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Disability in the News.

Roosevelt Memorial to Add Wheelchair.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Bowing to the demands of activists for the disabled, the National Park Service will add a sculpture of Franklin D. Roosevelt in a wheelchair at the entrance to his popular memorial.

Roosevelt's paralysis from polio was often concealed from the public when he was president, and the memorial's lack of emphasis on his disability drew protests when it opened in May 1997.

Clinton administration officials are announcing the addition Thursday.

Activists called the decision historically accurate and a powerful inspiration for the disabled.

"We're very pleased. We're anxious to get it there,'' Jim Dickson, director of community affairs of the National Organization on Disability, which led the campaign for the sculpture, said Wednesday. "We need this statue to tell all the children with disabilities and all their parents that anything is possible.''

Lawrence Halprin, who designed the Roosevelt Memorial, said he is comfortable the new sculpture will blend well with the memorial spread over a 7.5-acre site between the Potomac River and the rim of the Tidal Basin. It has four open "rooms'' that tell the story of his four terms in office and the new sculpture will serve as a prologue, Halprin said.

"I'm extremely pleased since the assignment was that it would follow all the characteristics and qualities of the existing memorial, enhance it rather than look like an addition,'' said Halprin, a California landscape architect.

The memorial's original design has few obvious signs of FDR's disability, although the centerpiece sculpture portrays him seated, his Scottish terrier Fala at his side, in the wheeled straight chair in which he normally was pictured rather than a standard wheelchair.

"This is what we have been demanding,'' said Justin Dart, a veteran activist for the disabled and a key mover behind the Americans with Disabilities Act. ``This is what we feel will communicate the reality of FDR's life. He did, in reality, lead this nation from a wheelchair, every day for three and a fraction terms.''

Dart said Roosevelt felt he had to conceal his disability to survive politically.

``FDR didn't think it was politically practical,'' Dart said. ``Our world is full of primitive assumptions and stereotypes.''

Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, chief sponsor for the disabilities act, said it was ``a day of triumph for people with disabilities.''

David Roosevelt, grandson of the former president, was initially opposed to the addition and remains skeptical that "a memorial like this should be used to make a social statement.''

But Roosevelt, chief executive of a charitable foundation in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, recalled that his grandmother, first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, talking about a sculpture of her husband planned in England, noted that he shouldn't be shown as disabled because that's not what her husband would have wanted.

The addition of the sculpture in a wheelchair should not detract from the design of the memorial, said Hugh Gregory Gallagher, a Roosevelt biographer and member of a committee assigned to determine where and how the president could be depicted as disabled.

"It will be at the entranceway, human-scale and freestanding, a statue of a person who is paralyzed and uses a wheelchair,'' said Gallagher, author of the book about his disability, "FDR's Splendid Deception.'' "This was just an aspect of his life. Disabled people will be able to roll up beside it and have their picture taken. Parents can tell their children 'This guy did it, and you'll be able to do it, too.'''

Los Angeles sculptor Robert Graham said his bronze will depict FDR before he was president. "What's required is a sense of optimism,'' Graham said, ``something that shows this man was not affected by his disability and went on to function as a great president despite his disability.''

Visitors to the memorial Wednesday had a mixed reaction to the news.

"If they wanted a memorial to the physically impaired, then they should build one,'' said Virginia Simpkins, 53, of Santa Rosa, Calif. "I don't think Roosevelt was a spokesman for the physically impaired.''

But Mike Clayton, a 58-year-old from Haw River, N.C. said he thinks the wheelchair portrayal of FDR is correct. Everyone in our generation, we all know that he was in a wheelchair,'' Clayton said. "I'm sure that the young people know it, too.''  
 

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