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.

When I was seven months old, my Mother and Daddy noticed my runny nose and how much I was falling when I was trying to hold onto furniture and pull myself up. By the time the tests were completed, I couldn’t stand at all.

John Nanni, as most people who contract polio do, got it as a baby, just one year before the vaccine became widely available.

Ann Lee Hussey is a polio survivor and a veterinary technician who travels the world leading other volunteers on trips to vaccinate children against polio.

Ina Pinkney was infected in 1944, during World War II, more than a decade before the Salk Vaccine became available, stemming the annual summer epidemics that paralyzed communities almost like it paralyzed children.

David contracted polio from the live polio vaccine when he was a baby. It was later discovered he had a serious underlying immune disorder, which meant he was susceptible to many infections, including polio.

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.

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.

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.

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.

We got home from Rock Creek in time to sign up for my second session of swimming lessons at Downey High School. At least that was the plan. Of course, things don’t always work out as planned.

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.