And thank God for both Sabin and Salk polio vaccines!!! Before them, in Southern climates (hot and humid), people who could afford to took their children to live in the country during the summer, because there was less exposure to this communicable disease.
Most (it usually struck children) lost use of arms or legs to paralysis, but some even had paralyzed lungs:
And there were wards and wards of kids who could only live like this. (I've been told that most paralyzed by Polio EVENTUALLY recovered most functions.)
I knew several who were partially paralyzed, the first being Mickey, two years older than me who lived next door to my parents' apartment in Cincinnati:
And I gave Mickey my first "homo-kiss" -- LOL!!!
Another, in leg braces was the nephew of Hollywood "B" actor, Victor Mature:
And that friend (whose name I forgot decades ago), was LAVISHED with everything Mr. Mature could buy to help relieve his suffering.
But in ANOTHER strange connection to Hollywood, my mother, while a nurse at Good Samaritan Hospital in Cincinnati -- and before she'd even met my father -- had to clip Victor Mature's toenails as he lay recovering from something, and Mom quotes him as saying with mild astonishment as she tossed the clippings in the trash: "I believe you are the ONLY girl who wouldn't save those!!!" -- LOL!!!
>>> CORRECTION on 10 April, 2014:
It was actually Sonny Tufts, the spoiled son of an old Banking Family after one-of-whom, Tufts University is named: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonny_Tufts , whose toe nails my mother cut -- and did not "Properly Honor".
But I spent the most of grade school at St. Martha's in Louisville, Kentucky (and in 1959, I even helped the volunteer men assemble our desks that had come in kits before the school opened, the summer before third grade), and at THAT school had both Rosemary Clooney's SISTER and Eva Marie Saint's SISTER-IN-LAW for substitute teachers. This my SECOND (if tangential) brush with celebrities, after Roy Rogers and Dale Evans had so coolly dressed up and entertained groups of 4 - 6 of us neighborhood kids in Roy's first cousin's living room -- right next door to my parents' first purchased house on Ebeneezer Road in Cincy.
And the nuns at St. Martha included my sister Jane's second grade teacher, Sister Mary Vitalis (I guess there is a St. Vitalis with fabu hair, and hence the name of the then-popular hair oil), and while I DID see their aluminum Christmas tree with four-color light wheel (which seemed shocking to me back then -- nuns should have a TRADITIONAL tree, no???), I never caught them roller-skating in the cleared cafeteria like I did with Kevin Holleran (now an attorney in West Chester, PA), at Sts. Philip & James in Exton, Pennsylvania.
And it was in Louisville that Mom took Jane and me to hear President Kennedy speak. I barely remember it, except for the crowd and him far away, speaking, but that address got the LONGEST AUDIENCE APPLAUSE of any he ever gave, and to this day, every now and then, I remember and give a single clap so I am the last one clapping.
Is it any WONDER I would eventually meet so many Kennedys and be privy to "secret info" shared by Jackie with my boss Tennessee Williams???
This is PROOF POSITIVE of the Power of Thought -- even though I had NO IDEA what I was doing at the time.
>>> ADDITIONAL PROOF is that I've had HELL TO PAY the last four years, due to GAZILLIONS of BAD THOUGHTS, but then I DO retain a serious Sense of Humor about it all, no???
President and Mrs. Kennedy begin his last day.
Scott
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