Josephine (Briggs) Gross was born in Deadwood, South Dakota…. She was diagnosed with Polio at the age of 4, and remembers very little of it, however does not feel as though she suffered with it very badly while she was sick.

In order to get away from Trenton, NJ, which was experiencing a terrible epidemic of polio, Sally’s cousins had rented a house while their husbands were overseas. However, she and two of her younger cousins got sick, and Sally had to be driven home.

I have gone cross country from Seattle, WA to Lancaster, PA and up and down both coasts. Because I live on the west coast, my favorite option for east coast rail travel is to fly to Chicago and catch the train there.

We got home from Rock Creek in time to sign up for my second session of swimming lessons at Downey High School. At least that was the plan. Of course, things don’t always work out as planned.

I came down with a high fever and a stiff neck. Mom called our doctor. The next thing I knew, I was alone in an ambulance bound for a hospital at the other end of the county.

Emanuel (Manny) Poznanski was born in Israel, where he contracted paralytic polio when he was 4 months old. He said his mother rushed him on a plane to the U.S. to save his life.

Let me tell you how Santa and I came together 63 years ago.

As an active 10 year old, living in a tight knit community in East Detroit, Roger enjoyed the summer of 1947 playing with his friends in the neighborhood. Soon the summer fun came to a harsh end with the spread of polio.

In 1949, the year I was hit by the poliovirus, 42,000 cases of polio were reported in the United States and 2,720 people died, most of them children.

“Are you handy?” I hear this question many, many times a day. Just to be clear, my husband Joe is not asking me if I am handy as in fixing a leaky faucet or assembling an Ikea book case. He already knows the answer to those questions.

During that first year of the Salk vaccine, there was a shortage of polio vaccine in northern Wisconsin and they decided to give it only to children going to school. That was a good public health decision, but a bad one for me.

I was one of many kids in the thousands of children who were brutally attacked by poliomyelitis during the epidemic outbreak of the virus between the years of 1951 and 1952 in México

She never understood why she had Post-Polio Syndrome later in life. Marge never pitied herself and knew she could do anything she put her mind to.

Through all the ups and downs in her life Marge always had one word for herself, “blessed”.

“You’re OK but your feet don’t match”, my future husband jokingly said to me as he was walking me home from our first meeting.

Deborah served as activist, mentor, friend, sister and boss to many in Memphis and across the country.