Select people (daughter, wife, friends) roll their eyes when I say, “I remember running out with my brother and playing all day in our neighborhood without adult supervision.” Or, “I remember skiing with cable bindings and wool mittens,” or, “I remember spending a dollar in the corner candy store after school and walking out with a pocket full of Sweet Tarts, Fireballs and candy cigarettes.”
I also remember standing in line in a Wyoming hospital corridor with other children waiting to receive a polio vaccination. I don’t remember my mother telling me much about polio or vaccines, other than promising me that it wouldn’t hurt or taste gross.
I had heard vague stories about Franklin Delano Roosevelt and even scarier ones about people entombed alive in something called the Iron Lung. But it was difficult to wrap my 6-year-old mind around how a president with a disability or a person spending most of their life on their back translated into me waiting in line to accept a small Dixie cup containing a medicine encased in a sugar cube.
The New York Times in a 1982 article referenced FDR’s status as the most famous American afflicted by polio, adding: “It is difficult for young people to appreciate the degree of fear that existed up to a couple of decades ago when polio was a dread disease of the summer.”
That is probably how COVID-19 pandemic survivors will describe 2020 to future generations. The Times article goes on to describe summers when polio cast its grim specter across America. People were warned to avoid crowds; “stay away from movies,” and keep children from playing with friends.
In a close parallel to this year, polio precautions included canceling vacations.
Polio exploded in epidemic proportions in the 1880s in northern Europe. The epidemic took root in the United States, according to the Times story, first in Vermont in 1894. By 1909, states were imposing strict quarantines in a desperate bid to stop polio’s spread.
New York City — one of the first COVID-19 battlegrounds — fought a running battle with polio in 1916. Children 16 years old and under were not allowed to leave the city between July and October without medical approval.
“Children in families affected by a case of polio were quarantined to their homes, and police officers were ordered to enter the homes to determine whether such regulations were being obeyed,” reported the Times.
A polio outbreak 40 years later sent public officials scurrying to implement health measures during the summer of 1955, fearing polio’s reputation as “the dread disease.”
As Labor Day approached, Lynn and other school districts postponed the Sept. 6 school opening date by a week, even longer in some communities, while Swampscott and Marblehead opened on time with parents insisting their children, according to a Daily Evening Item article, “spent the Summer in resort areas away from polio epidemic zones…”
Even with mass vaccination efforts, polio surfaced as a threat in Lynn again 2001 when an outbreak in Caribbean countries raised concerns among Spanish-speaking local residents and health officials.
I remember peering closely at the sugar cube on that afternoon 55 years ago and spotting a faint blue discoloration inside it. After a second’s hesitation, I popped the cube onto my tongue and let it melt away.
Thor Jourgensen can be reached at [email protected].
