We were Polio Pioneers

“The Biggest Public Health Experiment Ever” was how Statistics: A Guide to the Unknown, edited by Judith Tanner, described the 1954 polio immunizations.  

Since my last post I have been busy reading Polio: An American Story, by David M. Oshinsky. It is a well written and documented history of the disease. It helped me to understand what lead up to the immunizations in spring 1954.  So in a nutshell:

In 1938 Franklin Roosevelt, himself a polio victim, formed the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis with the goal of finding a cure for polio while providing the best possible care for those afflicted.

The National Foundation’s successful annual March of Dimes campaign funded the research that made tremendous strides over the next decade. In the early 1950s the number of polio cases spiked again.  

Surrounded by controversy, Jonas Salk’s vaccine seemed the best option for controlling the new polio outbreak.  With little testing, the vaccine, manufactured by Eli Lilly and Park-Davis, was rushed to market.  The first shot was given in April 1954 and successive immunizations given through the end of the school year. By that time over a million school children across the U.S. received the vaccine or a placebo. 

Tompkins County children were among those chosen to be Polio Pioneers. Some children received the vaccine via shots while others took a liquid form.  Since I remember taking the liquid form in little white paper cups and my husband remembers receiving a shot, I wondered why the different forms?

I then checked with the History Center, the Tompkins County Health Department, the Tompkins County Historian, and the Deputy County Clerk.  None of these sources had, to their knowledge, any record or documentation regarding the 1954 polio vaccinations.   

From reading Prof. Oshinksy’s book, I learned the reason might be because documentation was sent immediately to the Vaccine Evaluation Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan where the results were collected, processed and coded. 

The formal report given one year later on April 12, 1955 was that the vaccine was successful. 

The answer to our question: Why did students at Newfield Central School receive shots while those at the Willow Creek two-room schoolhouse in the Ithaca district receive the oral vaccine - may never be answered.

It’s My Three Year Blogiversary! And - Calling all Polio Pioneers!

Celebrating my three year Blogiversary

Last Monday’s blog that developed from identifying an old photo to finding information on Ithaca's 1916 polio epidemic has kept me preoccupied with further research on this topic. The question: oral versus shots.

Courtesy of  http://amhistory.si.edu/polio/virusvaccine/clinical.htm

I vividly remember the day I became a Polio Pioneer. I was attending Willow Creek School as a second grader.  We had been indoctrinated about the importance of the role we were about to undertake.  We knew that some children would receive the live vaccine; others a placebo. With much anticipation we marched into the central hall that separated the two schoolrooms.  In the hall was a long table filled with little white paper cups that held the liquid.  And that is where my memory ends. I do not remember getting an additional shot.  My husband, who grew up at the opposite end of Tompkins County, said the students in his school received the polio vaccine via shots.

I learned from a brief Internet and yes, encyclopedia, search that the oral vaccine wasn’t available until the early 1960s.  If that was true, how did we happen to have it available to our rural school in abt 1954?  Or, was the oral vaccine the placebo?

I contacted the Tompkins County Historian, who immediately replied she didn’t know the answer to my question, but was now herself very curious. She grew up in New Jersey at about the same time and also received the oral vaccine.  She suggested I contact the Tompkins County Health Department.

Before doing that I contacted the History Center in Ithaca.  They too responded immediately, but saying, sorry, all they had were a few photos of children getting the vaccine.

We are awaiting a call back from the Tompkins County Health Department from a nurse who might know if the polio records from the 1950s were kept and if so where they might be archived.

In the meantime I went to the library to take out Polio: An American Story by David M. Oshinsky.  This book will not give me the specific answer I am looking for as far as immunizations in Tompkins County is concerned, but it will give me a lot of interesting information on polio in general. 

And offshoot of finding the photo of the Lamkin family is my husband just finished an article on the Lamkins and the polio epidemic for the Newfield Historical Society’s next newsletter.

You just never know what road genealogy research will take you. 

52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy - Our Measles Rooms

Skip and Mary Nunn
Socksie on the sidewalk
1486 Taughannock Boulevard

Although my brother Skip and I were saved from contracting polio by being Polio Pioneers, we did however suffer through the usual childhood diseases of the time – chicken pox and measles.  

I don’t remember now which one of us contracted measles first. But our clever parents found a way to care for us while keeping up with their responsibilities of running a business. We were each ensconced in our own guest room on the second floor of the restaurant so that Mom and Dad could continue to work, while keeping a close eye on us.  Bed rest in a darkened room was mandatory. I remember how hard it was to stay in bed in a room by myself with all the activity going on down below. Of course I was provided with things to do, books to read, coloring books, dot-to-dot books, paper dolls, but it just wasn’t the same.

From that day forward the two second floor guest rooms to the right and left of the center windows were labeled “Skip’s Measles Room” (right), and “Mary’s Measles Room” (left)