Warm Springs 3

On the road:  Franklin D. Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945.  He left a rich and complex legacy which still influences the political, economic, and social life of the United States nearly 70 years later.

For example, economists debate the wisdom of the controls the Roosevelt Administration imposed on U.S. banks and Wall Street.  Yet it was only when those controls were removed that the financial services industry ran amok and triggered the Great Recession.  Again, conservatives call Social Security a "ponzi scheme," but for tens of millions of Americans, it is their primary, and often their only, source of retirement income.  And millions of Americans use our national forests for recreation without realizing that it was FDR who ensured that those forests exist.

On April 12 FDR was enjoying a normal day at The Little White House at Warm Springs, posing for a portrait, working on a speech, and anticipating a barbecue with neighbors later in the day.  When the President was taken ill, the artist put away her portrait and left Warm Springs.  This work of art remains unfinished today and is on display in the Little White House Museum.

The unfinished water color portrait.

One of the President's most enduring contributions is all around me here in northern Michigan — our national forests.  Less than a week after his inauguration in 1933, Roosevelt began work on a program to create jobs for young men in need.  His idea was to send the unemployed out of America's cities into America's forests.  There they would plant trees and make infrastructure improvements that Americans would use and enjoy for generations to come.  He called this program the CCC — the Civilian Conservation Corps.

A CCC t-shirt for sale in the Museum's Gift Shop.

FDR wanted this program to employ a quarter million young men.  The New York Times declared that such a proposal had little chance of adoption by Congress; and if it did become law, the target population would show little or no interest.  The Times was wrong.  Congress approved the CCC, and its 250,000-person goal was met within six months.  It went on to become one of the most successful and widely respected New Deal programs.

The work of the CCC endures to our own time.  For instance, earlier during this trip I visited Mammoth Cave where the pathways through the cavern were built by CCC crews in the 1930s.  Here in Michigan, on May 2, 1933, a group of 200 men from Detroit set up camp in the Hiawatha National Forest west of Sault Ste. Marie.  Organized as Company 667, these CCC men were the vanguard of 100,000 Michiganders who would plant and build throughout the state, and especially in northern Michigan.  The lush forests we enjoy today were planted primarily by these hard-working, enthusiastic young men who heard and responded to FDR's call.

At a personal level, it was Warm Springs' warm springs which set the stage for one of FDR's most enduring accomplishments.  (For easier reading, click on the photos to enlarge.)

It was the warm springs which originally brought FDR
to Warm Springs, GA.

An explanation of how the springs work...

...and a visual aid on the same subject.

In the 19th century Warm Springs became a vacation spa site because of its 90-degree F. spring water.  However, by the early 20th century its day as a vacation watering hole was passing.  When, in the 1920s, the spring water proved useful in physical rehabilitation of victims of polio and other crippling diseases, a new chapter opened in the town's history.  Roosevelt bought land, including the springs, and soon established a program of hydrotherapy for paralytics.  The Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute continues to provide a broad range of rehabilitation services for people from all over the U.S.

The spring-fed swimming pools are a vivid symbol of Roosevelt's commitment to this work, which he himself had found beneficial.  After years of neglect these pools have been rescued by the State of Georgia, which now maintains them as part of The Little White House historic site.

For thousands of polio victims, the iron lung was symbolic
of their captivity to an illness.

Roosevelt's vision was very different.  He believed that with
therapy and exercise, many paralyzed children and adults
could lead active, productive lives.

The pools remain in fairly good repair, although the glass-
enclosure, which allowed one pool to be used all year,
has been removed.

The warm springs still flow.  Visitors can walk down into
one of the pools and test the waters!

The Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute is headquartered uphill from the original pools.  Its modern facilities make these pools unnecessary.  However, twice each year — on Memorial Day and Labor Day Weekends — the State of Georgia fills the pools and invites the public to use them just as FDR and thousands of friends did in the 1930s and 1940s.

For information on The Little White House at Warm Springs, click here.

For information on the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute, click here. •••