Washington • Franklin Roosevelt, afflicted by the disease at age 39, died in April 1945 at the polio recuperation facility he had created in Warm Springs, Georgia. Before then, Mitch McConnell living in Five Points, Alabama, began going there for treatment for the polio that struck him at age 2, in 1944.
After paralysis by polio, an inner iron undergirded the ebullience of FDR, who hitherto had relied on privilege and charm. McConnell, who had none of the former and is parsimonious with the latter, acquired while overcoming polio the patience and grit that on June 12 will make him the longest-serving leader of Senate Republicans, surpassing Bob Dole.