After five years in Atlanta, this World War II-era history major finally made the pilgrimage to Warm Springs — a place about 75 minutes south of Downtown that’s closely tied to former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Why it matters: Warm Springs was more than just a place with mineral springs that helped FDR’s polio. It was also where Roosevelt (a child of wealth from Hyde Park, New York) was first exposed to rural Southern poverty on his drives around the area.
- That exposure, historians say, helped inspire his landmark New Deal programs.
Zoom in: I was fascinated to learn that it was the water’s warmth and buoyancy from its high mineral content that allowed FDR and other polio victims relief. He said in 1924, the year he first visited, that the swims had allowed him to move his right leg for the first time in years.
- He opened a polio therapeutic treatment center called the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation in 1926 and celebrated Thanksgiving annually there with the staff and…
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