New Sculpture of FDR to Feature Wheelchair

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.

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.”

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 to announce the addition today.

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 that 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, 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.