FDR

Dime Honors FDR's Support for 'March for Dimes' Campaign Against Polio
10-Dec-03
FDR

Robert Scheer writes, "What made this right-wing political ploy particularly objectionable was that the dime commemoration, a year after FDR's death, was in honor of the March of Dimes' support of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, which Roosevelt founded in 1938. In the foundation's first year, more than 2.6 million dimes were mailed to the White House in what was to become one of the great private charity efforts. It led to the eventual eradication of polio, which Roosevelt had. Roosevelt picked the dime as the fund-raising device because he felt that everyone could afford to make at least that contribution. Like the AIDS epidemic, polio was a pervasive plague throughout the world. In a message now echoed in AIDS fund-raising, Roosevelt viewed the fight against polio as a means of cultivating a greater awareness of our common humanity."