Our Tenth Anniversary -
How We Began:
It’s been ten years since our founder attended the PHI Conference in St. Louis. Upon return, she was inspired by the survivors and amazing professionals she met and was determined to bring support to her own home location. By the end of the summer, the initial volunteer team was intact and the website had begun. We began as the Pennsylvania Polio Survivors Network, mistakenly thinking that only survivors in this area are asking questions and seeking help. We will always be grateful for Richard L. Bruno, PhD, Polio Australia and Post-Polio Health International for their initial support. Prior to our launching our website in December, 2014, Dr. Bruno (Director, International Center for Polio Education), Joan Headley (Director, PHI) and Polio Australia approved everything we had put onto our new (and very basic “free” website). Shortly thereafter, we began sharing our newsletter and Bruno Byte (Q&A’s) on a monthly basis.
Within a year, we had survivors from all over the US asking for our information. Within two years, we were sharing our information abroad. Over the next few years, our volunteer team grew to what it is today. After five years, it was suggested by multiple survivors that we relaunch and change our name to one that would “invite” survivors from anywhere in the world.
Given our donation dependent status, when seeking to create a new website with such a low budget, the large number of articles we had accrued became a very expensive issue, far more than we could afford. In 2021, we met Stay Calm Industries. Over the next ten months, our meetings focused on not just the technical piece of the site creation but primarily on “what we do, and why we do it”. Evan and Rick (of Stay Calm) could see the importance of the generous professionals who gave so much to support polio survivors and they wanted those survivors and health care professionals using our site to have easy Indexing and Search capabilities to find whatever information they were looking for. Their significant generosity, creativity and hard work resulted in our becoming Polio Survivors Serving Others (PPSN) – www.polionetwork.org, in the spring of 2023.
We are thankful for those who believe in this mission to serve polio survivors all over the world:
Our Professionals:
John R. Bach, MD, Norma Braun, MD, Richard L. Bruno, HD, PhD, Selma H. Calmes, MD, Mark A. Lopatin, MD, William M. DeMayo, MD, Marny K. Eulberg, MD, William Montgomery, MFT, Paul A. Offit, MD, Carol Vandenakker-Albanese, MD, Daniel J. Wilson, PhD, Polio Australia and Post-Polio Health International for their generosity in giving us the ability to share their work with those in our Network.
Our Working Team whose creativity has taken our work forward:
Survivors - Joyce Crutchfield, Carol Ferguson, Joe Randig, Jim Smith and Deborah Stambaugh.
Volunteers - Harry (Finance), Carolyn Meyers (Website maintenance), Pat Rider (Support), Pamela Sergey (Story writing and book reviews), Aaron To (Graphic Design), Helen Urban (Story writing and editing), and Denise Yarrington (Large Print newsletter conversion and misc. everything).
Special thanks to those survivors who have generously come forward to participate: John Nanni, Greta Roberts, Shirley Smith, Barb Underwood, May Van, Laura Vittorioso, and all of the survivors who have trusted us to publish their stories of survival and courage.
Working together to serve others as we advocate to rid the world of this terrible disease has truly inspired us.