I've been thinking a lot lately about legends and legacies. I've followed with keen interest the Ken Burns PBS odyssey through the challenged and courageous lives of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.
Although the Roosevelts, the Great Depression and Second World War were more a part of my parents generation, I've long been inspired by FDR's legacy of leadership and perseverance, of overcoming and of hope - and by Eleanor Roosevelt's legacy of compassion and dogged commitment to human rights in all its forms.
I recently made a pilgrimage to Hyde Park to visit Springwood, Val-kill and Top Cottage - the physical and spiritual homes of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. It was serendipitous that my visit coincided with the Burns' biopic.
All of which has made me think about adversity and about overcoming. How some people afflicted with severe physical and emotional wounds are able to somehow reach deep inside and find strength to propel them beyond themselves, beyond their limits, to achieve the seemingly impossible.
Eleanor Roosevelt, who has always been one of my heroes, had a lot to say about adversity and overcoming it. " We gain strength, and courage, and confidence," the First Lady said, "by each experience in which we really stop to look fear in the face... We must do," she admonished, "that which we think we cannot."
At the entrance to the FDR monument in Washington, is a bronze statue of Roosevelt sitting in his wheel chair. It's a glimpse of the president that few people outside his inner circle ever saw. Etched above the statue are the words of his wife Eleanor. "Franklin's illness," the inscription reads, "...gave him strength and courage he had not had before. He had to think out the fundamentals of living and learn the greatest of all lessons - infinite patience and never ending persistence."
I think Roosevelt's experience taught him more. I think through his own adversity he learned compassion for others with struggles often just as profound and just as invisible. During the course of his presidency FDR created programs that not only provided jobs, housing and food - the most fundamental of human needs - to the millions ravaged by the national economic collapse, but just as importantly he restored dignity and offered hope.
This is, for me, the legacy and the legend of FDR - how he struggled and fought, how he persevered despite crippling physical challenges, and then drew on his own experience to build confidence and give hope to others.
That same hope gets me through when my own days begin to feel dark and cheerless - that and Eleanor Roosevelt's challenge to do every day "one thing that scares you."
