[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 69 (Thursday, May 16, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5187-S5188]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            THE FDR MEMORIAL

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, thousands of people come to Washington, DC, 
each year to learn about the history of our country and the legacy left 
to us by the great men and women that have built the strongest, most 
powerful nation the world has ever known--the United States of America.
  Our country's finest hours have been ones where prejudice and 
discrimination have been acknowledged and addressed. The key to our 
overcoming and addressing discrimination has been education and 
understanding.
  The most recent debate over the FDR Memorial is an opportunity for 
our country to once again beat back discrimination. Discrimination is 
not always blatant. Discrimination also includes exclusion.
  I strongly believe that portraying FDR in a wheelchair in one of the 
three statues that are being built as part of the memorial would be an 
incredibly powerful statement to all who visit this tribute to a great, 
vibrant, forceful leader. The fact that FDR had polio and spent most of 
his waking hours as President working in his wheelchair does not change 
any of these truths. In fact, FDR's disability was a great source of 
his strength.
  A main tenet of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 was to 
ensure that the Federal Government plays a central role in enforcing 
the standards established in the act on behalf of individuals with 
disabilities.
  In this effort, I hope that the FDR Memorial Commission will depict 
President Roosevelt as he was--a great, courageous man who had polio 
and still led our Nation.
  I ask unanimous consent that an editorial from the New York Times and 
a letter from eight of FDR's grandchildren to Michael Deland and Alan 
Reich of the National Organization on Disability be printed in the 
Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the New York Times, May 12, 1996]

                         The Airbrush of Power

       Most Americans are aware, if sometimes vaguely, that 
     Franklin Roosevelt was stricken by polio in 1921 and was 
     unable thereafter to stand unassisted. Yet there will be no 
     visual reminder of this fact in the F.D.R. memorial due to be 
     dedicated in Washington next spring. On the contrary, he is 
     to be shown standing tall in one of three sculptures planned 
     for the seven-acre site on the banks of the Potomac.
       This fiction, however benign, is being protested by the 
     National Organization on Disability, whose chairman, Michael 
     Deland, urges that at least one bronze image depict F.D.R. as 
     he often was, in a wheelchair. Logic and sentiment support 
     Mr. Deland. But alas, the leaden weight of tradition stands 
     all too squarely behind the memorial commission's penchant 
     for make-believe.
       Through the ages, rulers of every stripe, male and female, 
     have sought to improve upon or alter nature. The Egyptians 
     led the way. Ramses II was not content to show himself mowing 
     down adversaries in scores of battle friezes. His artists had 
     to depict him twice as big as everyone else. Going further, 
     Queen Hatshepsut, the first great female ruler known to 
     history, had herself replicated in stone with a false beard, 
     thus visually changing her sex.
       Roman emperors and their wives were tidied up in marble and 
     bronze, their faces deftly nipped and tucked on imperial 
     coins. European rulers in the Middle Ages invoked theology to 
     justify the lies of art. Every monarch, it was said, is at 
     once mortal and incorporeal, so that in a higher realm all 
     were immune to the blemishes of the flesh.

[[Page S5188]]

     On their death, an image was carved delineating their 
     idealized features.
       We learn through written records, not portraits, of Richard 
     III's crookback and Henry VIII's terminal corpulence. In art, 
     Elizabeth I is always the same iconic virgin queen; in life, 
     she banish mirrors from her palaces as her hair thinned and 
     her cheeks hollowed. In the same spirit, Elizabeth II, who 
     has turned 70, has firmly resisted suggestions that she 
     permit an updating on coins of her youthful profile, as 
     Queen. Victoria did after her Jubilee in 1887.
       By contrast, the Puritan regicide Oliver Cromwell is said 
     to have told the artist Lely: ``Flatter me not at all. But 
     remark all these roughnesses, pimples, warts, and everything 
     as you see me. Otherwise I will not pay a farthing for it.'' 
     Yet this splendid story was printed long after Cromwell's 
     death and may be apocryphal, according to his biographer, 
     Anotonia Fraser. More characteristic was Winston Churchill's 
     response to an unflattering portrait by Graham Sutherland. he 
     hid it away, Dorian Gray fashion. Some years later his widow, 
     Clementine, apparently burned it.
       Presidential portraits in the White House are a study in 
     illusionist brushwork. Richard Nixon resembles a scoutmaster, 
     Lyndon Johnson everybody's kindly uncle, and John Kennedy a 
     saintly matinee idol. Interestingly, a dark and gloomy 
     portrait of Lincoln is tucked from sight in the Lincoln 
     bedroom. It was painted in 1930 by Douglas Volk, whose 
     father, Leonard, once sculpted Lincoln from life. The son's 
     haunting portrait, or a copy of it, turns up in Oliver 
     Stone's film about Nixon, who at one point talks to the 
     painting.
       Official art, in real life, rarely speaks truth to power. 
     It would indeed be refreshing, even liberating, for the 
     memorial to show F.D.R. as he was. According to Mr. Deland, 
     who uses a wheelchair himself, only two photographs are known 
     to survive showing Roosevelt in the same device. This is the 
     result of an unwritten protective rule among White House 
     photographers. Like the kings of old, and most sitting 
     politicians today, F.D.R. wanted his incorporeal self to 
     linger in posterity's memory.
                                                                    ____



                                               Anne Roosevelt,

                                                   April 29, 1996.
       Dear Messrs. Deland and Reich, Franklin Delano Roosevelt 
     looms large in the hearts and minds of many, including his 
     grandchildren who now survive. Some of us knew him 
     personally, but most of us did not. We hold him in memory, as 
     families will, as a whole person whose life touched a nation 
     and whose affection still reaches us. We want him to be 
     remembered as he was, in all his strength, courage and 
     humanity.
       It is quite clear that FDR developed his strength of 
     character, determination and discipline most distinctly as a 
     result of his having polio. He also became a more sympathetic 
     and modest person. He made a political decision to downplay 
     his disability because of his understanding of the role of 
     public perception and the norms of the day. At times he did 
     not.
       But when it came to inspiring and encouraging others who 
     were disabled--such as at his beloved Warm Springs, Georgia, 
     or with amputees and wounded soldiers in wartime hospitals--
     he freely showed himself in wheelchairs or on crutches, with 
     braces. He was in no way embarrassed by his disability. Life 
     was bigger than that.
       Were he alive today we are convinced that he would wish to 
     have the people of this country and the world understand his 
     disability. He would be comfortable, possibly eager, in light 
     of current increased understanding of disability issues, to 
     share awareness of his and other types of disabilities and 
     others. We firmly believe that more factual knowledge, 
     particularly about and from public leaders, encourages and 
     inspires those without disability to accept and support all 
     people, including people with disabilities to live full, 
     productive and joyful lives.
       FDR's commitment to leadership, to excellence and to life, 
     with a disability not well understood by many, nor accepted 
     by some, sustained him and the Nation through one of the most 
     challenging periods in American history. There is no better 
     memorial than a complete picture of who he was.
       While we wish no delay in the construction of the proposed 
     memorial we urge an adequate inclusion of all facets of the 
     man as he was, not as some think he ought to have been.
           Sincerely,
         Anne Roosevelt, on behalf of Chandler Roosevelt Lindsley, 
           Christopher D. Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt Seagraves, 
           Franklin Roosevelt III, Kate Roosevelt Whitney, Nina 
           Roosevelt Gibson, James Roosevelt, Esquire.

                          ____________________