Rome, 1950. I was twenty-two and had been traveling through Europe for six weeks with Carol, my college roommate. We had another month remaining before returning to the United States.

Recently I had the opportunity to return to the hospital where I received twenty-two months of rehabilitation following polio in 1952. At that time it was known as the D.T. Watson Home for Crippled Children.

I’m talking about an old-fashioned winter like when I was a kid in the 1950s. The snow started after Thanksgiving and it snowed ’til the end of February.

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.

Josephine (Briggs) Gross was born in Deadwood, South Dakota…. She was diagnosed with Polio at the age of 4, and remembers very little of it, however does not feel as though she suffered with it very badly while she was sick.

In order to get away from Trenton, NJ, which was experiencing a terrible epidemic of polio, Sally’s cousins had rented a house while their husbands were overseas. However, she and two of her younger cousins got sick, and Sally had to be driven home.

I have gone cross country from Seattle, WA to Lancaster, PA and up and down both coasts. Because I live on the west coast, my favorite option for east coast rail travel is to fly to Chicago and catch the train there.

I came down with a high fever and a stiff neck. Mom called our doctor. The next thing I knew, I was alone in an ambulance bound for a hospital at the other end of the county.

Emanuel (Manny) Poznanski was born in Israel, where he contracted paralytic polio when he was 4 months old. He said his mother rushed him on a plane to the U.S. to save his life.

Let me tell you how Santa and I came together 63 years ago.

As an active 10 year old, living in a tight knit community in East Detroit, Roger enjoyed the summer of 1947 playing with his friends in the neighborhood. Soon the summer fun came to a harsh end with the spread of polio.

“Are you handy?” I hear this question many, many times a day. Just to be clear, my husband Joe is not asking me if I am handy as in fixing a leaky faucet or assembling an Ikea book case. He already knows the answer to those questions.

During that first year of the Salk vaccine, there was a shortage of polio vaccine in northern Wisconsin and they decided to give it only to children going to school. That was a good public health decision, but a bad one for me.

She never understood why she had Post-Polio Syndrome later in life. Marge never pitied herself and knew she could do anything she put her mind to.

Through all the ups and downs in her life Marge always had one word for herself, “blessed”.