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.

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.

“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.

I was one of many kids in the thousands of children who were brutally attacked by poliomyelitis during the epidemic outbreak of the virus between the years of 1951 and 1952 in México

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”.

“You’re OK but your feet don’t match”, my future husband jokingly said to me as he was walking me home from our first meeting.

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.

Ross Reynolds speaks with polio survivor and post-polio syndrome sufferer Kathy Parrish about her experience as a child with polio and the lasting impacts of the disease.

Peter Kavanagh is recalling a time four decades past. Stricken with paralytic poliomyelitis during the epidemic of 1953, he has lived a physical life of what he calls “really bad odds”

I grew up proud to be a polio survivor, blissfully unaware of the stigma many people attach to paralysis and deformity.

“I think an important element for any young person is the whole concept of resilience and perseverance. I mean, no one’s life is free of problems, of challenges, of confrontations.” Lauro Halstead

Kiwi parents who question the need to vaccinate their children need to know that the crippling disease poliomyelitis, commonly known as polio, is “just a plane ride away.”

Standing front of the first lady, she tried to apologize, but was halted in midsentence. "My dear, I understand perfectly," Mrs. Roosevelt said soothingly. "You are a polio."