by Charles S.P. Hodge
On Wednesday morning, January 10, 2001, at a gathering of disabled people and other political notables, President Bill Clinton dedicated the statue which portrays President Franklin D. Roosevelt in a wheelchair, as a permanent addition to the FDR Memorial in Washington, DC. Outgoing Secretary of Labor Alexis Herman opened the dedicatory ceremony by reviewing and lauding the Clinton-Gore Administration’s record of accomplishments for people with disabilities. The next speaker was Michael Deland, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the National Organization on Disability (NOD), and a severely disabled person himself. Deland reviewed the history of the battle to obtain a statue which would depict President Roosevelt realistically, in a wheelchair, and thanked many individuals for their efforts to make this new addition to the FDR Memorial become a reality. In particular, Deland paid tribute to Jim Dickson of NOD who was instrumental in obtaining approval from Congress for the addition to the memorial. Deland also thanked Peter Kovler, the heir to the Jim Beam distilling fortune, and Gordon Gund, who happens to be blind, and is an investment financier from Princeton, NJ, for their generous financial contributions to the Rendezvous with Destiny campaign, which raised private funds to pay for the statue.
The third speaker was Anne Roosevelt, granddaughter of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, who told the gathering that the new addition to the memorial depicts her grandfather as he actually lived. She thanked the many members of the Roosevelt family who had stepped forward to support the new addition to the memorial and to make the project become a reality.
President Clinton acknowledged a number of disabled people who were present, including Justin Dart, whose steadfast efforts to see this project through had helped to make the presence of the statue a reality. Clinton pointed out the bronze plaque placed just behind the statue which spells out in print and in braille Eleanor Roosevelt’s often quoted remarks about her husband’s disability: i.e., that FDR’s constant struggle to overcome his disability had made him a stronger, more mature leader. FDR’s daily struggles to overcome the limitations of his disability in fact allowed his spirit of freedom to soar, Clinton said.
After the dedication, I went up and inspected both the statue depicting FDR in his wheelchair and the bronze plaque on the wall behind it. I found that the braille on the plaque is jumbo braille and is only grade one braille. Yet the spacing between dots and cells is proportional, and this jumbo braille, unlike other braille at the memorial, is legible and quite readable. In addition, I found that the lines which form the engraved print letters above the jumbo braille characters are deep and wide enough to make the print letters readable for a blind or visually impaired person (although they do not conform to the Uniform Federal Accessibility Standards {UFAS} for raised letters proposed by the Access Board for inclusion in the Americans with Disabilities Act Accessibility Guidelines {ADAAG}).
The dedication of the new addition to the FDR Memorial was capped off with a gala reception and buffet luncheon sponsored by NOD in the main reading room at the Library of Congress, Thomas Jefferson Building, which featured remarks by Senator Max Cleland of Georgia and newly elected Congressman Jim Langevin of Rhode Island, both of whom are disabled members of Congress. The event was a fitting and celebratory conclusion to the entire day’s proceedings.