Introduction

According to historian Patrick J. Maney, more books and articles have been written about Franklin D. Roosevelt than any other U.S. president.1 Yet until 1985, none of these works examined the president from the perspective of disability studies. That year, Hugh Gregory Gallagher published his book FDR's Splendid Deception: The Moving Story of Roosevelt's Massive Disability — and the Intense Efforts to Conceal it from the Public. Gallagher's biography looked at what was obvious to Gallagher as a polio survivor, but which had apparently escaped other biographers of our only disabled president: that from the time Roosevelt contracted polio in 1921 until he died in 1945 the president deceived his family, the public, and himself about his crippling disease. In Gallagher's assessment, it was a deception that was necessary for Roosevelt to be elected president and to lead the country through one of its most difficult times. In the end, Gallagher concluded, it was this elaborate deception that became too much for Roosevelt to bear and eventually led to his death at the age of 63.

This article looks at why Gallagher was compelled to write his book on Roosevelt, how it differed from earlier Roosevelt biographies, and how Gallagher's portrait of the president reflected Gallagher's life experience as a survivor of polio. Finally, the article examines the impact of Gallagher's seminal research on later portrayals of FDR, particularly in the popular press and in the president's depiction at the Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Hugh Gallagher and Polio

Hugh Gregory Gallagher was born in Palo Alto, California, in 1932. His father taught public administration and worked as a government consultant, and Gallagher's family moved frequently. At his parents' insistence, he enrolled in college at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but was miserable there. Against their wishes, in 1952 he left M.I.T. for Haverford College, a small liberal-arts college that better fit Gallagher's interests. There, his life was like that of most other college students of his time. "My enthusiasm for sex, for opera, for cars, politics, philosophy, art, and dance were unbounded: the world seemingly lay open before me, mine for the taking," Gallagher recalled years later in his autobiography Black Bird Fly Away: Disabled in an Able-Bodied World.2

But in the spring of that year, Gallagher became ill.3 He complained of overheating after attending a dance with his girlfriend, followed by severe chills. He came down with a cold. He developed a backache and stiff neck. The college infirmary nurse gave him some aspirin, but the pain continued. He spent that night in the infirmary consumed by pain. When he tried to get out of bed that evening to go to the bathroom, he found his legs had become "like stiff rubber." He would never walk again.

Three years later, Gallagher recalled his experience as polio took over his body in a paper he wrote for a biology class at Claremont Men's College, where he would eventually finish his university studies.4

I awoke just before dawn on what was probably the third day of fever to find my left leg in the process of paralysis. I watched the paralysis for close to an hour with fascination. It moved from my ankle up and was most un-dramatic. It just progressed. There was no loss of sensory perception — if anything my legs were hypersensitive. When I called for a nurse, I was immediately taken to the hospital where a spinal tap was taken and my illness diagnosed as polio. That day my other leg was paralyzed and the paralysis progressed up my body. The following day breathing became difficult and my arms weak. I was placed in an oxygen tent that evening. On Monday my breathing was tortured and swallowing difficult. An emergency tracheotomy was performed in my room under local anesthetic. The doctors felt there was no time for a trip to the operating room and that my system would not stand a complete anesthesia. After the operation, I was placed in a respirator. On the way to the [iron] lung I stopped breathing altogether, passed out, and I understand, began to turn black. That day, my temperature reached 106 degrees, my breathing and cough reflexes were zero, I could not swallow, I was under constant aspiration and oxygen and was completely paralyzed with the exception of my two fingers.

Gallagher was near death, and the last rites were administered. But he survived, thanks to the iron long that kept him alive for six weeks.5 Gallagher was eventually weaned from the iron lung, and he regained some muscle movement in his hands and arms. But he never considered that he would not fully recover.

Weeks later, when he confronted his doctor he was finally told the truth — that he would not walk again without assistance. The news was devastating to Gallagher. "I acknowledged to myself for the first time that everything had changed. I would never again be beautiful, innocent, secure in health, strong in body, confident in mind. Everything had changed, and I would forever be crippled."6 "The young man I had been, rich in life and youth, died that afternoon."7 In his later years, Gallagher would suffer bouts of severe depression related to his life as a polio survivor, which he vividly described in his autobiography Black Bird Fly Away.

Gallagher was transferred to Providence Hospital in Washington, D.C., where he had six operations and spent 20 additional months in treatment. He eventually went home with his parents, feeling completely helpless. He expressed his grief in a brief diary (which he wrote by attaching a pencil to his fingers with a rubber band) about his first few months as a survivor of polio. "An ability to take care of oneself by oneself is one of the greatest gifts man has. Its loss is one of man's greatest tragedies," he wrote.8 Gallagher was determined to regain as much independence as he could.

Through his father's connections, Gallagher was accepted into the polio rehabilitation program at Warm Springs, Georgia, in fall 1953. Initially he did not want to go, because Warm Springs was for "crippled people," and he did not think of himself as "crippled."9 But it was at Warm Springs that he learned two things that would change his life: first, that it was possible for someone who was a paraplegic due to polio to live independently; and second, that the training he received in independent living at Warm Springs was the result of the work of a man who would become his fascination — Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Roosevelt, Polio, and Warm Springs

At Warm Springs, the lives of Hugh Gregory Gallagher and Franklin Delano Roosevelt became intertwined. While Roosevelt had been dead for nearly ten years before Gallagher arrived at Warm Springs, Gallagher came to realize that the environment Roosevelt had created at the polio rehabilitation facility was different from that at any other medical facility of its day.10 From the time Roosevelt purchased the run-down vacation resort in 1926, it was operated by persons with polio for persons with polio. There were doctors, nurses, surgical units, and physical therapists, yet Warm Springs was intended to feel as far away from a hospital as someone in need of medical care could get. It was here that Gallagher rediscovered himself. "At Warm Springs, I found that I could have fun again. Just because I was in a wheelchair did not mean I was unable to do things, go places, exert my personality, stretch my intelligence, or use my sex appeal," Gallagher wrote in Black Bird Fly Away.11

Like Gallagher, Roosevelt's life had changed swiftly and dramatically when he contracted polio. Roosevelt was the only child of Sara Delano and James Roosevelt, and he led an idyllic — if sheltered — early life at the Roosevelts' family estate in Hyde Park, New York. Epidemiologists now believe that upper class children like Roosevelt may have been more susceptible to the polio virus because they were not exposed to it in its less lethal forms early in childhood as poor children were.12 Roosevelt attended Groton School, a private boarding school near Boston, and went on to college at Harvard in 1900.

As an adult, Roosevelt remained close to his mother. She was not happy when Franklin announced in 1904 that he was engaged to Eleanor Roosevelt, a shy and awkward fifth cousin. But the couple was married in 1905, with Eleanor accompanied down the aisle by her uncle, President Theodore Roosevelt.

Soon, Franklin Roosevelt's career began to mirror that of his more famous relative, Theodore. Like Theodore, he was elected to the New York legislature and became assistant secretary of the Navy. This became a position of some influence during World War I, and Roosevelt used it to promote himself. People began to talk about him as a possible candidate for president. In 1920, Roosevelt was nominated to run as vice president on the national Democratic ticket with James Cox. The party lost the election, but Roosevelt became nationally known through the campaign. Many voters felt that despite the electoral loss, Roosevelt had a great future.

But a personal indiscretion between 1917 and 1919 threatened not only his marriage, but his political future. He had an extramarital affair, and when his wife discovered it, she threatened to divorce him. This would have ended Roosevelt's political aspirations, so the two agreed to continue their marriage in name only. This episode added considerable stress to Roosevelt's life, as did a scandal involving homosexuality in the Navy that erupted in the summer of 1921 that Republicans blamed on Roosevelt's poor oversight. Again, it appeared that Roosevelt's dream of higher political office — particularly the presidency — was in jeopardy.

After testifying before a Congressional committee about the scandal and strongly defending his actions, Roosevelt left a hot and humid Washington in early August 1921 exhausted physically and drained emotionally to join his family at their vacation home on Campobello Island off the coast of Maine. For the Roosevelts, a vacation there was not one of relaxation, but instead focused on strenuous activities and sports. Early into the vacation, Roosevelt went for a swim with his children in the frigid Bay of Fundy, which followed the family's rigorous efforts to put out a forest fire on the island. Afterwards, Roosevelt complained of feeling chilled and tired.13 He began to run a fever, and complained that his legs felt numb. He lost control of his bowels and bladder. He thought he might have lumbago, but a doctor located on the island diagnosed a blood clot. Despite pain so intense that even bed sheets caused extreme discomfort, he allowed Eleanor to give deep massages to his legs in order to remove the imagined clot. Dr. Robert Lovett, a polio expert from Boston, evaluated Roosevelt several days later and diagnosed polio.

Concealment of the devastating impact of the disease on Roosevelt began almost immediately. Roosevelt's advisor and close friend, Louis Howe, led the efforts to deceive the press about the extensiveness of the disease. First, Howe kept the press at bay as Roosevelt was evacuated to a hospital in New York. Once there, Howe convinced the press that the attack had been relatively mild, and would have no permanent affect. The New York Times went along, carrying an article that noted Roosevelt's hospital stay, but saying that he was recovering and "will definitely not be crippled."14

Roosevelt's continued desire for a career in politics caused serious disagreement between his wife and his mother. Sara Roosevelt, like most people at the time, believed that disabled persons had no place in public, and that the most appropriate future for her son was to retire quietly to Hyde Park. Eleanor Roosevelt, along with Louis Howe, believed otherwise. Together, Eleanor and Howe worked to keep Roosevelt's name alive politically.

For Franklin Roosevelt, the time after he contracted polio was focused on rehabilitation. He refused to accept that he would not walk again. But little was known about treatments for the disease, and his recovery dragged on without much improvement. He did regain his upper body strength, but his legs showed little movement.

In October 1924, Roosevelt traveled to Warm Springs, Georgia, to investigate an old resort recommended to him by a friend, George Foster Peabody. Peabody had told Roosevelt about a young man with polio who had improved the movement in his legs significantly after swimming in the naturally warm mineral spring waters. Roosevelt, too, felt that the buoyancy of the spring water and the warm Georgia temperatures improved his mobility. A reporter from the Atlanta Constitution covered Roosevelt's stay there, and described his exercises, swimming, and leisurely drives through the Georgia countryside in an upbeat article that was widely reprinted in newspapers around the country. Soon letters from other polio survivors began to pour in to Warm Springs. Some polio patients did not bother to write, but simply arrived at the train station asking for directions to the facility.

From these humble beginnings, Warm Springs quickly evolved into a revolutionary polio rehabilitation center. Roosevelt was so committed to developing the facility that in the spring of 1926, he purchased the old resort for $200,000 — nearly two-thirds of his personal fortune.

Those with polio who came to Warm Springs found a facility unlike any other. "From the beginning, the polios had a spirit of self-help and make-do…. The oppressive hostility of the Victorian hospital routine, the pain of body bracing and muscle strengthening, had been replaced overnight by a world of sunlight and warm water, laughter, encouragement, and hope," Huge Gallagher wrote.15 And Franklin Roosevelt was involved in the hands-on directing of operations. He instructed how ramps were to be built into the old inn, designed a treatment table to be used in the pool, and developed exercises that he found to be helpful to his own recovery. Those who were treated at the facility called him "Dr. Roosevelt."

For the patients, Warm Springs offered more than physical rehabilitation. "What Roosevelt conceived at Warm Springs seems, on reflection, to be both sensible and obvious, but it was, in fact, revolutionary," Gallagher stated in his book FDR's Splendid Deception.16 "At Warm Springs, Roosevelt and his associates were busy doing rehabilitation. As a result, they discovered various principles, and these were later incorporated into a coherent theory of rehabilitation…. From the first, Roosevelt seemed to understand that rehabilitation of the polio patient was a social problem with medical aspects. It was not a medical problem with social aspects, as previous American treatment efforts have assumed," Gallagher stated.17 Innovations included equipment developed by the on-site brace shop, classes in day-to-day living skills, and social activities that brought together those with similar problems to create a sense of community.

Gallagher's response to the facility was common. Because polio was the norm rather than the exception, patients could be themselves and be accepted despite their physical limitations. Gallagher believed such interactions between the patients reconstructed their self-image, especially for young adults like himself.18 Roosevelt's presence continued to be felt there years after his death. Occasionally, Eleanor would visit Warm Springs, and in September 1953, Hugh Gallagher met the former first lady.19 Patients jammed the main building for a chance to see her, but the only patient she asked to speak to was Gallagher. She asked about the sort of treatments he was receiving, and made notes. Newsreel cameras recorded the encounter. Gallagher described the visit in a letter to his parents. "She was gracious and interested and I was captured by her charm. Flashbulbs again — Mrs. R Talks to Young Polio Patient — type of stuff. And she was off. I am very proud to have met her and I would certainly like a copy of one of those pictures. I was the only patient she met, imagine!"20 When Mrs. Roosevelt returned to New York, she contacted Gallagher's parents and reported on his progress, which came as a complete surprise to them.

Historians Disagree about Roosevelt's Disability

In 1945, Franklin Roosevelt made his last trip to Warm Springs, where he died on April 12. His death shocked the nation. Most did not realize he was gravely ill. He had served as president longer than any other person in history, and he was still relatively young at the time of his death. Documenting his historical legacy began almost immediately.

Two important early biographers significantly influenced the historical literature that would follow. Frank Freidel, called the "dean of Roosevelt biographers," began work on his biography even before Roosevelt's death. The first of his four volumes was published in 1952.21 The second biographer of note was Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., the Pulitzer prize-winning historian whose first of three volumes was published in 1957.

Both of these works offered exhaustive looks at the life of the president with one exception — the portrayal of Roosevelt's struggle with polio. By playing down the impact of the disease, these historians did much to influence how the subject was covered in later biographies. Freidel was more thorough in discussing the topic than Schlesinger, detailing Roosevelt's early days with the disease.22 But he also perpetuated a myth of Roosevelt's unnatural, almost Herculean strength of will and character that Freidel believed saw him through his illness. "There has been much speculation about the effect of the illness and suffering upon Franklin D. Roosevelt. He did demonstrate immediately a truly incredible fortitude — but he had possessed it in large measure since childhood. His own reserve, the buoyant mark with which he hid his inner feelings, was so uncracked at the time and in following years that it is hard to gauge his emotions," Freidel wrote.23 In Freidel's assessment, polio was a minor physical limitation on Roosevelt, and he suffered no depression associated with the new reality of his life. In The Ordeal, Freidel wrote, "The mental rehabilitation of Roosevelt began by the end of the first week of his illness at Campobello Island. The physical recovery could not really start until the spring of 1922, but by then he was already making a striking adjustment to his condition of life." 24

Freidel ended his second volume on Roosevelt with another common theme in Roosevelt historiography: that somehow the country saw in Roosevelt's illness a similarity to its own plight during the Great Depression, and it elected him president in 1932 because the people identified with him both personally and collectively. "Roosevelt's ordeal [with polio recovery] was over. He had not regained the use of his legs, but what was far more important he had mastered his physical handicap and made a spectacular political comeback. Within a year, the nation was crippled with the paralysis of depression. Within four, a majority of voters would turn to Roosevelt to lead the nation out of its ordeal."25 For Freidel, Roosevelt contracted polio, overcame it mentally if not completely physically, and his disability echoed the state of the nation during the Depression. These themes continued in Roosevelt biographies for decades to come.

Arthur Schlesinger Jr. was even more dismissive of the impact of polio on the president. The first volume of his three-volume work on Roosevelt entitled The Age of Roosevelt: The Crisis of the Old Order, 1919-1933, published just three years after The Ordeal by Freidel, does not list polio or infantile paralysis as a subject in the book's index. Roosevelt's contraction of the disease and his recovery from it covers just six pages. Schlesinger's assessment builds on Freidel's, including that Roosevelt's extensive time spent in physical therapy improved his outlook. "And all the time Roosevelt worked away, exercising endlessly, watching patiently and without complaint for signs of life in his dead limbs. The process both generated optimism and was lubricated by it," Schlesinger cheerfully conveyed.26 Schlesinger also believed polio was good for developing Roosevelt's character. "Polio did not transform him so much as it developed in him latencies and potentialities that gave him a new power, a new sympathy, a new self-control, a new specific gravity. Both physically and morally, he seemed less superficial and complacent, more composed, more mature…. Without transforming his intellect, illness gave it a new power and penetration. Immobility forced him to focus his energy and will," Schlesinger optimistically observed.27

Biographies by Roosevelt's wife and children did little to convey a more realistic picture of the man. In 1946, son Elliott published As He Saw It, which described how he helped his father as president while Elliot was serving in the military during World War II.28 The book made no mention of polio at all. Eleanor Roosevelt, the person closest to the president, made few mentions of his disability in her biography This I Remember, published in 1949. In one revealing passage, she did relate the way Roosevelt made little of the impact of polio, even to his own family — something Hugh Gallagher would expound upon in his book FDR's Splendid Deception years later.29 Eleanor stated, "We tried so hard to ignore any handicap he labored under that I'm sure the two youngest boys never even thought about what their father could not do; and I had taken it for granted that he himself had also come to ignore his disabilities."30 So began the family's own myth that polio was such a minor part of Roosevelt's life that it was not even evident to those closest to him. Those who worked closely with Roosevelt also made little of his disability in their memoirs. Frances Perkins's book The Roosevelt I Knew described how she had known Roosevelt since 1910, worked with him in the New York legislature and the New York Department of Labor, and eventually for him as Secretary of Labor. But despite this long professional relationship that spanned the time before he contracted polio, she devoted just nine pages to Roosevelt's disability in her book. Like others, she, too, noted how polio changed him for the better and broadened his horizons.31 Rexford Tugwell, who served in Roosevelt's "Brain Trust" and held various positions in his administration from 1931 to 1936, continued this view in his book In Search of Roosevelt. He devoted one chapter to "The Fallow Years." Again, the focus of the discussion of Roosevelt and polio was that the disease was good for Roosevelt's intellectual and empathetic development, and it was of little consequence to his life otherwise. "Everyone must accept it [his disability] as a condition of association with him; but he asked everyone to regard him as having been merely somewhat crippled," Tugwell remembered.32

In 1960, fifteen years after Roosevelt's death and after countless other biographies, a book appeared that dealt exclusively with his struggle with polio. Written by Jean Gould, an author of literary biographies, the book's title seemed to ensure yet another look at Roosevelt's successful defeat of his disability — A Good Fight: The Story of FDR's Conquest of Polio.33 Yet surprisingly, the book was one of the first to depict the reality of Roosevelt's disability. "Few people ever realized how serious Roosevelt's attack of polio was, or how many years of convalescence lasted, how varied and ingenious was the mechanical apparatus devised for exercises, braces, wheelchair ramps, car-driving adaptations; and how many other physical problems had to be solved to make a strenuous public life possible, not only on a national but on a world-wide scale," the book's jacket teased.34 Gould is thorough in the details she provided about the personal difficulties polio posed for the president.

Unfortunately, Gould concluded her book with the same myth that previous biographies had perpetuated: that Roosevelt "beat" polio. "This book has endeavored to tell the story of Franklin D. Roosevelt's personal triumph over poliomyelitis and to suggest the effect it may have had on character. The effect on his life was an important one, even though after he had conquered his handicap it seemed in later years to have been almost lost in many other conquests much more important to him and to the nation and the world at large," Gould ended her volume.35

Gould's book received little attention in later biographies by professional historians. One of its limitations is that it contained no citations to its sources, and Gould's personal papers give few clues as to her sources. Three notebooks record some of her research notes, but the sources for the information cannot be determined.36 It is unfortunate that this biography focused exclusively on the president's disability found little respect among historians. Hugh Gallagher was one of the few who drew upon Gould's research.37

It would be over twenty years before the next biographies detailing Roosevelt's disability were published: Richard Thayer Goldberg's The Making of Franklin D. Roosevelt: Triumph Over Disability (1981); and FDR's Splendid Deception by Gallagher (1985).38 Their publication coincided with an invigorated disability rights movement, and they appealed to an audience of persons awakening to the story of a man who would become one of their greatest — if conflicted — heroes.

Despite their similarities in subject matter and their closeness in publication dates, the two volumes differed significantly in the way they treated their subject. Goldberg drew his thesis from an idea first put forth by Freidel and Schlesinger: polio was good for Roosevelt, and made him the success that he became. Goldberg stated, "Disability mellowed him and contributed to his spiritual outlook. It afforded a hiatus for contemplation and regeneration. And it put him in touch with common people at Warm Springs, where he had his first full taste of rural poverty."39 Goldberg also picked up on another of Freidel's themes. "In 1932, the nation, paralyzed by fear and shattered by economic depression, required a symbol of regeneration. Roosevelt became that symbol."40

Hugh Gallagher and Roosevelt's Deception

After receiving rehabilitation care at Warm Springs in 1953 and 1954, Gallagher resumed his university studies at Claremont Men's College, receiving a bachelor's degree in 1956. He applied for a Rhodes scholarship, but the application was returned unprocessed because he did not meet the scholarship's requirement for being of "fit mind and body." Undeterred, he received a Marshall Scholarship, and studied at Oxford from 1956 to 1959, where he received both a bachelor's and master's degree with honors. He returned to Washington, D.C. that year and began his career as a legislative aid, first for Senator John Carroll of Colorado, and then for Senator E. L. Bob Bartlett of Alaska. Gallagher's first book, Advise and Obstruct: The Senate and Foreign Policy, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

But his most important work was as an aid to Senator Bartlett. Gallagher found working in Washington difficult, as most government buildings were inaccessible to wheelchairs, including the Library of Congress, where he frequently conducted research.41 After requesting a ramp to make access easier and having his request rejected, Gallagher, with Bartlett's endorsement, began to take on the larger issue of architectural barriers to the capital's public buildings. In 1968, he drafted the language for what became the Architectural Barriers Act. This was the first federal legislation that framed the rights of the disabled as a civil rights issue, an idea expanded upon in 1990 in the Americans with Disabilities Act. The 1968 law stated that any building built or remodeled with federal funding had to be accessible to everyone. Gallagher's study of Franklin Roosevelt began in 1982 when he was awarded a fellowship to the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. An early publication to come out of that research appeared in the journal Public Welfare in 1984.42 There, Gallagher stated what would become the thesis of his book released the following year: "Roosevelt obviously was crippled. Nevertheless, the nation wanted this man, with all his magnificent qualities, as its leader. So an agreement was struck: his handicap was simply denied by everyone. The generally accepted line was that FDR has had polio and was a bit lame; he had been paralyzed, but now he was recovered. He was a 'cured cripple.'"43

FDR's Splendid Deception was published early in 1985 by Dodd, Mead (and later released in two revised editions by Vandamere Press). It was the first biography to examine the president's life from the perspective of a disability studies scholar, who, unlike the hundreds of other able-bodied historians who had written about the president, was also a "polio."44 Because of Gallagher's life experience, he was able to see what others had not: that Roosevelt did not "beat" polio, but rather polio was something he struggled with every hour of every day, just as Gallagher did.

In FDR's Splendid Deception, Gallagher chronicled how Roosevelt carefully constructed an image that deceived himself, his family, and the public. "Roosevelt had never fully acknowledged his paralysis, either to others or to himself. His wife remarked once that, in fact, he had never admitted he could not walk. For years he had kept himself going with the assumption that he would regain full mobility — perhaps not immediately, but soon, perhaps not this year, but next…. FDR had defied polio; his reconstruction of himself and his person was based on his confidence that he could lick polio," Gallagher wrote.45 The national press of the day went along with the deception, and only two photographs are known to exist that show Roosevelt in his wheelchair. Ironically, newspaper writers often described Roosevelt's vitality and strength.

As Gallagher boasted about his book, "Until the appearance of this book, Roosevelt's biographers tended to treat his paralysis as an episode — with a beginning, a middle, and an end. By their accounts, Roosevelt gets polio, struggles through his rehabilitation, and then overcomes his adversity. End of chapter. The handicap is never mentioned again. It is viewed only as one of the stages through which FDR passed in preparation for the presidency," Gallagher observed.46 But Gallagher saw it differently. "The attack of polio that caused his condition was the central event of his life; his illness and lengthy rehabilitation shaped and altered his character."47

Gallagher believed he saw in Roosevelt's reaction to the disease the root of the deep depression which Gallagher thought engulfed the president in his later years. "The etiology of FDR's depression in 1944 is subtle and complex. It seems probable that the primal cause was his attack of poliomyelitis in 1921, and its resultant paralysis. Roosevelt's loss of motor power, as traumatic to the person as a double amputation, had generated anger and aggression, which he had repressed and turned inward upon himself. He had refused to deal with his feelings. He had denied them, and over the years diverted himself and the nation with his extraordinary display of leadership. During the third year of World War II, the cost of that denial finally caught up with him," Gallagher wrote.48

Gallagher's analysis of the president's mental state was the opinion of one who had struggled with the same crippling depression. Gallagher believed that Roosevelt's depression and swift decline in 1944 and 1945 were the result not only of years of denial, but perhaps a symptom of post-polio syndrome. Gallagher, who was himself beginning to suffer from post-polio syndrome at the time he was writing the book, again saw in Roosevelt what able-bodied historians had overlooked.49

But despite Gallagher's recognition of the president's elaborate deception, he did not fault him for it as some did. A letter to the editor of Public Welfare that followed Gallagher's 1984 article in that journal was typical of the response of those with disabilities who felt Roosevelt let them down. "[Gallagher] failed entirely, however, to deal with the what needs to be a central issue in any study of FDR: why FDR failed to advance the cause of an accessible society, choosing instead to ordain the false understanding that disability is a weight to be carried personally," stated Mary Johnson, editor of the Disability Rag.50 Gallagher agreed that Roosevelt's denial restricted his ability to advocate for the disabled. But Gallagher believed that such criticism judged Roosevelt by the standards of the post-disability rights movement era rather than the restrictive attitudes of the 1930s. "Given the social attitudes of the time, the deception was necessary if he was to get elected. And it made his leadership role easier to carry out. The deception was not easy — it drained FDR's energy, diverted his attention, and, emotionally, it served to enforce his isolation," Gallagher stated.51 "FDR is no role model for today's cripple…. He denied his disability, repressed his feelings, and emotionally isolated himself from others. Ultimately, the weight of this was too much, even for FDR, and it killed him," Gallagher concluded.52 During the time he was writing the Roosevelt book, Gallagher became conflicted about his feelings concerning Roosevelt. He was struggling with depression at the time, which he blamed on his own efforts to deny his disability and be a "Super Crip" like Roosevelt. While Gallagher still viewed Roosevelt as a hero for the disabled, Gallagher finally rejected the "Super Crip" model for his own life. He preferred, in his words, to live as a "human."53

Gallagher's Splendid Reception

Reviews of Gallagher's ground-breaking book were generally favorable in the popular press where it was heavily reviewed. Historical journals, if they reviewed the book at all, tended to be more critical, especially about Gallagher's lack of documentation (which is admittedly limited) and his attempt at a psychological evaluation of the president's final years. Reviews of the book began to appear in May 1985, and included major newspapers like the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Post, and Time magazine. All noted the importance of the book in presenting the president's life from the unique perspective of someone who himself had experienced the president's illness. Most noted how different Gallagher's depiction of the president was from previous biographies. Tom Teepen's review, appearing in the Atlanta Constitution, was typical. "It is impossible for historians ever again to treat FDR's polio, as almost all have done so far, as an important and dramatic, but essentially a passing, episode in his life," Teepen stated.54

Many in the disability community embraced Gallagher's work. In Mainstream: Magazine of the Able-Disabled in July 1985, Harlan Hahn looked beyond the simplicity of other reviews to the importance of the work to disability studies. It was not merely a book about Roosevelt — it was a book about the public's attitudes toward the disabled. "Gallagher makes it clear that a major force of [Roosevelt's] experience was centered on a struggle with prevalent public attitudes toward persons with disabilities."55 Noted disability historian Paul Longmore, in an essay appearing in Reviews in American History in 1987, noted that Roosevelt's deception was part of the public's requirement that handicapped persons were tolerated only so long as they "demonstrated continued cheerful striving toward normalization. This arrangement defined disability as a private physical and emotional tragedy to be managed by psychological adjustment, rather than a stigmatized social condition, and it disallowed collective protest against prejudice and discrimination."56

Other historians were less positive in their reviews of the book. Clarence Lasby's review in Presidential Studies Quarterly was typical of the criticisms — that Gallagher's thesis was based upon an assumption of the public's view towards disability in the 1930s and 1940s, and that Gallagher presented little evidence of this attitude. "Gallagher rests his thesis on the questionable assumption that a powerful nation does not want a crippled man as its president, and that it was unthinkable for the American people, at a time when the great depression had crippled their economy, to choose a cripple to lead them back to prosperity."57

But despite these criticisms, in the years that followed, many historians drew upon Gallagher's analysis in their Roosevelt biographies. Some, like Robert Ferrell in his book The Dying President: Franklin D. Roosevelt 1944-1945, refuted Gallagher's conclusion that Roosevelt's deteriorating health at the end of the war was related to polio and the elaborate deception that Roosevelt maintained throughout his life about it.58 "It is possible to draw too much from Roosevelt's bout with polio," Ferrell concluded.59 Others, like Geoffrey Ward (a survivor of polio himself) incorporated Gallagher's thesis into their studies.60 Ward, a friend of Gallagher's who wrote the foreword to Black Bird Fly Away, expanded on the story of Roosevelt's denial in A First Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt, which was published five years after Gallagher's. He cited Gallagher in his book, and noted that his discussion of the public's view of Roosevelt's disability "owes much to Hugh Gallagher."61 Ward also reviewed Gallagher's book for American Heritage when it was released in 1985. The review was generally favorable, although like other historians, he believed Gallagher made too much of Roosevelt's disability in his portrayal. While polio was important to understanding the president, Ward did not see it as the "central key."62

In recent years, historians have continued to produce major biographies of Roosevelt, and Gallagher's influence on Roosevelt historiography can be found in many of these works. David Kennedy's 1999 book Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945, is largely focused on American society during Roosevelt's presidency, and therefore his treatment of Roosevelt's disability is brief. But Kennedy does note the deception that was the focus of Gallagher's work.63 So, too does Conrad Black in Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom, published in 2003.64 Interestingly, the most recent biography, H. W. Brands's Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, does not make mention of Roosevelt's deception. Rather, Brands, like the early biographers Freidel and Schlesinger, saw his disability as a positive influence on Roosevelt's character, teaching him empathy and allowing the long-suffering American public to relate to him.65

A Memorial to Deception?

While the influence of Gallagher's book on historians can be debated, it was influential in changing the general public's view of America's only disabled president. This became evident in 1995 (the fiftieth anniversary of Roosevelt's death) when plans were revealed for the new Roosevelt Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. For decades, plans had floated about for a memorial on the Mall to honor America's longest serving president, but none had been realized. That year, a 20 year-old plan by San Francisco architect Lawrence Halprin was finally adopted for a memorial in West Potomac Park.

Designed as a park-like sequence of four outdoor galleries, the memorial would pay homage to the bread lines of the Great Depression, to Roosevelt's "fireside chats," and to his leadership during World War II. But the plans did not include any portrayal of Roosevelt in a wheelchair. Rather, they included a bas relief of Roosevelt seated, covered from neck to toe by his famous Navy cape. His loyal dog Fala was to be included, but not the wheelchair Roosevelt sat in for 24 years.

The National Organization on Disability (NOD), a Washington-based advocacy group, protested the memorial's design, basing their arguments on Gallagher's book.66 The splendid deception so carefully documented in Hugh Gallagher's work would continue in perpetuity with this memorial. Gallagher's book gained new attention in the press in their coverage of the memorial controversy. It was cited in opinion columns about the controversy in newspapers around the country, including the Washington Post and U.S.A. Today. Gallagher worked closely with the NOD to push for the inclusion of a realistic portrayal of the president in the memorial. Alan Reich, president of NOD, urged President Bill Clinton, who was the honorary chair of the FDR Memorial Commission, to depict Roosevelt as he actually was in the memorial. "President Roosevelt was, and is, a shining role model and example of the abilities of persons with disabilities. This serious omission certainly will be noted by America's 49 million citizens with disabilities, as well as many millions of other admirers — disabled and non-disabled," Reich pleaded with the president.67

Ironically, Gallagher's book became both the argument for including a disabled Roosevelt, and the argument against it. Some, including Roosevelt's grandson, David Roosevelt, expressed the belief that since Roosevelt worked so hard to conceal his disability in life, he would not have wanted such a depiction after death.68 Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer quoted Gallagher in his column in opposition to the inclusion of Roosevelt in a wheelchair in the memorial.69 Others, like granddaughter Anne Roosevelt, felt that Roosevelt would have wished to be depicted as he was to increase the world's understanding of those with disabilities.70

Gallagher himself saw the memorial as the only way to relieve Roosevelt from the burden of his life-long concealment of his disability. Gallagher also believed Roosevelt was, in his own way, an advocate for the disabled despite his unwillingness to admit his disability publicly. Gallagher cited Roosevelt's devotion to Warm Springs as a facility run by and for those with polio as an example the president's early advocacy for persons with disabilities. Gallagher argued that Warm Springs was the beginning of the Independent Living Movement, which sought to move disabled people away from dependency and towards independence.

And despite opposition from some in the disability community, Gallagher had another reason for fighting to see Roosevelt depicted as disabled: it was a chance to establish the president as a hero with a disability. "It is important for Americans with disabilities — and important as a symbol of how American society perceives its disabled people — that the memorial depicts the man as he was: tall, strong, heroic and disabled…. Don't let them steal our hero!" Gallagher protested.71

When the memorial was finally dedicated in 1997, it did not include the president in a wheelchair. But the National Organization on Disability spearheaded a fundraising drive that raised $1.65 million for an additional statue showing the president seated in a wheelchair, which was added to the memorial in January 2001. At the memorial's dedication in 1997, President Bill Clinton paid homage to Hugh Gallagher's scholarship and his fight to reclaim Roosevelt as a hero for all Americans by autographing his dedication speech and giving it to Gallagher.72

Gallagher's Legacy

Hugh Gregory Gallagher died in 2004 of complications related to post-polio syndrome. His legacy — the accurate portrayal of Franklin Delano Roosevelt at the Roosevelt Memorial — can be seen today by the estimated 25 million people who visit the National Mall in Washington each year.

In a paper he wrote in college in 1955 entitled "Our Keeper, Our Brother," Gallagher described the true poignant story of a poor child from Arkansas who came to Warm Springs so deformed that even the residents of Warm Springs found it hard to look at him.73 Because no one provided medical treatment to the boy in the early stages of the disease, the doctors and therapists at Warm Springs were unable to help him. He was sent home as he came, profoundly deformed. In telling the story, Gallagher projected his fears about society's acceptance of his own disability onto the boy. "The pity of others, the self-pity you yourself feel when your body is helpless, combine in despair; the overcoming of which is the most difficult struggle of all. This is the struggle which all polios must make, at one time or another, if they are to recover," Gallagher wrote in 1955.74 In many ways, Gallagher's research into Franklin Delano Roosevelt's efforts to hide his disability can be seen as Gallagher's way of helping the president to overcome his self-pity by setting the historical record straight. And Gallagher's fight to have an accurate depiction of the president cast in bronze at the Roosevelt Memorial was Gallagher's way of finally and forever freeing the president of his deception.