Contacting Polio

Traveling east on Highway 22 from Williamstown, Kentucky, about seven miles from Williamstown, there sits an old building on the left side of the road near Locust Grove, Kentucky. The building now has a garage door on the front, but many years ago this was a grocery store. At one time, in the 1940's, my grandfather ran this store with the help of my mother and father.

We lived next door to this building, which was in much better condition then. The house still sits there, and it has been kept and is in good condition. I still have some pictures of myself along with some of my family, standing beside the store building beside two large gas pumps where people could purchase gasoline for their cars.

In the month of July in 1947, my family had awakened for the day, but (according to my oldest brother) I did not arise with everyone else. After a while, my mother called me to come down from upstairs. She told me that I first did not answer; then I said, "I cannot walk." She thought that I was teasing her, so she sent my oldest brother upstairs to persuade me to come down to breakfast. After going up the stairs to bring me down, he answered back, "He really can't walk." So, my mother brought me downstairs and began to try to walk me around the house to see if the problem was simply my legs being numb from sleeping on them. But that was not the problem.

After a while, my parents decided to take me to the doctor. Several doctors found several things wrong with me, but they finally said to my parents, "Take him to the hospital." They took me to Children's Hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio, where almost immediate the doctors determined that I had had Polio.

I stayed in the hospital for nine months. When I went home for a visit from the hospital at Christmas time (my mother said), I asked when the children were going to go home. I had forgotten that I had brothers and sisters.

I began to wear braces and use crutches when I was about four years old. I went to public school, attended business college, Bible college at Lexington Baptist College, took classes at Austin Peay State University in Tennessee, done further education other places, and God has blessed through the years.

Now the Polio is coming back to cause pain, which it had never done before. This is called Post-Polio Syndrome. This is the way life goes, but I enjoy serving the Lord, even though in my older age I cannot do as much as I could when I was young.

Soon I will write about the time my mother took me to a "faith healer."