Polio: Yesterday and Today

The Polio Crusade: An American Experience Film

In the summer of 1950 fear gripped the residents of Wytheville, Virginia. Movie theaters shut down, baseball games were cancelled and panicky parents kept their children indoors — anything to keep them safe from an invisible invader. Outsiders sped through town with their windows rolled up and bandanas covering their faces. The ones who couldn’t escape the perpetrator were left paralyzed, and some died in the wake of the devastating and contagious virus. Polio had struck in Wytheville. The town was in the midst of a full-blown epidemic. That year alone, more than 33,000 Americans fell victim — half of them under the age of ten.


The Library will screen this one hour documentary, followed by a discussion of the state of polio eradication in the world today. David Carpenter, Rotary International Zone 29 Polio Challenge Coordinator, will speak on Thursday, October 29 at 7pm in the library auditorium.

In addition, the Library is sponsoring a special book discussion of two books: Warm Springs and Splendid Solution. The discussion will be held on Tuesday, November 10 at 7pm in the library lounge.

Warm Springs is the memoir of Susan Richards Shreve, one of the last victims of polio in the United States. She contracted polio and was sent to the sanitorium at Warm Springs, GA, the polio haven founded by Franklin Roosevelt. She stayed for two years, 1952-1954. While she was at Warm Springs, the Salk Vaccine was introduced and the cases of polio dramatically reduced. "Shreve's memoir is both a fascinating historical record of the time and an intensely felt story of childhood." (book description)

Splendid Solution: Jonas Salk and the Conquest of Polio by Jeffrey Kluger is the "compelling true story of an urgent scientific battle--and of the man who provided a crucial turning point in the quest to eradicate polio and, in the process, becams a cultural icon." (book description)

Read one or both and join us for the discussion on November 10.