Jim Smith was totally paralyzed from the neck down at age 2. His parents were told “the hospital is full - take him home”. Jim has his own special perspective to life with the effects of this terrible virus.

It was the summer of 1952 and our country was in the middle of its worst polio epidemic since 1916. Nearly 58,000 cases of polio were reported and more than 3,000 died. I was lucky.

One August day I was outside in front of our home playing hopscotch with some of the other girls in the neighborhood, when I realized I did not feel well. A few days later, my right arm was paralyzed.

I am an “inapparent” (often referred to as ‘non-paralytic’) polio survivor with PPS. My post-polio journey was long, painful and truly confusing. There was diagnosis, frightening mis-diagnosis and an enormous amount of self-doubt. Carol Ferguson

His three months in the hospital included an iron lung, a rocking bed and painful physical therapy. He learned how to stay positive in the face of adversity.

Thomas Fetterman caught polio when he was 8. He needed an iron lung. Despite his many challenges he always looks for the positive aspects of his experiences.

My parents decided to volunteer our entire family (themselves included), feeling strongly that it was the right thing to do.

His parents would have given anything for their son to have had a vaccine to prevent polio.

These Philadelphia-area polio survivors continue to suffer from a disease thought to be long gone.

According to John T. Margie, US Marine Corp, Retired “It’s the training that makes the difference”.

She remembers the day she felt too tired to feed those chickens, and was too tired to hold her 9-month-old niece. Finally, the family doctor was called and her parents were told she had the “the flu or grippe”

I contracted polio when I was 5. We lived in West Virginia, where there was only a small clinic. . .

“Parents of children today don’t have any idea of the fear that took ovr the country in the summers of the 1940’s and 50’s.” Joe Randig for the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

One day I was an active 12-year-old riding my bike, playing baseball with my friends and climbing trees on my grandmother’s farm. The next day, I remember feeling bad, missing school and developing a limp.

I probably didn’t give much thought to my plain brown shoes in the beginning. I was just happy to be on my feet and walking.

I had just returned from a week’s vacation at Geneva on the Lake. I was almost eighteen years old and was embarking on a nursing career. While at home, I was preparing to start an “on the floor” study the on the following Monday. Three days prior, I started having a weird sensation on my skin.

One morning, shortly before my ninth birthday, I had trouble getting my shoes on, but eventually I did and went off to school with this thought from my mother - “If you have any trouble during school, go to the office”.