Rare footage shows ‘brave struggle’ of FDR walking

Rare film footage that shows President Franklin D. Roosevelt walking has been donated to the Pennsylvania State Archives.

Former Major League Baseball player Jimmie DeShong, a Harrisburg native, shot the film at the Major League Baseball All-Star game in 1937 in Washington.

Filmmaker Ken Burns calls the footage “one of the very best” because it shows “what a brave struggle it was for FDR to move.” Burns plans to use it in his upcoming PBS documentary on the Roosevelts.

An official at FDR’s presidential library in Hyde Park, New York, says the clip has been on view there the past year.

Roosevelt was paralyzed from the waist down by polio in 1921. He could walk only with braces on his legs and the support of a cane.