Dayton Chronicle - Your Hometown News Source

To the editor,

I read with interest the column by Connie Schultz in USA Today entitled, "Vaccinating Children from Polio to Covid. I was one of those children in 1954 to stand in line for the sugar cube polio vaccine.

Huron, South Dakota, a small town, 8,000 people. We gathered at Huron Arena, the largest venue in town. The populace turned out en masse, We serpentine through the Arena for hours. When my father got off work, he came looking for us and joined the line. There was no question in anyone's mind about should we or shouldn't we. With all the children in the Arena it was amazingly quiet as we waited.

Nine years later I became a Candy Striper at the local hospital. In the basement were gigantic baths where wheelchair-bound polio patients were rolled in for relief. No longer used iron lungs were against the wall. It made quite an impression on this young volunteer.

Six weeks before my twenty-first birthday, I married a polio survivor. At two years old he contracted polio before a vaccine was discovered. Until he was 12 years of age he lived in the hospital. He was strapped on a machine, resembling a hula hoop that constantly turned him. If polio didn't kill it shriveled one's muscles.

The muscles in his feet, calves, and back were cut and straightened. He was put in a body cast from his hips to a chin rest. It was replaced every six months to allow his bones to grow. He told of corn meal being dropped in to soak up the South Dakota summer humidity and rulers used to scratch the itch. As a result of the cast his body was very scarred. He grew to 6 feet 3 inches tall, weighing in at 140 lbs. soaking wet with rocks in his pockets. At 12 the cast came off. His entire spine was fused to a steel rod. But he could walk on his 13AAA shoe sized feet. All his clothes were tailor-made. But he was alive, intelligent, eventually earning his doctorate.

I would not wish the resultant polio disability on anyone. Most were not as lucky to have the care of his Registered Nurse aunt and a small-town attitude of caring for their own. Over the years I have known many survivors with withered limbs and shortened lives due to polio.

When Coronavirus struck, I did not think twice about whether I would have the vaccination. I knew the statistics of less than ten deaths per one million shots. I wanted the vaccination.

My second consideration was the people cashiering at the store, sitting next to me in church, walking next to me down the street, talking to me in the park. I love meeting people, hearing about their lives, their pride in their towns, their stories.

To never talk to Orinda at the Senior Center or Judy at the bank or food bank, or Trudy, Rainbow or George at the Mercantile, or Mike as he watered the flowers or Allen at the dog park or Francisco or Charlie at the Library or Dr. Dave at the Post Office or a plethora of other friendly, interesting people I have interfaced with in Dayton. I would be devastated if by not getting a vaccination I caused even one person to become infected, ill or die and I would never be able to see these people again this side of Heaven. Vaccination is the way to go.

Katherine James Lui

Silver Springs, Nev.