Chapter 1 - Ronnie Wolfe

Many who read this will remember the events of the year 1944. It was near the end of World War II. The month was September. My mother and father, Lola (Blackburn) and Willard Wolfe, already had three living children. Two others had died as infants. On the 23rd of September, my mother went to Booth Hospital in Covinton, Kentucky, and brought me into this world. I was, according to the hospital records, a premature baby.

We lived in a little neighborhood in Pendleton County, Kentucky, on a road named Fishing Creek Pike. We lived on a farm in a house rented from a Mrs. Race. I have never in my adult life been to that house, but my younger sister says that my father took her to see the house. I am not even sure that the house is standing today.

We moved from place to place as I grew. We lived with my grandfather, Francis Blackburn, while I was very small. He owned a farm just off Highway 1054 in Pentleton County. Later, my grandfather began to run a grocery store at a place called Locust Grove. While living there and my parents' helping my grandfather run the store, in the month of July, 1947, I contacted Polio at the age of two years old. I do not remember any of the events surrounding this occasion of my life; I have only been told about them.

When I first had Polio, I was first placed into Children's Hospital in Cincinnati. I suppose this is where the doctors finally realized that I had Polio. My parents had taken me to five doctors and could not find out what the problem was with my walking. I could not walk. The last doctor sent me to the hospital, and very soon the doctors realized that I had had Polio. After being in Children's Hospital for a few months, I was transferred to St. Elizabeth Hospital in Covington, Kentucky. Through the years, until at 17 years of age I left home to live in Lexington, Kentucky, to go to school, I went to St. Elizabeth Hospital almost every six months. This has helped me to be very compatible to visiting hospitals today in my vocation as pastor of a Baptist Church.