Hamilton County and the Polio Epidemic
There’s been so much talk lately about the possibility polio vaccination requirements could be watered down, or done away with altogether, this seemed like a good time to examine the impact polio had on Hamilton County before vaccines were available.
If you’re not entirely sure what polio is — after all, it hasn’t existed in the Western Hemisphere since the 1990s — here’s a little background . . .
Polio, or more properly poliomyelitis, is a VERY contagious disease caused by a virus. It attacks the nervous system and can paralyze a person within hours of being infected. Although its victims are usually children (it was originally called “infantile paralysis,”) anyone of any age who hasn’t been vaccinated can catch it.
Only a small percentage of polio victims die, but those who survive often suffer muscle weakness and other complications the rest of their lives.
The most important thing to know about polio is that THERE IS NO CURE. The only way to keep from contracting polio is to be vaccinated.
Actor Alan Alda, musician and songwriter Joni Mitchell, Olympic athlete Wilma Rudolph and politician Mitch McConnell are just a few of the famous polio survivors.
The disease’s most prominent victim, however, was President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Roosevelt founded the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, which became the organization we know today as the March of Dimes.
Although polio has been around for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, it didn’t start reaching epidemic levels until the 20th century.
I found a few cases of “infantile paralysis” reported in local newspapers during the first decades of that century, but the worst years were 1949-1955. Polio-related articles frequently appeared on the front page of the Noblesville Daily Ledger during that period.
In 1949 Hamilton County had nearly 20 cases and one or two deaths. That may not sound like much, but the county’s population in 1950 was less than 29,000, so most people were probably either personally acquainted with a polio victim, or knew OF them or their family.
Among the local victims of the outbreak were three Carmel High School students, Dora (Owen) Wainwright, Rosalyn (Shoemaker) Stuckey and Alyce (Myers) DeBlase.
The three girls were hospitalized for weeks and two of them had to be placed in an iron lung. They all survived, but were left with varying degrees of paralysis. The most seriously affected, Alyce Myers, spent the rest of her life in a wheelchair.
That was also the fate of Marjorie Passwater, Indiana’s “Polio Mother of the Year” for 1958.
The wife of Hamilton County Deputy Sheriff (and later Sheriff) Marcus Passwater, Jr., Mrs. Passwater caught polio in 1952, as did one of her sons. His case was mild, but she nearly died and for the last 20 years of her life she was wheelchair-bound.
In 1951, volunteers went door-to-door in Noblesville, collecting funds to fight the dreaded disease during the county’s first Mothers March on Polio. Two years later, the March expanded into a county-wide effort that continued annually each January for over a decade.
The tide finally began to turn when the Salk vaccine was made available in 1955, followed by Sabin’s oral vaccine in 1961. The Salk vaccine had its naysayers even back then, but the results were undeniable.
In 1955, 1,413 first and second grade students from all over Hamilton County received the Salk vaccine and the number of polio cases in the county began to drop.
By the 1960s, the success of the vaccines allowed the March of Dimes to shift its focus from fighting polio to preventing birth defects and infant mortality.
Although polio has been eliminated from most of the world, it still exists in a couple of areas. As long as that’s true, it could stage a comeback.
Just some food for thought.
Paula Dunn’s From Time to Thyme column appears on Wednesdays in The Times. Contact her at [email protected]