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Traces of a Childhood at FDR's Polio Haven
by Susan Richards Shreve
Book Reviewed by:Shreve, who contracted polio when
she was a year-old, spent the first 11 years of her
life trying to fit into "normal" life, walking with
a brace and failing deportment classes at the local
elementary school. So she was thrilled to arrive at
a place where crippled children were considered
ordinary - only to find herself insufficiently
debilitated to be considered normal there either!
For many decades after Shreve's father collected her
from Warm Springs, having been ask to remove
his 13-year-old daughter with immediate effect as she was
a "danger" to the other children, Shreve never
thought to look back on her time at the center. This
changed a few years ago when she and her husband
struck up a conversation with two scientists who
were examining the relationship between the AIDS and
polio viruses. It struck Shreve that both diseases
carried a moral stain - in the case of AIDS the
shame is sexual, with polio it was social, based on
the false belief that the virus struck only the
filthy houses of the urban poor.
This conversation triggered her to begin a
circuitous route back to the years she had spent at
Warm Springs and the downhill wheelchair race that
she had instigated between her and her first
love, Joey Buckley, that had caused her to be
removed "pronto" from the establishment.
She read about the history of polio and FDR's
contribution to Warm Springs and the irradiation of
polio. She read about the "silent generation" of the
1950s and thought about the shame of illness and the
character-defining frustration of a child locked in
a paralyzed body who feels responsible for changing
the family's daily life. As she thought all this she
remembered the fateful race with Joey and began to
think, "What it had meant to live in a village of
cripples, to travel the distance between childhood
and adulthood for that short time by myself
discovering the lure of religion and romantic movies
and the danger of sexuality lurking in the embryo of
adolescence".
The result is Warm Springs. Shreve spins a
delicate web of memoir in which polio takes a back
seat to a powerful coming of age story in which a
13-year-old girl trapped in a body inadequate for
her ambitious energies hits adolescent rebellion at
full speed, experiences her first crush, undergoes
surgeries and rehabilitation and tries terribly hard
to become the "good girl" people want her to be. It
is a riveting, raw, miscellany of memories from a
bygone era that seems much longer ago than it is - a
snapshot of a time and place, and the challenge of
living with pain, guilt and loneliness.
The History of Warm Springs & Franklin D Roosevelt
In 1924, FDR (who contracted polio in 1921)
received a letter from a friend of his, George
Foster Peabody, informing him that a young polio
sufferer seemed to have recovered his ability to
walk by swimming in the buoyant waters of a Georgia
resort called Warm Springs. Peabody, a wealthy
banker and co-owner of the resort, suggested that
FDR should visit, which he did shortly after.
Roosevelt was delighted by the warmth and buoyancy
of the pool which supported his weight and enabled
him to stand and practice walking. In 1926, FDR
announced that he had decided to buy Warm Springs
and turn it into a center for the hydrotherapeutic
treatment of polio victims. He invested nearly
$200,000 in the foundation (roughly 2/3rds of his
private fortune) and for two years served as its
director and unofficial physiotherapist. To the
growing numbers of patients that began to arrive at
the center, he became the affable and sympathetic
"Dr. Roosevelt"—a role in which he took great
pleasure.
In 1928 he was persuaded to run for governor of New
York. Initially reluctant to leave the rewarding
work at Warm Springs he was eventually persuaded to
enter the race and was elected. Four years later, in
1932, he was elected President - the first of four
terms he would serve. As World War II drew to a
close his health deteriorated. On April 12, 1945 he
died of a cerebral hemorrhage at Warm Springs.
The center still exists as the
Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation.
Its mission is to empower individuals with
disabilities to achieve personal independence.
This review was originally published in The BookBrowse Review in July 2007, and has been updated for the
July 2008 edition.
Click here to go to this issue.
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