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OPAF Orthotics and Prosthetics (O&P) Awareness Initiative
Newspaper Articles
Five articles on Polio, Post Polio, and Warm Springs, Georgia
by M.A.J. McKenna staff writer, science and medicine
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution• Article 1 • Article 2 • Article 3 • Article 4 • Article 5 •
Additional readings and information about polio and post polio
Back to main OPAF O&P Awareness page
The Atlanta Journal - Constitution Thursday, April 12, 2001
Section D, Page 1
Polio survivors remember at Warm Springs Tender and painful memories
await senior citizens at first treatment center reunion
By M.A.J. McKenna/Staff
Warm Springs --- They grew up, and they moved away. But they have never
forgotten.
Several hundred senior citizens from around the United States converged
Wednesday night on this small town 80 miles south of downtown Atlanta.
Their trips are a return to their childhoods and to memories that are
both tender and acutely painful: When they were children, they had polio,
and Warm Springs was the place that took care of them.
Today through Saturday, the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation
is holding the first reunion of polio survivors who were treated at the
hospital. More than 150 are expected to attend; for many, it is their
first visit in 40 or 50 years.
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| Residents of Warm Springs watch as FDR's casket arrives at the train station. All along the route to Washington, mourners waited for his funeral train to pass. Photo © RWSIR |
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| With World War II nearing its end in Europe, FDR came to Warm Springs for a two-week vacation in the spring of 1945. His sudden death from a cerebral hemorrhage on April 12 shocked the nation. Here, the funeral procession passes Georgia Hall, giving staff and patients of the Institute one last chance to see the man who had given them so much hope and encouragement. Photo © RWSIR |
Warm Springs was a fading 19th-century spa when Franklin Roosevelt bought
it in 1927 and made it into a combined treatment center for patients and
a personal retreat where his own polio paralysis didn't need to be concealed.
He died at Warm Springs 56 years ago today. Thousands of children and
young adults were treated here over 30 years, until polio vaccine was
discovered and mass vaccination campaigns chased the disease from the
country.
For most Americans, polio is a forgotten disease, though it persists in
the developing world where the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention is working to eradicate it. But there are 1.6 million polio
survivors living in the United States who remember it vividly.
About 40 percent of them are believed to suffer from post-polio syndrome,
a new set of disabilities that develops 40 to 50 years after the first
attack of the disease. Warm Springs has one of the few research teams
in the world working on the syndrome; part of the reunion program will
deal with educating polio survivors about the new threat to their health.