Rare Footage of President FDR Walking at 1937 Baseball Game Donated to Pennsylvania Museum: Film Shows Brave Struggle [Video]
Rare video footage showing President Franklin Delano Roosevelt walking to his seat at a 1937 baseball game has emerged.
Although FDR was paralyzed from the waist down by polio in 1921, he went to great extends to hide his disability from the public. As a result, this is only the second video in existence that features FDR in such a manner.
The video, which was donated to the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, shows the struggle it took the former president to perform daily activities. According to experts, he used a wheelchair because he could walk only with braces on his legs, while using a cane.
"Here is FDR going to a stadium full of people," said Bob Clark, deputy director of FDR's Presidential Library and Museum, The Associated Press reported. "Even the simple act of going to a baseball game required a great deal of logistics and preparation."
The video shows the president holding on to an aide's arm and a handrail while he walks up a ramp. The museum issued a statement revealing that he was at Griffith Stadium in Washington, D.C., at the 1937 Major League Baseball All-Star Game.
"The fact that he is on an incline and that it is very windy makes his walking even more arduous," filmmaker Ken Burns, who is using the footage in a documentary, said in a statement, CNN reported. "The wind even presses his pants against his withered legs, and you can clearly see the braces underneath."
According to Burns, Secret Service prohibited and confiscated cameras at the time to conceal the president's disability. The footage was shot by Major League Baseball pitcher James "Jimmie" DeShong of the Washington Senators using an 8 mm camera.
"This remarkable eight seconds provided to us by the Pennsylvania State Archives is one of the very best pieces of film that so clearly shows what a brave struggle it was for FDR to move," Burns said. "This ... helps deepen the American public's understanding of the strength and fortitude this badly disabled man brought to the task of seeing our country through two of the worst crises in our history -- the Depression and World War II."
The film donated to the Pennsylvania State Archives was by DeShong's daughter, Judith Savastio, in order to "conserve, preserve, interpret and make it accessible to the public," the statement reads.