PART 1
THE INFECTION
AUGUST–OCTOBER 1921
Chapter 1
CAMPOBELLO
Franklin Roosevelt loved to tell stories about his life. He would talk about his ancestors who’d fought in the American Revolution, the towns he’d visited, the people he’d met, the friends he’d made, the moments he remembered.
But he never said much about what happened to him on Campobello Island in the summer of 1921.
At the age of thirty-nine, he was one of the most promising young politicians in the country. Many people thought he might one day be president of the United States. But events at his family’s summer home on Campobello put an end to any such talk.
He had always loved the island. As a boy he spent fall, winter, and spring on his family’s estate on the Hudson River, a hundred miles north of New York City. But at the start of every summer, Campobello beckoned. He learned to sail there, steering his own boat among the rocky islets and drifting mists of Passamaquoddy Bay, the great arm of the Atlantic Ocean that divides the tip of Maine from the Canadian province of New Brunswick. As he grew into manhood he went back nearly every year. After he married, he brought his wife, Eleanor, and their growing brood of children to their summer house overlooking the bay.
But after 1921, he went back to Campobello only three times, and then for the briefest of stays.
Many years later, one of his sons, Franklin Roosevelt Jr., was asked why his father had all but abandoned his favorite spot on earth. He replied: “I think he just couldn’t bear to go back to the place where he had hiked and run and ridden horseback and climbed cliffs, and realize that he could never do those things again.”
* * *
The first hint that something was wrong came into his mind on an oceangoing yacht sailing up the coast of New England as the calendar turned from July to August.
FDR was heading for his first real vacation in a long time. Through the four years of World War I (1914–1918) and its aftermath, he had worked long, difficult hours as assistant secretary of the U.S. Navy under President Woodrow Wilson. In 1920, he had sprinted through a national political campaign as the Democratic Party’s nominee for vice president. When that campaign failed, he had launched himself into a dozen new activities. Now, finally, he could look forward to two glorious weeks of recreation and rest.
He was aboard the yacht of his friend Van Lear Black, a millionaire businessman and sportsman from Baltimore. FDR had invited Black to bring his family and some friends up to Campobello for a few days. The Blacks picked him up in New York City; then they all sailed north together.
He had a wonderful time aboard. He would remind Black later that he “never laughed as much as we all did on the cruise up the Coast of Maine.”
But he also felt a little sluggish and sick, as if he had picked up an intestinal bug.
Then he noticed something stranger. His skin was becoming unusually sensitive; his nerves seemed to be on high alert.
After two days on the water FDR spied Campobello on the horizon—a line of dark conifer trees on a craggy shore. He himself likely piloted the yacht through the tricky, narrow channel that divided the island from the village of Lubec at the easternmost tip of Maine. Campobello, though so close to the American mainland, belonged to Canada. Even in summer, not many people lived there—just a handful of Canadian fishermen, their families, and a scattering of Americans who loved the place for its crisp sea air and long views of the bay.
Roosevelt’s parents—James and Sara Delano Roosevelt—had purchased property there in the 1880s because they thought it would be a healthy summer spot for their only child, who seemed to get sick so often. They had a fine house built, and twenty years later, when FDR married, his mother purchased an even finer house next door and gave it to the bride and groom. It was a broad, comfortable place with a red roof, loads of bedrooms, and wide windows overlooking the water.
A loud houseful of people greeted FDR and the Blacks. There was Eleanor Roosevelt, who was not only FDR’s wife but his distant cousin, the favorite niece of the former president Theodore Roosevelt; FDR and Eleanor’s daughter, Anna, who was fifteen; their four sons, James, thirteen; Elliott, ten; Franklin Jr., about to turn seven; and John, five; the children’s nanny; the nanny’s mother; and the family of Louis Howe, FDR’s close friend and assistant.
For Roosevelt, free time meant time on the move outdoors. He was a sailor, golfer, and tennis player. In Washington, D.C., during the war, he had joined other government executives for daily workouts with a famous football coach. At work he often jogged from one appointment to the next. He took stairs two at a time.
So once he reached Campobello, he wasted no time lounging around. He announced the first order of business: a fishing expedition on Passamaquoddy Bay. The next morning, he and the others boarded Black’s yacht and cruised out across the gray water. Then they got into the vessel’s “tender” boat, a long, narrow craft with two cockpits, one at either end, with the engine taking up most of the space in between.
FDR gave himself the job of baiting fish hooks for everyone. To carry the hooks from one cockpit to the other, he had to step carefully along a narrow, wet plank beside the hot engine.
Suddenly he lost his footing and plunged into the water. It took only a minute for the others to haul him back on board, and right away he was laughing at himself.
“All you landlubbers” were still dry on board, he said, yet he was the one, an “old salt” with many years on the water, who had become the only “man overboard.”
Funny thing, that slip. He’d been dashing around slippery boat decks forever. He’d hardly ever fallen off a boat. Yet that day he had done it. And although he had been swimming in the frigid water there for many years, it never had felt as cold as it did that day—“so cold,” he remembered later, “it seemed paralyzing.”
* * *
Once the Blacks had gone, FDR turned to having fun with his children. “Father loved life on the island more than any of us, but got to spend the least time there,” remembered Jimmy, the oldest boy. In this family, fun was strenuous. They played tennis. They went swimming and sailing. They played a pursuit game FDR loved called Hare and Hounds, which sent the players racing up and down the rocky slopes along the shore. For two or three days, Jimmy remembered, they had “a wild, whooping, romping, running, sailing, picnicking time.”
On the morning of Wednesday, August 10, FDR arose from his bed feeling worn out, though he had slept all night. He thought another good day outdoors might restore his energy. So he piled everyone into the family’s sailboat, Vireo, and steered for a deserted island out in the bay. On the beach they shared a picnic lunch. Then, sailing for home, they spotted smoke rising from an island in the distance—a forest fire.
At his home in upstate New York, FDR raised trees as a hobby. He couldn’t bear to see trees destroyed. So he steered toward the smoke and beached the boat. The family tumbled out to fight the fire. Other people who had spotted the smoke joined them. For hours, the Roosevelts worked as an emergency fire brigade, swatting at flames with evergreen branches and stamping on sparks. Anna was standing near a tall spruce when she heard “that awful roar of the flames as they quickly enveloped the whole tree.” They sweated in the heat and smoke until the fire was finally out.
After an outing like that, most families would have been ready to collapse on the couch. But when the Roosevelts got back to the cottage, someone suggested a swim. FDR was still feeling that unfamiliar sluggishness. He thought a quick dip might drive the feeling away. So he and the children set off at a jogging pace for Lake Glensevern, a long, narrow pond with water warm enough for comfortable swimming. It was about a mile and a half away. They all dove in. While the children splashed around, FDR left the pond and ran a little farther for a plunge in the colder waters of the ocean. Then they all straggled back along the trail toward home and dinner.
In the living room, FDR dropped into a wicker chair. He said he was too tired even to change into dry clothes. He just wanted to sit still. “I’d never felt quite that way before,” he remarked later. He and his friend Louis Howe paged through the newspapers and opened mail.
After a while Eleanor called everyone to dinner.
“About halfway through the meal,” their daughter, Anna, remembered later, “Father very quietly announced that he thought he had a slight attack of lumbago”—pain in the lower back. He felt a chill, too, he said, and he wanted to get completely warm. “He thought he’d better excuse himself and go up to bed. There was no fuss.”
He rose, walked across the room, and climbed the stairs.
* * *
When he awoke the next morning, his legs hurt. He swung them out of bed, placed his feet on the floor, and stood up.
There was something wrong with his knee, the right one. He must have twisted it the day before without noticing, maybe while fighting the forest fire. Or maybe he had slept on it wrong.
From the bedroom, he crossed the hallway to the bathroom. He stood at the sink to shave. That knee—it felt as if it couldn’t hold his weight. He went back to bed.
Eleanor sent Anna upstairs with breakfast on a tray. FDR could see his daughter was worried. He reassured her and they joked for a couple minutes.
But when Anna was back downstairs and Eleanor looked in, he told her he was feeling dreadful. He couldn’t understand it, but his legs were killing him.
Elliott was standing nearby. Many years later, he remembered that his father used the words “stabbing pains.” Others who have gone through the same experience say it felt like someone was hammering nails into their legs.
* * *
Eleanor sent a message from the island over to the mainland village of Lubec. She wanted the family’s summertime doctor to see Franklin. His name was Eben Homer Bennet.
Dr. Bennet got to the island that afternoon. He asked questions and took FDR’s temperature. It was 102 degrees, quite high but not dangerous. He concluded the problem was a severe summer cold. He couldn’t explain why Roosevelt’s legs were bothering him.
In the afternoon, FDR went to stand up, then abruptly sat back down. Now his right knee definitely could not support his weight. By evening, the other knee was feeling weak.
By the next morning, August 12, the needles of pain had spread to his back. He couldn’t clench the muscles of his buttocks or his gut. It wasn’t that his muscles were numb. If he rubbed his legs with his hands, he could feel his hands. But the muscles wouldn’t obey his commands to move.
His arms felt weak. That evening he reached for a pencil. His fingers couldn’t hold it.
The fever rose so high that he drifted in and out of delirium.
By now his legs felt like the floppy legs of a marionette. He couldn’t walk. He couldn’t stand up.
He stared at Howe.
“I don’t know what is the matter with me, Louis,” he said. “I just don’t know.”
Copyright © 2021 by James Tobin
