When polio struck: 3 KC-area survivors recall the trauma of the epidemic

Entire generations of Americans have little to no idea what it’s like to live through an epidemic.

In 1952, the peak polio year in the U.S., some 60,000 children were known to be infected with the virus. While some didn’t even know they had it, several thousand became paralyzed. More than 3,000 died that year.

It would take three more years before a polio vaccine would be available.

During those intervening years, in the heat of Midwest summers — when polio usually hit — swimming pools closed. Moviegoers were warned not to sit too close to one another. Hospitals sent parents with sick children down the road to other hospitals. Whole towns were shunned.

The Kansas City region got a taste of that fear during this summer’s measles outbreak, the worst in 30 years for Kansas. Though no one died, the outbreak still had a disease investigator for the Johnson County Health Department working nearly around the clock.

“I think we probably talked every hour on the hour, late into the night and on the weekend going, ‘Can you believe this is happening?’” Tiffany Wallin said in June of staying in contact with a Children’s Mercy Hospital specialist to halt the spread of the highly contagious virus.

To get a sense of polio’s grip on the Kansas City region before vaccinations were available, we talked to three survivors — including one of the last iron lung users in the country — about what it was like to live through an epidemic and the scars that remain.

This story was originally published August 19, 2018 at 5:45 AM.