What Was FDR’s Biggest Disability?

Re “New View of FDR Includes Disability,” April 23: The idea that there is a need to educate the public about Franklin Roosevelt’s paralysis is particularly lame. Since I was a boy in grammar school, we were taught about the great man’s handicap. Every book I’ve read about FDR describes in detail his struggle to overcome it. PBS documentaries plainly discuss it, as well as his efforts to appear “normal.” Roosevelt established the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, which later became known as the March of Dimes. (There’s a reason for his profile on our dime.)

When I visited the Roosevelt home in Hyde Park, his wheelchair was on display and our guide described how his lack of mobility compounded his fear of fire. There’s been a Broadway show and movie (“Sunrise at Campobello”) about Roosevelt’s efforts to overcome the effects of polio. Outing our 32nd president as a “disabled man” is as revealing as disclosing that the new pope is Catholic.

Walter Hall

North Hollywood

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Your article might have noted that Roosevelt’s greatest disability while president was not his paraplegia but his blindness to his moral responsibilities in the face of the massacre of the European Jews then occurring on his watch.

Indeed, “FDR: A Presidency Revealed,” last week’s compelling History Channel production mentioned in your article, inadvertently underscored our own continuing blind spots: This four-hour documentary barely touched on what is surely the largest failing of the Roosevelt president -- and of America during World War II.

Peter Sauvage

Los Angeles