Pauline Nevins

“Don’t get both shots in one arm.” It was our daughter, Tina, calling. “I did that two days ago and still regret it.”

I remembered Tina’s advice as Jim and I motored down the hill to the CVS Pharmacy in Auburn. Since COVID, we’re getting vaccinated more consistently. And a recent reading of Charlotte DeCroes Jacobs’ biography, “Jonas Salk – A Life,” only strengthened that commitment.

Ms. Jacobs begins with these chilling words: “In the summer of 1916, New York’s playgrounds stood empty. No children splashed in public swimming pools; none sold lemonade on the sidewalks. …” I had no idea America’s first polio epidemic occurred 40 years before my first polio vaccination in 1956.

As I ploughed through the Salk biography (559 pages), skipping most of the shocking clinical trials, I discovered I knew even less about Dr. Salk than I thought. That he was extraordinarily dedicated was no surprise – he often spent 16 hours a day in his laboratory toiling to eradicate what the public feared, “second only to the atomic bomb.” But his personal life was in shambles. He neglected his family. “There were rumors of affairs … no one adored Salk more than America’s women.” And he inexplicably struggled to achieve acceptance from the scientific community.

Despite obstacles, success came at last. On April 12, 1955, funded almost entirely from March of Dimes donations, Dr. Salk’s vaccine was approved. Six years later, polio was almost eradicated from the United States. Millions wrote him letters of gratitude. Countless universities bestowed honorary degrees upon him. Medals galore were hung around his neck – the most prestigious from the sitting president, Dwight D. Eisenhower. The celebrity he never sought overwhelmed Salk.

I’ve only known a few people who contracted polio. One is my daughter’s mother-in-law, Mary Patt, and the other is Larry Rolufs, who I met through Auburn’s Newcomers and Neighbors club.

Mary Patt was 6 years old in 1940 when she fell ill. One morning, she tried to get out of bed, fell to the floor and couldn’t get up. The next two years of her young life, she was isolated from her family in the Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles and spent five days encased in an iron lung. “When my dad came to see me in the hospital,” she told me on the phone, from Chico, “I told him, ‘Get me out of this tin can.’ ” She and I both laughed.

Larry was born the year Mary Patt contracted polio. Six years later, he too was stricken with the devastating disease. On a sunny December morning, we sat across from each other at my dining table, his cane resting by his leg. Larry’s first memory of the illness was strikingly similar to Mary Patt’s. “We were visiting family in Elk Grove,” he said. “I sat on the ground to play with younger family members, then couldn’t get back up.” His legs were too weak to hold him. He was quickly diagnosed with polio and admitted to the isolation wing at Mercy Hospital in Sacramento. “The only time I could see my family was through a window. They would be outside on the grounds and would wave to me.”

The accepted treatment for polio was to immobilize the affected limbs. This therapy was later abandoned thanks to Sister Elizabeth Kenny, an Australian nurse who introduced a technique using hot packs and muscle strengthening exercises. The medical field did not immediately accept her methods, but they proved effective. Mary Patt still recalls the screams of children being treated with the scalding hot blankets, and up to a few years ago, Larry would awake each morning remembering the scent of those blankets.

Polio left Larry atrophied and partly paralyzed on his left side. “My childhood was normal,” he said nonchalantly. “Yes, I was different, the kid who limped, who didn’t have a lot of left side body control. But I did all the things I wanted to do, although,” he admitted with a broad smile, “sliding into second base wasn’t my best idea.” He paused. “The one thing you’ll find in polio victims, almost invariably, is that they are the most determined people you’ll ever meet!”

This is certainly true of Mary Patt and Larry. Both are accomplished. They graduated from college, had long and successful careers – Mary Patt as a teacher and Larry working in the printing business, traveling the world. Both married and raised children. Mary Patt proudly proclaimed she had no trouble giving birth to her four children. The only challenge, she exclaimed, was when they ran away. She couldn’t catch them.

Not all surprises came from the book. I learned from Larry that polio has not been eradicated. He’s a longtime member of Rotary International, an organization involved for decades in efforts to eradicate the wild polio virus still active in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Smallpox, Larry said, is the only disease that was officially eradicated from the world, vanquished by vaccinations.