Have you ever heard of a president who served the country on crutches and wheelchair? Believe it or not, he is Franklin D Roosevelt, the longest-serving President in the history of the United States, credited with pulling the country out of the Great Depression and leading it through much of World War II.
At the age of 39, Roosevelt contracted polio, a terrifying and incurable disease that left him paralyzed from lower back down. Eleanor Roosevelt, his wife, later said of this time, “I know that he had real fear when he was first taken ill, but he learned to surmount it. After that I never heard him say he was afraid of anything.”
As Roosevelt travelled by automobile around the state, he demonstrated that his illness had not destroyed his youthful resilience and vitality. Roosevelt brought such verve and vigour to the presidency that people tended to forget he was physically handicapped, and photographers and cameramen reinforced his dynamic image by acceding to White House requests to take all their pictures of him from waist up.
“There are many ways of going forward, but only one way of standing still,” says Roosevelt, the only President to be elected four times in America’s history.
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