Prologue

Prologue

Photo: NPS / Kelsey Graczyk

Quick Facts

Amenities

4 listed

Audio Description, Braille, Historical/Interpretive Information/Exhibits, Tactile Exhibit

FDR tried to keep his use of a wheelchair from the public. Disability rights advocates, including the National Organization on Disability, successfully lobbied President Bill Clinton and Congress to add this explicit portrayal in 2001. The new statue depicted FDR as his family and close associates saw him. Why do you think the original designers left out a statue like this one? 

A Carefully Crafted Image

The original 1997 memorial barely hinted at Franklin Roosevelt's paralyzed legs- much as FDR had during his Presidency. Roosevelt's battle with polio was not a secret. The president worried that if people knew he was unable to walk, his opponents could portray him as too weak for office. Years before live video, the press agreed not to report on FDR using a wheelchair or aides carrying the president. 

"Franklin's illness... gave him strength and courage he had not had before. He had to think out the fundamentals of living and learn the greatest of all lessons- infinite patience and never ending persistence." - Eleanor Roosevelt (Below the quote is the quote in braille symbols, but at a size too large to be read by those who can read braille.)

These hand sketches (right) appear on the back of the FDR statue in the Prologue. FDR believed a standard 1920s wheelchair was too bulky, so he designed his own. He oversaw the construction of his wheelchair, created by adding wheels to a kitchen chair. 

Inscriptions:

Arriving at the west end of the Franklin Delano Memorial from West Basin Drive, one enters the paved entrance plaza. Zelcova trees shade the plaza. Straight ahead is a wall of large stone blocks stacked four rows high. Three lines of inscription on the wall reads:

Franklin Delano Roosevelt
President Of The United States
1933 – 1945

There is an inscription, Prolouge, on the pavement in front of FDR.