Franklin D. Roosevelt

Radio Address on the President's Second Birthday Ball for the Benefit of Crippled Children.

January 30, 1935

Most of you who hear my voice tonight know in general terms of the story of the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation—of how, from very small beginnings ten years ago, there have been built up two useful, practical factors in the fight against one of the most insidious and baffling of American health problems.

The first has been the work at Warm Springs itself—the joyous task of taking care of scores of children and of trying to bring them back to useful, active participation in life, and also the interesting task of trying new methods which suggest themselves from time to time through the many and constant advances of medical and surgical science.

The other objective, long dreamed of, receives tonight its greatest incentive. In every part of the Nation funds are being raised to give better care to crippled children within or near their own community. Seventy percent of your generous contributions go to these local needs. The other thirty percent go, not to the Warm Springs Foundation, but to a distinguished Committee, to be allocated by this Committee for the furtherance of research into the cause, the prevention and the treatment of infantile paralysis.

I need not tell you of my own deep personal happiness that my birthday is being made the occasion for aiding this splendid work. I wish that I might be with each and every one of you at each and every one of these parties and entertainments in every State in the country.

Today I have also been made happy by thousands of telegrams and letters—so many of them, indeed, that even an enlarged White House staff could not begin to express thanks for them. To all of you who sent them I, therefore, take this opportunity of extending my gratitude.

To all of you who are so generously helping the cause of crippled children everywhere, I also send my thanks and my best wishes. I like this kind of a birthday.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, Radio Address on the President's Second Birthday Ball for the Benefit of Crippled Children. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/209047

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