[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 37, Number 2 (Monday, January 15, 2001)]
[Pages 70-72]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks on the Unveiling of a Statue at the Franklin D. Roosevelt 
Memorial

January 10, 2001

    The President. Calm down.
    Audience members. Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!
    The President. You still have to do what I ask for 9 more days. Calm 
down. [Laughter]
    Secretary Herman, thank you for your eloquence and your passion on 
this issue. I thank all the members of the administration who are here: 
Secretary Babbitt, thank you; Secretary Shalala; Secretary Slater; SBA 
Director Alvarez; Janice Lachance. I thank the other members who are 
here who supported this in every way.
    Thank you, Max Cleland, for the power of your example and the 
largeness of your heart. Thank you, Tom Harkin. Every day you redeem the 
promise of your brother's life and your love for him in what you have 
done. Thank you, Senator Levin and Congressman Levin; Congressman Eliot 
Engel. I like your beard. [Laughter] I had a note that said, Eliot Engel 
was here, and I thought instead it was Fidel Castro for a moment. 
[Laughter] But you look very good.
    Thank you, Jim Langevin, for running for Congress and for winning. 
Ken Apfel, our Social Security Administrator, is here. Thank you. Thank 
you, Justin Dart, for seeding the crowd with signs. I think you must 
have something to do--[inaudible].
    I want to thank all the donors, and a special word of appreciation 
to two folks who did a lot of our work--one who has been acknowledged--
thank you, Jonathan Young; thank you, Bill White. Thank you very much. 
You guys have been great. Thank you. And I, too, want to thank Larry 
Halprin and Bob Graham.
    This whole memorial has exceeded my wildest dreams for it. It gives 
you a feel that is completely different from any other memorial. It is 
grand and beautiful, all right, but it is so accessible, in a way that I 
think would have pleased President Roosevelt and Mrs. Roosevelt. And of 
course, this last addition is even more than the icing on the cake. But 
I know that for Larry and for Bob this has been a labor of love and 
honor. And we honor them for what they have done. Thank you very much.
    I would like to also say to all of you that, as a person who has 
loved the history of my country and tried to learn more about it every 
day, it would have been under any circumstances an honor in my life to 
become friends with Jim Roosevelt and his wife, Anne--and Ann. But what 
I want you to know is they are the true heirs of their ancestors because 
they are exceptional and wonderful people, and I'm very glad to be here 
with them.
    Last Saturday marked the 60th anniversary of President Roosevelt's 
speech on the four freedoms. It is fitting to remember it here

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today, for this is the story of freedom in this memorial: Freedom's 
steady advance across the land, from the school room to the voting booth 
to the corridors of power; freedom's open arms embracing the tired, the 
poor, the huddled masses from every shore; freedom's rising tide across 
the globe as more people and more places secure the blessings of 
liberty; and freedom's march for people with disabilities here at home 
and around the world.
    This is a monument to freedom, the power of every man and woman to 
transcend circumstance, to laugh in the face of fate, to make the most 
of what God has given. This is a statue of freedom. I, too, am glad that 
the statue is built at a scale not larger than life but lifelike. Not 
raised on a pedestal but available, touchable, for people who are in 
wheelchairs and people who cannot see. The power of the statue is in its 
immediacy, and in its reminder to all who touch, all who see, all who 
walk or wheel around, that they, too, are free, but every person must 
claim freedom.
    In April of 1997, when I asked for a depiction of FDR's disability 
here at the memorial, I, like every other American who had paid 
attention, knew that he went to some length to hide his disability on 
almost all occasions. But he lived in a different time, when people 
thought being disabled was being unable, though he proved them wrong 
every day. He was a canny fellow, and he didn't want to risk any vote 
loss by letting people see him in a wheelchair. [Laughter]
    Of the more than 10,000 photos in his archives, only four show him 
as he is depicted in this magnificent statue today. He knew the impact 
of the image, and he knew, seen wrong in those days, it could have ended 
his political life. But he also knew he had an obligation to use it when 
appropriate. On rare occasion, he did so to great effect. His speech 
writer Sam Rosenman said he could never forget, as he put it, ``The look 
of courage and faith and self-reliance and affection in the faces of 
disabled Americans who were given the privilege of seeing FDR struggle 
with his own disability and the joy of watching him overcome it.''
    For example, in the summer of 1944 President Roosevelt spent an 
afternoon at a naval hospital in Hawaii. The men there had been 
seriously wounded, and many had lost limbs in the war. He insisted on 
wheeling himself into their wards. He wanted to show them that he, the 
President of the United States, could not walk any better than they, but 
he could still show courage and hope and inner strength.
    He said that returning Americans with disabilities to active and 
productive lives was a great objective for the Nation, one of the 
greatest causes of humanity. It's hard to believe that that was a very 
unusual statement to make back then.
    It was one of the basic tenets of the New Deal, the inherent worth 
of all Americans, our shared responsibility to empower them. That is 
what we have sought to do here for 8 years, to avoid any barrier that 
would keep the potential of any American from being fully tapped.
    We have tried to reward work and give people the support they need 
to live their lives in freedom. Even in the last days of the 
administration, we are still working on efforts to increase employment 
of Americans with disabilities, to provide alternatives to institutions, 
and we're going out with a report on the progress we've made and what we 
still have to do.
    We must always remember that in the end, the story of America is the 
story of freedom and interdependence. The crowd that started us off 
pledged their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor to forming a 
more perfect Union. That's what they said.
    What does that mean? It means that people can never fulfill their 
own lives completely unless they're working with their neighbors to help 
them fulfill theirs. And so we have to constantly work to push back the 
frontiers of our imagination, to advance the cause of both freedom and 
community--that interdependence which makes life richer. That means we 
have to encourage each other along the way, as well.
    President Roosevelt once told a little girl who, like him, had been 
stricken with polio, that she must keep up the splendid fight. For 
someone else who has not suffered in that way, to say it is splendid, 
for Max Cleland to labor all those years against his horrible war 
injuries to become a great Member of

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the United States Senate, seems almost out of place. But the truth is we 
have to learn to talk to each other that way.
    The thing I like about the disability movement today is, it has 
moved beyond trying to get the rest of us to do the right thing out of 
compassion, doing the right thing because it's the right thing and the 
only sensible thing to do.
    I want you all to go out when you leave here not just to look at the 
statue but to read--in letters or Braille--the quote behind the statue 
by Eleanor Roosevelt, who pointed out that before he was stricken with 
polio, President Roosevelt had never been forced to become a truly great 
man, had never been forced to develop those habits of infinite patience 
and persistence without which life cannot be fully lived. And I want you 
to think about that.
    The reason this is a story of freedom is that what matters most in 
life is the spirit and the journey of the spirit. And we lug along that 
journey whatever body God gives us and whatever happens to it along the 
way and whatever mind we were born with. But a clever mind and a 
beautiful body can themselves be disabilities on the spirit journey.
    And so we celebrate freedom and dignity for incredibly brave people 
whose lives were all embodied by that incredibly brave man, whose 
disability made him more free for his spirit to soar and his Nation to 
survive and prosper.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at noon. In his remarks, he referred to Justin 
Dart, former Chair, President's Committee on Employment of People With 
Disabilities; Representative Jim Langevin, newly elected to Rhode 
Island's Second Congressional District; event organizer Jonathan Young; 
Bill White, White House Office of Political Liaison for Disability 
Outreach; landscape architect Lawrence Halprin; sculptor Robert Graham; 
FDR's grandson James Roosevelt, and his wife, Anne; and FDR's 
granddaughter Ann Roosevelt.