STEPHANIE SALTER: Springtime in Washington inspires, ‘What would FDR do?’

By Stephanie Salter
The Tribune-Star

TERRE HAUTE April 01, 2008 10:40 pm

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In these days of difficulty, we Americans everywhere must and shall choose the path of social justice, the path of faith, the path of hope and the path of love toward our fellow men.
— Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Oct. 2, 1932
When most people list the sites they intend to see on a spring trip to Washington, D.C., the lineup usually goes something like this: Washington Monument, Lincoln and Jefferson memorials, the White House (from the outside), the Capitol, the Vietnam and World War II memorials and — if they are in blossom — the cherry trees that ring the Tidal Basin.
Less often, do you hear, “I have to see the FDR Memorial.”
Maybe this is because the tribute to Franklin Delano Roosevelt doesn’t rise majestically above the D.C. skyline or perch imposingly at the top of scores of stairs. Easily accessible to anyone in a wheelchair, Roosevelt’s memorial quietly rambles along 7.5 acres of land that are tucked away between the Potomac River and the southwest shore of the basin.
It is also possible that, for a fair number of conservative and libertarian Americans, FDR represents that time in history when the country took a wrong turn — away from what these folks think of as individual self-sufficiency toward a “welfare state.”
For someone who believes the opposite — taxpayers, through their government, can and should help take care of the poor, disabled, marginalized and educationally disenfranchised — Roosevelt is a president who embodied the Christian call to aid “the least of my brethren.”
I am among the latter group, which made a recent tour of the FDR Memorial almost heartbreaking.
The structure of world peace cannot be the work of one man, or one party, or one nation. It must be a peace which rests on the cooperative effort of the whole world.
— March 1, 1945
Since Sept. 11, 2001, it’s hard for a visitor to view much of anything in Washington through pre-9/11 eyes. For many of us, as the United States has passed the grim 4,000 mark in American war dead in Iraq and Afghanistan — and still refuses to officially own the number of Iraqi civilian dead — our government’s wrong-headed response to the terrorist attacks is in high relief in D.C.
In such a setting as the Roosevelt Memorial, the path America has chosen mocks history, and all we should have learned from it.
The brilliant architect Lawrence Halprin was given the task and privilege of designing the memorial in 1974. Known for creating functional and beautiful buildings and complexes within their natural surroundings, Halprin laid out the site in four outdoor “galleries” that represent FDR’s four presidential terms.
Around fountains, trees and winding walkways, Roosevelt’s eloquent and sometimes searing words live on in 21 quotations engraved in red granite walls. Stone carver John Benson, who contributed his artistry to the Vietnam Memorial Wall, designed and executed the FDR placements.
The timelessness of Roosevelt’s words is stunning, be the subject war, prejudice, economic instability or the environment.
I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded. I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed. I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war.
— Aug. 14, 1936
Men and nature must work hand in hand. The throwing out of balance of the resources of nature throws out of balance also the lives of men.
— Jan. 24, 1935
In the second gallery, one of this country’s greatest contemporary sculptors, George Segal, created a three-part representation of the Roosevelt presidency during the Great Depression. The largest of the trio of bronzes is a profile line of five men in overcoats and hats. The angles of their heads and shoulders convey anticipation, humiliation, defeat or the glimmer of hope. The work is called, “The Breadline.”
Four quotes grace the second gallery. One is from FDR’s second inaugural address, Jan. 20, 1937:
I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, and ill-nourished. The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.
Statues by Neil Estern of FDR and his wife, Eleanor, are larger than life, yet delightfully unintimidating. Posed in front of the United Nations insignia, elderly Eleanor stands in gallery three, straight-backed in sensible shoes and a decidedly unglamorous coat. Her hands are gently clasped in front of her like a self-conscious schoolgirl’s.
Estern’s Franklin sits in gallery four, draped in a dramatic cape. But his little dog, Fala, is at cheerful attention just a foot or so away. The effect is not so much commander in chief as distinguished gent with best friend.
In the fourth gallery, a bas-relief bronze by Leonard Baskin, “The Funeral Cortege,” affirms a statement on the FDR Memorial’s Web site: Baskin’s sculptures are “characterized by the release of feelings and emotions as triggered by the forms, expressions, and subject matter he creates.”
To search the faces of the line of mourners behind Roosevelt’s horse-drawn casket is to glimpse the grief of millions of Americans, 63 years ago this month.
As I contemplated the journey to that grief — Americans moving from mistrust of a blueblood from Hyde Park, N.Y., to embracing his embrace of them and “the forgotten man” — I tried to imagine FDR’s response to the kaleidoscope of dangers we face today, those thrust upon us and those of our own making.
I saw such things as a 2008-style Conservation Corps and extended unemployment benefits, not an open-ended federal bailout of the perpetrators of the sub-prime mortgage crisis and a one-time income tax rebate meant to be spent at the local shopping mall.
As to the Iraq War and the United States’ place on an over-crowded globe, I heard this from Feb. 12, 1943:
Unless the peace that follows recognizes that the whole world is one neighborhood and does justice to the whole human race, the germs of another world war will remain as a constant threat to mankind.

Stephanie Salter can be reached at (812) 231-4229 or stephanie.salter@tribstar.com.