Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Remembering Polio

How many of you remember Polio? I saw a guy I went to high school with in church today. I haven’t seen him in 47 years. He had Polio when he was young. I remember a half a dozen kids that wore braces on their legs from contracting it. I remember my mother keeping us inside all summer after a kid in the neighborhood came down with it. I remember we took the vaccine on a sugar cube, I was 9 or 10.

Does anyone else remember being afraid you were going to be crippled from it?

Everyone used to be afraid their kids would get it.

Often those kids that were sheltered the most were the ones that got it.

remember the same from the late 60s and the sugar cube, knew two kids who had the braces,

I guess that I was too busy to be afraid. At the elementary school I attended there were two classrooms where the "crippled kids" were taught. We were kept separate from them except for one 15-minute period in the afternoon when we could go in and visit them. There were kids with braces, crutches and those that were confined to wheel chairs. The worse afflicted could not speak or often even hold their heads up. I always felt sorry for them, but since there was no one in my family or among the friends that I knew that was afflicted, I never felt threatened or vulnerable. I finally did get vaccinated when I was in the 6th grade, as I recall, but it was an injection, not the sugar cube.

It was a different world. I clearly remember the teacher walking the entire class to the hospital to get the sugar cubes in 1963 as 8th graders. It was about a mile each way. My generation is the first to live without the fear of polio.

Mine was in the shot form as the oral polio vaccine hadn't been either discovered yet or if so approved for release. Seems like later on though I did get a booster with the oral vaccine. Even more scary than the threat of having to wear leg braces was the threat of winding up laying inside a "iron lung" machine for no telling how long.

My Dad had it, and beat it.

i know a guy who was crippled with it. he had a hard time walking and his speech was affected. but he was tough to play basketball with. he had some moves and could drive the ball. i still see him once in a while and he doesn't look like he's aged in 40 years.

I well remember polio, back in the late 50's and early 60's they didn't know how it was spread. My Dad was especially protective of my sister and I as kids, on the hottest summer day he wouldn't let us drink water from a public water fountain for fear of contracting polio. The first vaccine I got for polio was shot, I remember my Mother taking me to the City Board of Health for the shots and when the oral vaccine came along it was given in the public schools on Sunday. The program was called SOS shich stood for Sabin Oral Sunday for the doctor who created the vaccine.

My mom's best friend from church had it and it took her life at an early age. I remember the vaccine.

My wife and I both had it in the early 50s. One leg is a little shorter than the other but I was fortunate to still be able to earn a college football scholarship.

I remember the sugar cube. I think I recall dad telling me that the parents hated the spring coming on, as that's when Polio would hit.

My half-brother had it, a teacher in elementary school and one kid I knew of in the late 60's

I remember when i was a kid, we would go to the old high school building. people would be lined up around the school to get the sugar cube. we did have several kids that had it.
makes me wonder what happened to them.

A sister and a brother had it. I knew a more than a few other kids as I got older who had it and had arms/legs that didn't work right anymore.

When I was 4, in the early 50's, my dad had it. He spent 4 months in the hospital and rehab. He was one of the lucky ones who walked out healed. When they came out with the Salk vaccine, we were near the front of the line to get it. Later, when the came out with the Sabine version, we got that one, too.

When I was 4, in the early 50's, my dad had it. He spent 4 months in the hospital and rehab. He was one of the lucky ones who walked out healed. When they came out with the Salk vaccine, we were near the front of the line to get it. Later, when the came out with the Sabine version, we got that one, too.

Just the thought of having to live in one of those huge iron lungs was scary.

Had the shot and the sugar cube. One of the girls in my class and one of the teachers had polio.
When they sent the kids home with those cards with slots to put dimes in, my Dad filled them and told me to bring more.

Got the sugar cube at school must have been late 50s.

Funny, because of my brother's bout with polio, and my father trying to get any help from the March of Dimes, my father swore off the March of Dimes for the rest of his life. He hated those SOB's.

I rember the Sugar Cube, my Uncle had it as a Kid, and walked with a bad limp!