Description:

Roosevelt Franklin 1882 - 1945 Franklin Roosevelt TLS detailing creating the Polio rehabilitation clinic, phenomenal content

Single page TLS, 7.25" x 10.5", with letterhead of Franklin D. Roosevelt / Vice President / Fidelity and Deposit Company of Maryland, New York ( however this was composed in Warm Springs, Georgia as typed alongside the letterhead is "at Warm springs Georgia / April 8, 1927". Professional repair on verso to intact tear. Expected folds with light toning. Dated "April 8, 1927" and neatly signed by Franklin Roosevelt in full signature as "Franklin D. Roosevelt".


Roosevelt writes an important letter to Julian from Warm Springs, Georgia, in the year that Roosevelt, with a group of friends, created the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation. This thought provoking letter delves into Roosevelt's plans for the Foundation, in addition to reflecting to how it can be made affordable for polio clients, who were often "really poor". As a polio victim himself in 1921, FDR initially sought therapy at a resort in Warm Springs. By 1927 , FDR with the aid of friends and a successful corporate lawyer, bought a resort in Warm Springs with the intention to set up Roosevelt's Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation. It was his vision to build a resort to offer both mental and physical therapy for polio victims, most often children, who ravaged by this devastating illness. His letter details his goals for the buildings, how he would like the portions of the property arranged, the addition of a Patient Pool and the creation of a Patient's Aid Fund to make it affordable. His letter is shown in full below:

"Dear Julian:

I do hope you can manage to get down here sometime before I go back to New York the first week in May. Things are coming along well and the new Patients' pool is about ready. There is no question that we shall have many more applications from patients that we have accommodations for, and the only trouble is that so may of them are really poor people who cannot afford to pay the actual cost of $42 a week. I am starting a Patient's Aid Fund to help these poor children and hope to be able to assist with about 15 out of 50 patients.

Did I tell you that I have completely separated the two portions of the property - hotel, cottages, and patients pools to be owned and run by a membership corporation - non-profit making and financed entirely by gifts and by the small actual cost rate charged to the patients. All the rest of the property goes into the Meriwether Reserve and develops the golf course, cottage colony, etc., and this also, when the development cost if paid back, will have its profits go to the Foundation.

Meanwhile, lots of people are becoming interested in the place and its future looks very bright.

Always sincerely yours,

Franklin D. Roosevelt"

Roosevelts subsequent passion and drive to abolish Polio followed through with him later in 1938 establishing the historic National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis - known popularly as the March of Dimes to combat polio. This foundation became the leading light for over three decades with his immediate task to build an organization that could quickly respond to polio epidemics anywhere in the nation. This was the very foundation which ultimately came to fund Salk's infamous research, ultimately achieving worldwide recognition with the vaccine for polio in 1955.

An incredible important letter reflecting on the birth of Roosevelt's brain child campaign to provide emotional and physical support, funding, research and the push for a vaccine for one of the most devastating diseases of the 20th century.

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