Washington -- A memorial to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, now under construction here, will commemorate some of the president's greatest achievements, including guiding the nation out of the Great Depression and through World War II.
But one of his most difficult achievements will not be depicted: his rise to political power despite paralysis from polio at a time when disabilities were often considered shameful in American society.
To many, the $52 million memorial being built in West Potomac Park between monuments to presidents Lincoln and Jefferson is an appropriate tribute to the man who was largely responsible for leading the nation through some of its most tumultuous times.
But to some activists for the disabled, the memorial ignores an important feature of Roosevelt's life and misses the opportunity to honor a role model. The disagreement has sparked a debate over both historical accuracy and what Roosevelt would have wanted.
Speed Davis, the acting executive director of the National Council on Disability, an independent federal agency that advises the president and Congress on disability issues, said he is angry that the memorial does not include this aspect of Roosevelt's life. Mr. Davis uses a wheelchair as a result of a spinal cord injury.
"It was so much a part of who he was, and for them to continue to hide it kind of undermines everything we're trying to do," said Mr. Davis. "It reinforces the idea of shame, the negative value of having a disability, which is less and less true every day. If they want to show the whole person, they have to show all aspects."
Mr. Davis said the council's role as a federal agency prevents it from pursuing active lobbying against the memorial, which will be handicapped-accessible.
After 40 years of debate over funding, rejected design proposals and bureaucratic stalling, the controversy is yet another headache for the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial Commission. The winning entry of a 1960 memorial competition was dubbed "instant Stonehenge" by critics and scrapped. Two other designs have since been rejected as well.
The latest design, by landscape artist Lawrence Halprin, was approved in the late 1970s, but Congress did not appropriate the construction funds until a decade later. Construction began in October.
The memorial, a series of walls with waterfalls, will be made up of four outdoor galleries, each depicting a term in office, and including bronze images of Roosevelt and his wife, Eleanor.
The commission now hopes to have it completed by the fall of 1996, funded through federal appropriations and $10 million of private donations. About $2 million in private funds has been raised so far.
Despite academic guesses of how he would have like to be depicted, only one thing is clear: Roosevelt requested before his death that a memorial for him be simple, no larger than his desk, and placed near the National Archives. Today, a small granite block in his memory sits on Pennsylvania Avenue at the designated spot.
The monument under construction, unlike many Washington memorials, will not be a single sculpture but a sequence of outdoor galleries. Water fountains, engravings of some of his famous quotes, and sculptures of both Eleanor and scenes depicting the Depression will be included.
A sculpture of Roosevelt will show him in a well-known image: seated with his cape draped about him and his dog at his feet. There will be no photographs or sculptures showing his wheelchair, cane or crutches.
Dorann H. Gunderson, executive director of the commission, said this was done in accordance with what the commission believes the president would have wanted.
"This is historically accurate," she said. "We know that President Roosevelt himself chose to present this kind of image to the public. To do otherwise would be revisionist history."
She said the decision was made based on both academic research that shows Roosevelt hid his paralysis from the public and the wishes of David B. Roosevelt, the president's grandson and a member of the commission. He has said that the monument should not be for the man, but "a place of remembrance, contemplation and tribute to his work."
Alan Reich, president of the National Organization on Disability, a lobbying group for the disabled, said he is disappointed with the decision and hopes members of his organization will write to the commission.
"To push his disability aside, to hide it, is not only an injustice to FDR but an historical aberration and misinterpretation," he said. "We should not only not hide it, we should portray it. It doesn't need to be the paramount feature of the memorial, but it's a fact, an important fact."
There is no doubt that Roosevelt hid evidence of his paralysis from the public. He refused to be photographed in his wheelchair, and a sympathetic press respected his wishes.
According to Ray Teichman, supervisory archivist at the Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, N.Y., Roosevelt made public appearances using crutches, leg braces and canes, but even photos of these are rare. Among 125,000 photos of him at the library, only one shows him in a wheelchair.
Mr. Teichman said he thinks Roosevelt's attitude toward his disability might have been different today.
"He might very well support something that would indicate that he had this kind of problem [in the memorial]," he said. "He was a product of his age . . . but he had an optimistic view of life and an inclination toward helping people."