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

the Saratoga waters, Peabody had thought back to a much smaller resort in rural Georgia, his home state, that he had visited often as a boy. When he went south to see what had become of the old place—it was called the Meriwether Inn—he found it worn and all but deserted. But the water was the same as ever, gushing up from the depths of nearby Pine Mountain at a steady temperature of 89 degrees, suffused with minerals that made the water fizzy with tiny bubbles. It flowed into a broad outdoor swimming pool.

For as long as anyone could remember, people had been attracted to the spot by the water’s restorative powers. First it had been Muscogee (Creek) people who said the water healed their wounds, then American tourists who made the place a popular resort for the well-to-do in the late 1800s. The nearby village was called Bullochville, otherwise known in the region as Warm Springs.

Peabody thought the resort might be brought back to its former stature and success, like Saratoga Springs. So he bought the rights to purchase the place, thinking he could pass it along to a new owner who would devote full time to it—perhaps the state of Georgia itself. In the meantime he worked with the man who had been running it, a retired and sickly newspaper editor named Tom Loyless.

It was Loyless who told Peabody the remarkable story that Peabody now relayed to Franklin Roosevelt. It was about what had happened to a young man with polio who ventured into the swimming pool.

His name was Louis Joseph. He was an engineer in his twenties. While working in the West Indies, he had caught the poliovirus and lost the use of his legs. He had to quit his job and moved back to his parents’ home in Columbus, Georgia, the city nearest to Bullochville. For a vacation in 1921, the family spent some time at the Meriwether Inn. Every day, Louis got into the swimming pool and moved around. He came back the next summer and the next.

After three summers of exercise in the foamy water, Louis Joseph could walk with a cane.

FDR listened, interested but not terribly impressed. He had heard many tales of miraculous treatments for polio, and he knew that most were exaggerations, if not pure hype.

But Peabody wasn’t through. When the Democratic convention was over, he wrote letters to Louis Joseph and Tom Loyless, asking them to send detailed accounts of Louis’s recovery.

FDR now read these words in Louis Joseph’s letter:

I was almost completely paralyzed with the exception of my arms. Discovering that I could swim in the warm water here, after someone helped me into the pool, I returned. This is my third summer. I use a cane while walking in the street, and can get about well.

A third-hand story had been one thing. But here in this letter was an amazing testament written by hand in Louis Joseph’s own words.

FDR already knew that water made it easier for him to exercise. What if the natural minerals in the warm Georgia water could do something more?

A new plan bloomed in his mind. To a New York doctor who had built him some new leg braces he wrote: “I am planning to go to Warm Springs, Georgia on October 3rd to try out a remarkable swimming pool of natural highly mineralized water … I have had such success with sunlight and swimming that I believe that in such a pool I could actually walk around at the shallow end with the water up to my shoulders, and thereby get the normal walking motion better than any other way. I can stand up without support in water just below my shoulders and I am going to take a couple of canes into the pool with me …

“There is nothing like trying it out.”

He rearranged his business affairs to guarantee the time he would need. Van Lear Black would tolerate his long absences indefinitely, but he had to quit his law firm, where his partners were about out of patience. He formed a new firm with a very bright young lawyer he had met, Basil O’Connor—and this time Roosevelt’s name came first on the door.

Then he packed his bags.

Franklin, Eleanor, Missy LeHand, and LeRoy Jones arrived at the Warm Springs train station in early October 1924. The scent of pine woods and a view of soft green hills greeted them. By an odd coincidence, the village, population 470, had originally been named for the family of Eleanor’s grandmother, a southern belle named Mittie Bulloch Roosevelt. But neither Franklin nor Eleanor had ever been near the place. Even for the rural South, it was isolated. In the day’s fading light, the Roosevelts caught glimpses of a broken-down hotel with peeling paint, a collection of sagging white cottages, and a slumping dance pavilion. Eleanor thought the whole place was depressing. But FDR insisted it was “delightful and very comfortable.”

The next morning, he was eager to get straight to the swimming pool. But first he opened the door to welcome Louis Joseph himself, standing and walking with only the help of a cane. With him was a local doctor named James Johnson, who had witnessed Louis’s progress. Roosevelt questioned them closely. They said the water held no miracles. It would take time to see any improvement. But the water made it easy to exercise. There was no doubt about that.

FDR got into his swimming trunks. With LeRoy Jones at his side, he made his way to the pool’s edge. An artificial waterfall spilled into the pool at one end. The water reflected the painted ocean-blue of the concrete sides. Soft white sand lay across the bottom.

Grasping a cane in either hand, he slipped in.

At home in New York, unless he was sitting in direct sunlight or a hot bath, his legs were always cold.

But now he felt a delicious warmth seep up through his feet into his calves, thighs, and abdomen. The sparkling sensation of a million