Master of His Fate by James Tobin (free ebooks for android txt) 📗

First, he laid plans to support his family by earning more money than he had been able to make in his ten years of government service. He wanted to supplement the handouts from his mother, perhaps even make them unnecessary. So he joined Langdon Marvin, his old friend from Harvard, in a New York law firm that was promptly renamed Emmet, Marvin & Roosevelt. At the same time he accepted a job offer from Van Lear Black, whose businesses included the Fidelity & Deposit Company, an insurance firm; Black wanted FDR to run the New York office. In both cases—the law firm and the insurance company—it was understood that Roosevelt would be a part-timer. His main value lay in the prestige of having the name Roosevelt on the door. His associates knew he would be devoting much of his time to politics.

He wasn’t running for anything yet. That would happen at some point down the road—just when was hard to say. After eight years in Washington, his job right now was to get back into New York’s political ecosystem. He looked out for trusted assistants who had worked for him at the Navy Department and on the 1920 campaign, so that when the next campaign came, he could bring them back on board. He arranged for jobs for several of them, including Louis Howe, who went to work for Fidelity & Deposit, and Marguerite LeHand, who became his full-time secretary. (She soon was so close to the Roosevelt family that the children began to call her “Missy,” and the nickname stuck.)

FDR didn’t talk about his long-term intentions, not with anyone but Howe. But hints slipped out now and then. When a deeply loyal booster named Tom Lynch couldn’t get past his disappointment over Roosevelt’s defeat in the race for vice president, FDR counseled him to be patient.

“Tom,” he said, “1932 will be our year.”

Now any such hopes depended on his legs. If his strength returned, if he could stand up and walk again, he could get back on the track he had set for himself.

If not, his future was lost.

From Grand Central Terminal in New York, FDR was driven to Presbyterian Hospital, then carted up to a private room for several more weeks of rest. His personal physician, Dr. George Draper, had taken charge of the case. After a brief examination of his patient, Dr. Draper would meet with reporters demanding news about the famous young politician.

It was good for FDR to have a man like Draper on his side. They had known each other since Groton School. Dr. Draper was smart and serious about his work. He had been a physician in the U.S. Army during World War I. (In fact, he still looked like a strict army officer, with a narrow face, a high forehead, and piercing eyes.) He knew perhaps as much about polio as Dr. Lovett did, since he had treated many patients in the 1916 epidemic and studied the disease in the years since then. He didn’t have time to examine Roosevelt carefully before he met with reporters that day, but otherwise he was well prepared to answer their questions.

The earliest news reports about FDR’s illness had been muddled. So it was up to Dr. Draper to tell everyone the truth.

He did—mostly.

Hard as it was to believe, he said, the vigorous politician of the 1920 campaign had come down with infantile paralysis. For the time being, Roosevelt was unable to walk.

But there was good news, too.

“Power is already beginning to return to the affected muscles,” Dr. Draper said, “and this is a promising sign. His general condition is exceedingly good and he is in the best of spirits.”

What about the future? the reporters asked. Would Roosevelt be permanently paralyzed?

“I can say definitely that he will not be crippled,” Dr. Draper declared, “and no one should have any fear of permanent injury in any way from this attack.”

Like Dr. Lovett, Dr. Draper knew perfectly well that it was too early to make that promise. No doctor could predict whether FDR’s muscles would recover a lot or a little or not at all.

So why would he say that?

Probably because he wanted his patient to read it in the next day’s newspapers.

For a physician of his era, Dr. Draper had some unusual ideas. In his own lifetime, scientists had made huge strides in understanding the causes of disease. But Dr. Draper believed the human body still concealed imponderable mysteries.

He thought it wasn’t enough for a doctor to know which germ could be killed by which medication. A lot depended on the patients—their upbringings, their immune systems, even their minds. Draper urged his fellow doctors to study their patients’ personalities. Too many doctors had lost track of “the powerful agencies of faith and hope,” he wrote. If he had two patients with exactly the same physical problem but different attitudes toward that problem, he believed the patient who was fighting for a comeback stood a much better chance than the patient who gave up in despair.

Dr. Draper wanted FDR to hope for what Dr. Lovett had spoken of—“spontaneous improvement” in his damaged muscles. Maybe it would happen; maybe it wouldn’t. But Draper wanted FDR to be in a fighting mood.

So the doctor spoke words to the reporters that he knew FDR would read in the newspapers. The words set a goal: “He will not be crippled.”

An able-bodied person like Dr. Draper could talk about what it’s like to be paralyzed. But only someone who is actually paralyzed really knows.

It was bad enough that FDR couldn’t get up and walk, let alone run or play sports or drive a car. But it was a lot worse than simply losing those abilities.

Some paralyzed people can’t control the muscles needed to go to the bathroom. If so, they have to use tubes called catheters that carry waste out of the body. FDR had needed a catheter right at first, but in this one small way he