Polio epidemic was devastating

The year 1949 saw the postponement of Union City’s celebration of its founding by Jeremiah Smith, and the cancellation of the Great Darke County Fair.

Randolph County and surrounding counties — indeed, the entire nation — faced a major outbreak of polio that caused dread in all Americans, particularly in parents since cases involving those younger than 20 outnumbered those of adults.

Union City Centennial Chairman Herbert F. Binninger and other committee members admitted their despondency as they reluctantly shaved their ornamental beards. 

By July 1, deaths and severe cases began to mount. At first, panic ensued because physicians failed to identify the causes with certainty. Eventually, the blame was placed on contaminated food and water.

Portland made the national news on July 30 after an escalating number of deaths and cases resulted in authorities placing a ban on children attending swimming pools, baseball games and public gatherings for two weeks, according to Oklahoma’s Okmulgee Daily Times. 

Muncie Mayor Lester Holloway drew raised eyebrows after recommending cancellation of all public activities and yet allowing the Delaware County Fair to stay open. At the time of the announcement, Robert Engle, 25, of Winchester, died at Ball Memorial Hospital despite the assistance of a respirator known as an iron lung.

Holloway offered assurances that the fair planned to take all precautions recommended by his board of health.

Not until 1953 did Dr. Jonas Salk announce that he developed a preventative vaccine. It took two years before full approval was given. Alternatively, University of Miami researchers in Florida found that some polio victims could be cured with cobra venom. Other so-called cures were exposed as bogus.

At the time, my friends and I in suburban Buffalo, New York, lived with nightmarish thoughts about contracting polio. That the nuns at my parochial school and my mother forbade me from going to the local swimming pool and beach only heightened my paranoia. 

Then the worst happened in 1953. I had a frail and tiny buddy named Franklin who lived next door to my favorite childless uncle who showered me with toys every visit. The times were close enough to World War II that we played World War II, arguing about who played American soldiers and who played Nazi soldiers. If we chanced to come upon firecrackers, we put the toy soldiers in cans and executed some.

Franklin contracted a nasty form of the disease called bulbar polio that attacked his brain and breathing. He literally wasted away, and my mother and uncle informed me when he went on an iron lung. 

One visit, I went to ask his mother if I could see him despite the iron lung. She broke into tears and informed me Franklin had died.

I walked away squeezing the toy soldier I’d hoped to give him as a gift. I was shaken. Maybe I hadn’t prayed hard enough for Franklin.

For years after, I witnessed my peers in wheelchairs and braces suffering the evidence of their bouts with polio contracted before the vaccine was ready. A college friend named Kathleen walked with a brace but was otherwise unimpaired. 

In Randolph County, as elsewhere, the good news that unlimited vaccines were available nationally to treat 30 million children was heralded by all. The mark from my polio shot stayed visible for years, but it’s now just a white dot. 

Likely some of that first group are now readers in their mid-70s. You and I had a chance to lead lives that Franklin never had. 

We all should be on guard so polio never makes a comeback. 

I equate the memory of that toy soldier with the loss of my little buddy Franklin. Eventually my mother tossed all my toys and baseball cards when my dad died and she moved into a tiny apartment. (She kept all my prayer books).

For sure, I never blew that toy iron soldier up with firecrackers.