Last Week at Rotary
"I woke up that morning to the sound of my mother screaming. My brother was paralyzed from the waist down."
With this recollection at our meeting last week, retired USFS law enforcement officer Duane Moe reminded the club of the devastation that polio wreaked in the days before the polio vaccine. In 1952 Duane's older brother, Don, a junior at Great Falls High School, came home from football practice one night feeling "funny." His mother thought he might be coming down with the flu and sent him to bed. The next morning she went to check on him and that's when Duane heard her scream.
"It changed all our lives for the rest of our lives," Duane said. His mother and father were running ragged, looking for cures and rehabilitation. His older sister took over the care of Duane and his 7-year-old twin, Daryl. Don alternated between struggling to regain his mobility and giving in to an overwhelming helplessness. The two second-graders pitched in to help, doing everything from laundry and housecleaning to helping Don get dressed.
Duane said that during the 1952 epidemic, most people in Great Falls just accepted that it could happen to anyone. His family was not quarantined. He and Daryl continued to go to school, and so did Don in time. A few neighbors would cross the street rather than go past their house for fear of "catching it," but mostly people were kind and supportive. Before the vaccine, Duane said, everybody just felt helpless to do anything about it. He and Daryl were included in the vaccine trials and were part of the promotion campaign for the vaccine in Great Falls.
Duane thanked the club for all that Rotary has done to eliminate polio and again stressed the importance of vaccination. His message was reinforced by recollections from Art Taft and Judge Holter, both of whom knew young me with stories similar to Don's. "If you were a child in Montana in the 1950s, chances are you knew someone who had it," Art pointed out, and a lot of heads nodded throughout the dining hall.
Meanwhile, outside our shredding event to raise funds to meet our pledge for Polio Plus was in full operation. People with boxes to shred were lined up at 11 a.m. and business was brisk. We shredded some 100 banker's boxes of paper and nearly tripled our fundraising goal of $800. Successsssss!
