electric stove, a small butler’s pantry, a bedroom for the President, a bedroom for Eleanor and others in the family, and finally a cozy comfortable living room opening to a large back porch from which the President could see 20 miles over the Georgia countryside. Today, the trees on the receding slope have grown and totally eliminate these bucolic views.

At this site one can see FDR’s ingenuity – for he designed hand controls so he could drive his own car and designed a “bump” gate that operated on a swivel to open with a bump from his car. Also displayed are multiple canes given him by admirers, his wheel chair and his leg braces. The steel braces were painted black at the lower leg level so they would not be seen. The braces themselves were not designed to assist in walking, but rather just for standing. The press understood that they should not report on his physical disability nor would the press photographers record him in his wheelchair—only standing (usually behind a podium) or sitting in a chair, but always supported. It is hard to imagine such self-imposed restraint by today’s press.

The historical commentary on the walls and in the display cabinets had the expected paeans to his Depression era legislation and how the laws he supported pulled America out of this economic crisis. Of course we all remember FDR’s famous Four Freedoms: Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Religion, Freedom from Want, Freedom from Fear. However, there was little mention of the heated controversy over government intervention at the expense of individual liberty – one example being the National Recovery Act that was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in the Schecter Poultry vs. the United States case. FDR remains an inspiration as he overcame the limitations of his paralysis.