POOL REPORT
Posted: Wednesday, July 11, 2007 4:44 PM by Daily Nightly Editor
Filed Under:
Brian Williams
By Brian Williams, Anchor and Managing Editor
For two years, I sat over the shallow end of FDR's swimming pool. Richard Nixon (a bowler, not a swimmer) put down flooring in 1970 and covered FDR's pool with the press briefing room in the West Wing. And when I entered that room every day as White House correspondent, and took my seat in the blue chair on the far left in the front row (with the brass "NBC" plaque on the front), I always thought of the room's prior use. FDR, who pronounced the pool "splendid," took his first dip at 6:30pm on June 3, 1933.
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| Franklin Roosevelt swimming, ca. 1930's Photo courtesy FDR Library |
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He had the temperature of the water kept at a constant 88 degrees -- to match the waters of Warm Springs, Georgia, which he found to have such restorative powers. The New York Lyndon Johnson used the pool often, and often without a bathing suit. He also used the practice of swimming in the nude (and urinating off the porch of his Texas Hill Country ranch) as a kind of "manhood test" which he would apply to the men he called "the Harvards" -- the Eastern intellectuals on his staff. They were bathing suit guys -- and resented the pressure to go without.
| Daily News led the effort to raise the money to build the pool, and never was it mentioned that the President found the water helped provide him with exercise meant to tone and soothe the ravages of polio.
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| White House swimming pool, June 2, 1933 (the day it opened). Photo courtesy FDR Library |
Today the press room opened again after a refurbishing, and tonight we'll spend a few moments looking at the new digs.
Also tonight: what did Chertoff mean by his "gut" feeling that a terrorist attack could come this summer? We'll have the latest on the so-called "pizza bomber" story, as well as foreclosures across the U.S. And Jim Maceda is just back from an embed in Iraq.
We'll also go back to the White House (way back to the Nixon years) and listen into some of the just-released tapes.
Please read today'sMedal of Honor biography. I'm told we've switched to some new blog software -- so apologies in advance for any bugs.
And please join us for tonight's Nightly News. We thank you as always.
