Today, in our time of hurricanes, fires, and floods, of wars in far-off places, of despair and recrimination and division, it is worth recalling the words of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who recognized the power and the peril of fear. In his first inaugural address on March 4, 1933, three years into the Great Depression, he asserted his “firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”
On January 6, 1941, as the country remained on the sidelines of a world war against fascism, FDR returned to the subject of fear in his annual message to Congress. With unity of purpose, he said, a “good society” supports freedom of speech, the “freedom of every person to worship God in his own way,” freedom from want, and freedom from fear — everywhere and anywhere in the world.
Two years later, a 26-year-old woman without arms delivered her interpretation of FDR’s speech as part of Baylor University’s Wednesday night “Religious Hour” program. Margaret Jones’ arms were severely burned and had to be amputated when, during a sailing excursion in June 1941, the mast of the sailboat contacted a high-voltage power line. Yet the former dental student returned to school, determined to find, and fulfill, her life’s purpose. The topic of her speech was FDR’s fourth freedom, for as she told a reporter, “I have a speaking acquaintance with fear.”
Margaret Jones Chanin would go on to marry and raise two boys, teach preventive dentistry at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, and become nationally known for her advocacy of people with disabilities. Throughout her life, she embodied a remarkable capacity to breathe in hurt, doubt, anger, and bitterness, and breathe back compassion, calmness, clarity, and joy — both for herself and for those around her. She did not fear change. Rather, she embraced it with unwavering courage and a deep belief in faith over fear.
FDR, whose legs were paralyzed by polio in 1921 when he was 39, also knew fear. But, like Margaret, he refused to be incapacitated by it. He was determined to help lead his country through its dark valley of terror.
“Since the beginning of our American history,” FDR said in his message to Congress, “we have been engaged in change — in a perpetual peaceful revolution — a revolution which goes on steadily, quietly adjusting itself to changing conditions … This nation has placed its destiny in the hands and heads and hearts of its millions of free men and women; and its faith in freedom under the guidance of God.”
Freedom of speech and of worship. Freedom from want. And freedom from fear.