I answer the door and stare. I realize that most of my friends are, shall we say, unique, but this person has silver hair in an elaborate updo, a tutu, and ballet slippers. Also wings! Yep, those transparent fluttery things are definitely wings.

Have you ever wondered? And really closed your eyes, If only for a moment, And thought of special times.

I contracted polio in Amarillo, Texas in October 1952, when I was 3 1/2 years old. No one in my family knows where I might have contracted the virus.

On June 8, 1953, Martha Lillard celebrated her fifth birthday with a party at an amusement park in Oklahoma. A little over a week later, she woke up with a sore throat and a pain in her neck.

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”.

One hot summer day in 1930, she was brought down to a swimming pool in Newark NJ to cool off and go for a swim. The two year old was told not to dunk her head in the water.

Six-year-old Wilma Rudolph was different from the other kids. They could walk, run, and jump, but she was hampered by a paralyzed, twisted left leg.

Polio, which caused the asymmetrical freezing of my muscles, not only shaped my body, but also moulded my personality. A virus — something that itself exists on the border between being alive and dead — had the power to write the manuscript of my life.

It was a very hot day. When they passed Logan Circle she let him play in the water fountain. That’s the day they believe he caught polio. The next day, they blocked off the entire area.

Explanation of the disease Polio and resource list of famous people living and deceased who had polio in their lives.

In 1949, the year I was hit by the poliovirus, 42,000 cases of polio were reported in the United States and 2,720 people died, most of them children.

Deborah served as activist, mentor, friend, sister and boss to many in Memphis and across the country.

At the age of four, I quickly had to come to terms with the devastating reality of contracting polio. I was born in Israel in 1945, but it would be another decade before the country began a national immunization program.