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Defying Odds: FDR's Impact on Disability Advocacy · When Life Gives You Lemons

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome to our podcast with Life Gives you Lungs.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: I'm Kevin Henry and my partner in crime, and life is Pommy Henry.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: I have a rare disease known as spinal cell viral ataxia, which is a neuromuscular disease.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: This has left me with mobility challenges, with a speech impediment and noise-induced anxiety.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: Living with these disabilities for over 20 years, we have developed helpful hints and life lessons that we would like to share with you.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: That has made our life easier and possible in some cases.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: We consider ourselves disability advocates and intend to educate ourselves and you about other disabilities and issues, and also talk about things we find interesting and frequently encounter when we're out and about.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: Hi everybody.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: It's Kevin.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: I want to remind you that we're still on break between we're after season two now, so what we're after season 2 now.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: So what we're doing is broadcasting some of our first season 1 episodes during that pause before season 3 starts.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: This one concerns FDR in season 1.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: You'll probably notice I've just labeled the episodes as episode one, two and so forth.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: This time I'm actually going to give them an episode title I'll see you next season, bye title I'll see you next season, bye.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: Well, hello there, you have reached the when Life Gives you Lemons podcast.
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: My name is Palmy.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: My name is Kevin.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: Episode two Handicapped is not a new thing, unless it's happening to you.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: So we're going to talk about prominent people who have been noted to be handicapped in the past, and the first one we're talking about is FDR Kevin.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: FDR is kind of controversial, so it should be noted that we're not really discussing politics.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: He did bad things and he did good things.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: We're talking about how he overcame his handicap to accomplish what he did.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: Okay, he was born in 1882, passed away while in office 1945.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: He was commonly known as FDR, which stands for Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: He was actually the cousin to Teddy Roosevelt.
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: And he was diagnosed with polio myelothysy and underwent years of therapy, including hydrotherapy, at the Warm Springs in Georgia.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: Roosevelt remained paralyzed from the waist down and relied on a wheelchair and leg braces for mobility, which he took effects to conceal in public.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: Let's hear a little more about FDR, kevin.
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: Do you have some more details?
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he pretty much patterned his political career after that of his cousin, right down to running for offices he had on his way to the presidency.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: At one point he was secretary of the Navy.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: Another point he was elected Governor of New.
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: York.
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: Now that was twice.
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: He was elected twice for that.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: That was in the 20s and 30s when he moved into government Governor's Mansion in Albany.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: He had the governor's mansion made handicapped accessible with ramps and doorways.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: His wheelchair would fit through, also an elevator he also had an elevator.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: There was a time he wore steel-like braces and he would kind of stiff-leggedly approach a podium and then kind of use that to prop himself up and lean on In the public eye.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: He wasn't displaying his disability, wasn't displaying his disability.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: He kind of kept that out of the public eye, although it was more or less no one secret to the media that covered his career.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: They would respect his privacy and to this day there are only three known photographs of FDR in a wheelchair.
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: Show here a quote from journalist John Guthner, who reported that in the 1930s he often met people in Europe, including world leaders, who were unaware of Roosevelt's paralysis.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: David Brinkley, who was a young White House reporter in World War II, stated that the Secret Service actively interfered with photographers who tried to take photos of Roosevelt in a wheelchair or being moved by others.
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: The Secret Service commonly destroyed photographs they caught being taken in this manner.
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: However, there are occasional exceptions, like the three that you quoted.
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: This manner.
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: however, there are occasional exceptions, like the three that you quoted.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: Mr Hugh Gallagher, a disability advocate, theorized that Roosevelt was desperate to appear able-bodied.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: Back then, if you were not considered able-bodied, you pretty much suffered for it.
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: Well, they just thought you weren't able to do the job that they were electing you for, so he was desperate for them to be elected.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: So it was part of his strategy campaign strategy part of his strategy campaign strategy and that pretty much pertained to all of his political offices, not just the presidency.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: As you all know, in the past it's been the practice that a politician will work his way through several offices before announcing candidacy for the president.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: Even though his party knew he was disabled, he had shown in the past he's able to do well in politics.
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: Well, he was thought of as a fighter and, better yet, as an underdog, and not a man to pity, not a man to envy, but a man to cheer for.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: The actual diagnosis for him has come into question in modern times because the polio related diagnosis that he had received at the time was, like, very limited in scope, because polio was a new drug on everybody's, new disease on everyone's mind and they just assumed that's what it was.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: It was somehow affecting his mobility.
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: But what do they think?
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: It is now Kev.
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: In 2003,.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: Modern scientists and doctors put their heads together and concluded in a study published by Armand Goldman.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: They used three different methods that are part of the diagnosis process that is undergone now Observation, basically pattern recognition, reconstructing the effects of the disease, and one that I'm not sure of the word how to pronounce this or what it entails it's Baylesian analysis.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: And the conclusion was Guillain-Barre syndrome, gbs, was more probable than his polio Diagnosis Diagnosis, in their opinion.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: Now, you have to bear in mind that they didn't have a patient to examine.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: They're just reading about his lifestyle, reviewing some of the tests that doctors had done when he was alive and possibly some of the family records as well.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: There's Prangle and Delano Roosevelt Memorial and as part of that he's sitting in a wheelchair.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: He's the only public official I know in a wheelchair in a statue that's in Washington DC, if you care to see it.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: The wheelchair statue was not originally included in the memorial.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: It was added in January 2001 because of the concerns of disability rights advocates and fundraising by the National Organization on Disability.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: Fundraising by the National Organization on Disability.
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: So Franklin D Roosevelt was elected three times as president of the United States.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: I believe that was four times.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: Oh, four times you're right.
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: And he remained the president until his death.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: Basically he died in office because basically he worked himself to death.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: Doctors kept trying to tell him to take things more easily than he had been, but with the war going on and the rigors of the job, he just never found the ability to do that.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: He felt it was his job to govern and he didn't hold back on that.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: Fdr remained the leader of America until his death in 1945, when his vice president, harry Truman, was assumed the presidency upon his demise.
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: He did lots of good things for the country was very strong during the World War II, but there are some actions that are kind of questionable in his um history.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: Um one was the um removing the um asian people from their homes and into what are they called they called them internment camps.
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: Internment camps, yeah, but basically they are concentration camps.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: That term was developed in the 1800s.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: It is simply depicting a camp that is filled with the concentration of people that you desire to be in one place, as opposed to the word concentration camp.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: When Nazi Germany was rounding up people, putting them in death camps, they made the international distinction between concentration camps, which you know.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: If you Get down to brass tacks, that could be a prison, it could be a medical facility, it could be anywhere.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: You're capturing people who are confined not of their own free will.
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: He also earned a Nobel Peace Prize.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: It was his work selling a war between the Russians and the Japanese.
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: In 1906, that was prior to him being the president.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: And he was the first American to win a Nobel Prize.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: He was the 32nd president, did four terms, like you said, died in office, but he made it very obvious throughout his whole life to try to appear able-bodied versus handicapped.
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: But in the long run he did very, quite a few things for the handicapped to help with, with handicap being handicapped.
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: One of the things was he initiated the ADA.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: The Americans with Disabilities Act.
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: And what did that?
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: Can you explain a little bit about that, kevin?
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: saying that disabled people with impairments have the right to participate in society in public without being discriminated against.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: It goes on.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: It mentions examples, but they're not hard and fast definitions of disabilities, so none are mentioned, more than others.
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: The main point of it was that in prior, individuals who had experienced discrimination on the base of being disabled had often had no legal recourse to aggress any discretions.
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: So this allowed it was a law.
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: It allowed people to have some way to fight against the discrimination.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, just FYI, I did reach out to a lawyer's office that specializes in disability-related cases.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: I'm still waiting to hear back from them.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: It's been several weeks and I really don't think they're going to contact me.
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: There were some interesting things.
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: When Kevin actually read the entire act, how many pages was it?
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: Kev.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: It was actually.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: If you go to wwwadaorg, you can read this stuff for yourself, but I digress here it wasn't like pages printed out.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: It was a website.
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: Oh, okay.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: There were like four or five tabs.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: They broke down different areas and such, so I can't really tell you how many pages it was.
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: It was a lot.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: There was a lot of information there, including a lot of information I hadn't really considered or expected.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: Can you give us an example?
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, one of those you're considered disabled under the ADA if you're a cancer survivor but you're genetically predisposed to have cancer, so like if you're genetically predisposed to have breast cancer and have survived breast cancer that cancer can't come back at any time.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: So they keep you as a, they don't keep you there, categorize you as a disabled person because that illness may come back and you may have the same disabilities you had before so, even though you've survived, you're still considered handicapped Correct and have the ADA protection against it.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: However, let's be clear about this thing.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: There's things that your employer cannot do.
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: They cannot hire or fire you based on your disabled status, they cannot pay you less than your coworkers, et cetera, et cetera.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: Now, aside from handicapped spaces, where they give clear dimensions and basically say states will have their own system for providing permits for them.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: So, for example, my state is going to be different than another state theoretically, than another state theoretically, but it's up to the state and local government to enforce those laws as if they were their own state's laws.
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: So, basically, there might be some little changes in between, but the basic thought of the law is followed through.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: Well, true, that's also the way innovation comes around here.
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: If somebody sees a problem in these things either differently or you know, can I say better than everybody else, based on the needs of their community, I will wager.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: There are some parts of the country Appalachia comes to mind where they have a lot of coal miners that have spent their lives under hazardous conditions and they are limited by disabilities that we will never see.
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: Being that we work above the ground, they have things like a black lung.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: They had to overcome A black lung they had to overcome.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: There are other professions as well that are hazardous that way, but usually they don't spend all day.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: Every day under those conditions Makes sense In the present day.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: Coal should be declining as an industry, so that probably means there are fewer people mining coal, so those specific disabilities may have a lesser impact on communities in those areas.
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: But then you have others where they go to nuclear and then you got side effects from that too.
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: Like you said, it just allows the ADA to advance based on what is the need of the day or the need of the area based on what is the need of the day or the need of the area.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the ADA was constructed as a living document that can be updated as needed.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: Obviously, medical conditions such as polio are not as great of a concern nowadays as they were in the 30s and 40s, and even on to the 50s.
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I also saw in the research you were doing that FDR established the March of Dimes, and that is.
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: I didn't know it, but the dime was chosen to honor Roosevelt after his death because of that, because he was associated with the March of Dimes.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's really a cool idea Because, like other presidents that have been on currency, just been well-known and put on currency, he was put on that dime for a reason, so I thought that was kind of cool.
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and back in his day it was focused on rehabilitation of the victims of the polio.
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: And nowadays, since that is not an issue that we work with currently, I'm sure there are some polio out there, but because we have the polio vaccine now.
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: The March of Dimes focuses on preventing premature births and congenitive disabilities and infant mortality.
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: One of the things that Roosevelt accomplished is he opened the door for other people with disabilities.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: For example, Governor Abbott of Texas is in a wheelchair.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: He was injured in 1984 as he was in a campaign for, I believe, the state attorney general, and it injured his spinal cord, so basically, he lost mobility from the waist down.
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: That was because a tree fell on him right.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: You know, it's a totally different environment that he's undergone in his political career than FDR did.
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: FDR tended to avoid being vulnerable and disabled because at the time that was the viewpoint of the public concerning disabled people, whereas today, because of accomplishments made by people, uh fdr public figures like fdr, governor abbott is very open about his disability well, I know there's also quite a few um military veterans that um have lost limbs and and stuff like that that are part of congress in different states well, actually, um, when they entered into the longer wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, losing a limb or having an impairment in a limb was not automatically disqualifying you from military service, really disqualifying you for military service.
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: Really.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: You would see some people go on in their military careers, perhaps not in the jobs they had when they suffered the injury.
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: But they would go on until they retired a normal career.
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: That's excellent.
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: That's a great example of how advanced the handicap life has become due to things like the ADA and March of Dimes and all the other things that we've mentioned here.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if you have problems with your job concerning your disability, you should contact a lawyer and find out what your employer may or may not have done in the terms of violating your rights granted to you under the Disability Act.
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: You can contact the ADA team for help with that.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: They can give you some advice on lawyers to speak to and have a general understanding to speak to and have a general understanding of what is not permissible as far as disabilities in the workplace.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: So bottom line if you think you're being discriminated against, you have avenues out there to talk to people and find out what your situation may lead you towards.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: A civil zoo perhaps the ADA office itself does not go after individual employers go after individual employers.
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: but they concentrate on laws in government, making sure that laws are not singling out disabled people and trying to correct those if they are, and trying to correct those if they are.
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: But they do, in fact, work with a team of lawyers who will refer you to a lawyer that will help you with civil matters.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: If it's not a law, an unjust law, they don't deal with it.
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: It's a civil matter and they will try to get you in contact with the lawyer that can handle it civilly.
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: So to conclude here, kevin, it looks like things have really advanced in the Department of Handicapped Accessibility.
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: I mean, we always have places to improve, but we definitely are a lot better off than we were in FDR's time.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: One thing that we should reexamine I think in the ADA is there are so many buildings that are grandfathered in.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: The bottom line is if it's a situation where they don't have to apply.
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: This goes for businesses and particularly I don't want to single out an industry, but the hotel industry a lot of the buildings you see, airbnbs or just older construction that didn't happen after the ADA, so they're grandfathered in automatically and they they should reexamine make it perhaps a little bit more difficult for a public or a agency or a business to advertise how handicapped accessible they are when there is absolutely nothing handicapped accessible about it.
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: Great and that will lead to more and more advancements.
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: But compared to what it was in FDR's time, I'm sure it's a lot better off than we're a lot better off than he was.
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: Oh, no doubt better off than we're, a lot better off than he was, oh, no doubt.
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: We even went to the barbie movie the other night and, lo and behold, in the credits we realized that there was a handicapped barbie.
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: But that is for future episodes.
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: We'll dive into the handicapped barbie issues.
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: Issue yeah, this isn't really a spoiler, but it was really cool that during the movie they talked about Barbie failed models.
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: If you will, Discontinues.
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah discontinues?
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I just assumed it was, you know, but it was made up to fit the storyline.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: But then during the credits they actually produced working bottles of those Barbies, explaining why they didn't do well, et cetera.
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that was where we saw the handicapped Barbie.
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: So this is when Life Gives you Lemons, and you can find us at our website, at wwwwhenlifegiveyoulemonsnet have an episode idea that you'd like to share with us, or have any comments or additions to any of the subjects we've talked about.
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: We would love to hear from you, and until then we will say goodbye.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: What I'd like to add before we say goodbye.
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: The best thing you can do, if you enjoy this podcast or the subject material, tell somebody about it and let them listen as well always the last word bye, everybody we are always looking to improve the podcast, so if you want to hear a specific topic, have a differencing opinion, to add something to the conversation, drop us an email.
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: Our contact information is listed on our website.
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: It's wwwwhenlifegivesyoulemonsnet.
• 32:40
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• 32:45
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• 32:51
  Speaker 2: Thank you.