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Since I grew up in a hard-core Republican household, with parents who had lived through the Great Depression and World War II under the sometimes heavy hand of the federal government and President Franklin D. Roosevelt, I have a fair idea of what a substantial portion of the American population would like to see in a memorial to FDR.
However, this is a family newspaper, which makes it impossible to quote accurately any of my father's comments about FDR, and besides, that's not the issue in the current controversy about how Roosevelt should be presented in Washington.
Franklin Roosevelt suffered an attack of poliomyelitis in 1921, when he was 39 years old. He was never able to walk on his own after that. Generally he got around in a wheelchair, but he didn't want the public to see that -- only two photographs are known of him in a wheelchair.
When he had to make a standing entrance, he locked his leg braces and, with a man holding him on each side, he moved slowly and painfully to the lectern, which he gripped fervently for the duration.
Disability-rights advocates say that the FDR memorial
should show FDR in a wheelchair. Their argument, in brief,
is that Hey, one of our people lived a bold and
productive life, and people should know that.
That seems fair, but what of smokers, currently falling ever deeper into pariah status?
FDR hid the wheelchair, but he did not try to conceal this flaw -- there are hundreds of pictures of him with a jaunty cigarette holder clenched in his toothy smile as a Camel straight smolders.
Shouldn't nicotine addicts also be able to point to the
monument and say Hey, one of our people lived a bold and
productive life, and people should know that
?
(Certain modern purifiers now argue that had FDR known what we know today, he wouldn't have smoked, so therefore it's fine to revise him accordingly. That's like saying that if Thomas Jefferson had been alive today, he wouldn't have owned slaves -- true, but meaningless.)
And now that the military court-martial of an accused adulteress has become a national issue, might not some people reasonably want a statue that depicts FDR cavorting with Lucy Mercer?
Then they could note that despite his lapses from martial and marital decorum, FDR still served as the victorious commander-in-chief of the largest military force in American history.
The more I think about this, the more it seems that the best course might be a much bigger FDR memorial than is currently planned, with many entrances to its various segments.
Aside from the philandering, smoking and wheelchair
sections, there could be a Roosevelt haters' room, laced
with pungent quotes from Westbrook Pegler and H.L. Mencken
(Nothing but hooey will issue from the Hon. Mr.
Roosevelt for the balance of the campaign. He will make
vague and gaudy promises in plenty ...
)
A special calumny section must be devoted to Eleanor, the most-despised First Lady in American history.
Others might prefer the populist portion of the memorial, where we might hear presidential statements of a nature apparently forbidden in these enlightened times:
Business and finance are unanimous in their hate for
me -- and I welcome their hatred.
Remember always that all of us, and you and I
especially, are descended from immigrants and
revolutionists.
No business which depends for existence by paying
less than living wages to its workers has any right to
continue in this country.
We have earned the hatred of entrenched
greed.
Come to think of it, though, an FDR memorial big enough to offer all aspects of this complex man who was president longer than any other American would be so big as to subsume the National Mall in Washington.
So perhaps the best memorial to FDR would be a small sign with an inscription found in St. Paul's Cathedral in London. It, like many public edifices built after the Great Fire of 1666, was designed by astronomer and architect Christopher Wren, who is buried there. On a nearby wall are the Latin words: Lector, si monumentu requiris, circumspice.
Or, in English, If you seek a monument, look
around.
Modern Washington, the center of the modern
federal government is what FDR left us, for better and for
worse. Why bother trying to contain it in a memorial?
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