Partner to Power

by K. Ward Cummings

  Howe first met the young Roosevelt in 1911, when he was assigned the duty of interviewing the then New York state senator for a newspaper article. Howe never forgot the meeting, but Roosevelt quickly did. The following year, they became reacquainted when Roosevelt took over a leadership role in the state Democratic party and hired Howe as a volunteer to oversee various state campaign functions. They grew to know each other and became friends. Howe was more experienced than Roosevelt, but Roosevelt was the boss. When Howe lost yet another job in the fall of 1912, he wrote Roosevelt a letter begging for work. Roosevelt had recently contracted typhoid fever and needed help with his campaign for reelection to the state senate; he asked Howe whether he would consider running his campaign for him while he recovered from his illness. Howe eagerly accepted. He ran the campaign on his own, with little involvement from the ailing Roosevelt.

  1912 was a good year nationally for the Democratic Party, but it was a bloodbath for New York State Democrats, who lost far more seats than they had expected. Roosevelt, however, who had also been expected to lose his seat and who had done very little campaigning because of his illness, won with a higher percentage of the vote than he had during his first campaign. Howe got all the credit for Roosevelt’s victory, and, from that point on, he was a valued fixture in Roosevelt’s life.

  There is a famous photo of the twenty-year-old Roosevelt taken just a couple of years before he married Eleanor that captures him at the height of his physical beauty. He is in motion, facing the camera, his body contorted as if he is about to tumble forward. Though the image is blurred, his expression is one of pure joy—childlike and aglow with hope. He is tall and lithe, like an athlete, and he appears to be darting in and out of the trees in hot pursuit of a fleeing Eleanor.

  Almost two decades after that picture was taken, at thirty-nine, Roosevelt awoke from a fitful sleep to find that his left leg was not working properly. The day before, he had been out with the kids, hiking and swimming. After dinner, he said he was feeling under the weather and decided to retire early. Young and vital, Roosevelt went to his bed without a care in the world and woke to find his life on fire.

  When the doctors told Roosevelt that he had contracted polio and might never walk again, he refused to believe them. Friends and family were astonished by the force of his denial. He welcomed the crushing pain of daily physical therapy, his muscles fighting him, tightening like a vise as he struggled to stretch them. He refused to accept that his legs would not work. He spent entire days consumed by the task of trying to move a single toe. He had to succeed. If he could not walk, or play with the children, or flirt with pretty young ladies, then who was he?

  In college, he had discovered that he was charming and smart. He found outlets for his huge energy – tennis, golf, editing the school newspaper, class president. He was bold and dynamic, and people liked him. He had encountered the same reception at law school and as a young lawyer at the firm of Carter, Ledyard and Milburn, where he boldly confessed, with complete sincerity, his intention to someday become president of the United States. No one laughed—they knew who his uncle was.

  Following in the famous footsteps of that uncle, Theodore Roosevelt, he accepted an appointment as assistant secretary of the navy. He loved ships, understood the people and enjoyed the work. Barely thirty years old, Franklin Roosevelt was in charge of the massive naval buildup that preceded World War I. When America entered the fight, he was proud to supervise the navy’s role. He hired Howe to be his chief of staff, and together they ran the navy as a partnership—Roosevelt out front and Howe behind the scenes.

  As the 1920 presidential campaign season approached, Roosevelt was deeply involved in party politics. He was noticed by the presumptive Democrat nominee, James Cox, and was asked to join his ticket as a candidate for the vice presidency. He threw himself into the work. Sweeping from coast to coast across the country by plane or train or car, he delivered speeches by the quarter-hour. Wherever a speaker was needed, Roosevelt was there. He would attend the opening of an envelope if the crowd was large enough. His energy and movie-star good looks charmed swarms of voters.

  A landslide victory for the Republicans swept Warren Harding into the White House, and Roosevelt found himself out on his own. But he was not out of hope or energy. While he considered ways to get his political career back on track, he took two jobs—one as the managing director of the Fidelity & Deposit Company and the other as a partner in a New York law firm. His party was out of power, but he wasn’t worried. He was young and popular, and it was only a matter of time before an opportunity opened up. He planned to spend the next four to eight years making a little money while he and Howe worked to lay the foundation for a run at the top job. There was no rush. Though the 1924 presidential campaign season—his next opportunity to run—was years away, he was still in his thirties. He and Howe had plenty of time.

  II

  Polio

  On the morning of August 10, 1921, Howe was finally in a good financial place. After almost a decade of working at Roosevelt’s side at the Naval Department and then briefly for Roosevelt’s successor, he was well-off enough to send Mary to private school and to own a nice vacation home. The New England Oil Company offered him a lucrative job as an executive, and an important New York newspaper wanted him to be its city editor. His relationship with Grace was still rocky, but with the navy job coming to an end and a chance to move back to New York and make some serious money, he hoped to rebuild their relationship and make her love him again the way she once had.

  Howe took the family on vacation to visit the Roosevelts on Campobello Island in Canada’s New Brunswick Bay, partially to rest and partially to decide whether to work for the New England Oil Company or the New York newspaper. A minor injury on the tennis court gave him an excuse to sit back and put his feet up. He and Grace sat outside on the lawn enjoying the beautiful summer day, waiting for Roosevelt and the children to return from a short sailing trip they had taken to the surrounding islands. They returned just before dinner, drenched from a swim and exhausted. As everyone gathered around the table, Roosevelt excused himself to go up to bed early. He was not feeling well.

  Roosevelt awoke the next morning with a numbness in his left leg. As he rose to prepare for the day, his condition only worsened, and he returned to his room. By that evening, as the numbness spread, he knew he was in trouble.

  The first few days of Roosevelt’s illness, before he knew he had contracted polio, were the most difficult. He was losing control of his body, and he could not understand why. At first, his only discomfort was a little numbness in his left leg. Then, the leg became immobilized. Gradually the paralysis moved to his right leg and then up his body, into his torso and into his neck. He woke one morning to find he had lost the ability to move one side of his face. It drooped as if he had had a stroke.

  The initial diagnoses were wrong. One doctor thought he had the flu. Another doctor suspected a blood clot in his spinal area. It was recommended that Howe and Eleanor take turns massaging his feet and legs daily to help relieve his intense pain. A third doctor finally got the diagnosis right—childhood polio. He ordered Eleanor and Howe to cease massaging Roosevelt’s limbs immediately or risk worsening his paralysis.

  Eventually he could no longer chew properly or feed himself. Until a nurse could be found, Howe and Eleanor took turns attending to his personal needs, changing his bedding and periodically turning his body to prevent bedsores. When he could no longer control the voluntary muscles in the lower half of his body and needed help with evacuation, Howe and Eleanor helped. Howe slept on a cot outside of Roosevelt’s room, prepared to rise at any hour to attend to his friend’s needs.

  After the initial shock of the news that Roosevelt was suffering from polio and might never walk again, Eleanor and Howe turned their attention to helping him cope with his new reality. Given that his life’s pursuit had been to become president, those closest to him wondered how he would adjust to what now might be a life lived
on the margins. His mother, Sara, thought she knew what was best for him—permanent rest. She envisioned him living out his days the way his father had, in the comfort and calm of their Hyde Park estate, reading and tending his stamp collection. She clearly did not know her son.

  Eleanor knew that such a life would drain all the spirit out of her husband. He needed to be around people. He needed to be active to be happy. Living as an invalid within the walls of a secluded upstate New York mansion would send the thirty-nine-year-old Roosevelt to an early grave. Howe shared Eleanor’s belief that Roosevelt must not be permitted to give up on his dreams. Having spent a decade working closely with him, Howe knew that politics was all Roosevelt really cared about.

  Since their first campaign together in 1912, Howe had been a close adviser to Roosevelt. And although he had developed great affection for Roosevelt over the years, Howe also had selfish reasons for wanting to see him regain his spirit. If Roosevelt achieved his life’s ambition to become president, Howe had every expectation that he would be there by his side when Roosevelt moved into the White House. He saw no reason why Roosevelt could not recover his career after he recovered his health. He needed to convince Roosevelt of this, but first he would need to help him regain his sense of self.

  When the news that Roosevelt was seriously ill went public, Howe took over the management of his public relations. For Roosevelt’s career to survive, no one could know the true nature of his ailment. When he needed to get back into the city to see doctors, Howe arranged an elaborate method of keeping his travel secret, involving the distraction of the press at the train station. Howe saw to it that a diversion took place at one end of the train, as he and others carried Roosevelt through the cars to the other end.

  Managing Roosevelt’s illness became Howe’s mission. He eventually moved in with the family. From that day forward, until the end of his life nearly twenty years later, Howe would live almost exclusively with the Roosevelts.

  Howe knew how fickle the world of politics was, and he knew that if Roosevelt was forgotten, he too might be forgotten. Roosevelt obviously could not attend the sundry Democratic Party events necessary to keep his name in the minds of political leaders, but he understood how important it was to remain relevant. Howe devoted himself to attending political events on Roosevelt’s behalf and to keeping his friend’s name in the papers. He sent out a flurry of letters over Roosevelt’s signature to members of the party; he wrote news articles, op-eds and letters to the editor on Roosevelt’s behalf; and, importantly, he convinced Eleanor that for Roosevelt’s sake she had to conquer her fear of public speaking and throw herself into New York politics.

  “You have to become actively involved in Democratic politics,” Howe told her, “in order to keep alive Franklin’s interest in the party and the party’s interest in him.”5 In her memoirs, Eleanor recorded her thoughts about Howe’s recommendation: “I was pushed into the women’s division of the Democratic State Committee, not because Louis cared so much about my activities, but because he felt that they would make it possible for me to bring into the house people who would keep Franklin interested in state politics.”6

  It is hard to imagine—given her huge historical stature—but when Eleanor Roosevelt started out, she was a painfully awkward public speaker. She understood how important it was that she help keep her husband’s name in front of the public, but speaking to even a handful of people terrified her.

  As Howe started to accompany her to speaking events, he noticed she had a habit of allowing her voice to trail off as she spoke. At other times, her pitch would rise sharply and unexpectedly. Her awkward pauses were long enough for listeners to wonder whether something was wrong. He spent hours with her, training her to control her movements and voice, and together they worked on methods to keep her focused on a single theme. He forced her to practice every evening after dinner. Her son James later wrote that she must have made a hundred speeches in the living room of their Manhattan home for an audience of only one—Howe.

  When Eleanor spoke at public events, Howe would sit in the back of the room, watching the audience. Using a system of hand gestures, he would guide Eleanor as she spoke until she learned how to capture and hold an audience’s attention. With Howe’s help, she eventually lost her stage fright and gained a reputation as a skilled public speaker.

  Before they were thrown together to help her ailing husband, Eleanor did not really like Howe. She thought he was coarse, crude and cynical. Though they were civil to one another for Roosevelt’s sake, they did not actually become friends until years after their first meeting, during Roosevelt’s vice-presidential campaign in 1920. By then, Howe was Roosevelt’s principal political adviser. He insisted that Eleanor accompany her husband on his whistle-stop tour, to help attract female voters. It was the first opportunity for her and Howe to spend significant time together. In her writings, she described the point at which their relationship changed: “Louis Howe began to break down my antagonism by knocking at my stateroom door and asking if he might discuss a speech with me. I was flattered and before long I found myself discussing a wide range of subjects.”7

  During those times when Roosevelt had to leave the train to attend nearby events, Howe and Eleanor would set off on their own and take walking tours of the town. Indeed, what had been at first a tense relationship became quite close after Roosevelt took ill. Roosevelt’s daughter Anna was surprised to find the two alone in Eleanor’s room one evening. Eleanor was sitting on the floor next to the bed, at Howe’s feet, as he stroked her hair.

  Howe’s influence on the political lives of Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt cannot be overstated. Were it not for his guidance and pestering, Eleanor might never have developed into the global figure she became, and Franklin might never have regained the confidence necessary to continue pursuing his dream of becoming president. Howe had more confidence in them than they had in themselves.

  While Roosevelt worked to regain his health, Howe and Eleanor worked to keep his career alive. They met with supporters and attended strategy meetings and New York State political conventions. They worked to strengthen or develop relationships that they hoped would be useful to him. But there was only so much Eleanor and Howe could do. Eventually he would need to play an active role in his own political career.

  As the 1924 Democratic presidential convention approached, Howe thought Roosevelt might use the occasion to reintroduce himself to the public. Al Smith, the presumptive nominee and governor of New York, was looking for someone to give the nominating speech during the opening ceremonies. It was a necessary, though minor, responsibility. The one benefit was that whoever took on the task would speak to a room packed with thousands of faithful Democrats and have a national audience listening by radio. Howe decided Franklin would be perfect for the job, but Roosevelt was still unsure. Essentially paralyzed from the waist down, he had to rely on leg braces and crutches to get around. What if he slipped as he was walking to the podium? He had fallen before.

  III

  Fighting Back

  By the autumn of 1922, Roosevelt had trained himself to walk again as best he could. Using crutches, he would lean on one stiffly braced leg and swing the other leg forward. Short trips were relatively easy, but a walk of any significant duration required forethought.

  Roosevelt is remembered as a man of supreme confidence, but beneath that buoyant exterior, his ego was as fragile as anyone else’s—perhaps even more so. (Before his illness, he was occasionally described by those who knew him best as shallow—content to dance along the surface of life like a feather duster, sweeping up adulation along the way.) It was worship Roosevelt craved, not pity. Once he fell victim to polio—a disease that not only sapped his energy, but also made him appear less than impressive—his condition was a frequent source of shame and embarrassment. To avoid having to encounter the look of pity in the eyes of strangers, he put off returning to work for as long as he could.

  But after more than a year’s absence, Roosev
elt decided it was time to return to work at Fidelity & Deposit. After all, he was the vice president in charge of managing the day-to-day operations—it was the least he could do. The plan was for his car to drop him off at the door of the office building. From there he would “walk” the five or so steps necessary to reach the building’s entrance. His driver would hold open the door, and he would traverse the long lobby toward the elevators at the far end. They would chat along the way, to make the exercise seem casual. The whole affair, it was estimated, would take no more than a few minutes. He would stay for a bit and then return home. It was a simple enough plan, but he worried about what might go wrong.

  On a cool and cloudy day in early October 1922, Roosevelt’s car pulled up to the entrance of the Fidelity & Deposit building. Passersby studied the windows as the driver walked around to Roosevelt’s side. A crowd gathered as he struggled to raise himself above his crutches. Someone held the door open for him. As he walked through the entrance of the crowded lobby, Roosevelt was suddenly aware of how slippery the floor was.

  Concentrating on his footwork, he thrust his right leg forward. As he did so, his left leg swept out from under him and he fell, landing on his back. Lying on the floor, drenched in sweat and embarrassed, all he could do was laugh nervously. He muscled himself up into a seated position and asked for help getting to his feet. Two sturdy men came forward. Someone located his hat, and he was on his way again. The sea of onlookers parted as he slowly moved toward the elevators. With each step, he smiled and nodded to onlookers, in spite of the sweat streaming down his face. As the elevator doors closed behind him, he leaned against the wall and let himself exhale.