[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.
____________________