Chasing Girls Leads To Polio And Warm Springs
By TOM MORTON
By the time I was nine years old, I had been enjoying the riding of my bike with my dog Jackie closely behind because everywhere I went, Jackie would be right there with me.
My parents were never worried about my safety for they knew beyond a shadow of doubt that Jackie would eat anybody alive for posing a threat to me. I was finally in third grade after being transferred to Jackson
Elementary School in Jackson and temporarily separated from my two best buddies, Morton and Wayne; they would join me later when Indian Springs Elementary School was permanently closed This was also the time when my real troubles began.
Not too long after school had started, we boys were at recess doing our favorite thing: chasing girls! I don’t know what we boys would have done with them had we caught them, but just the fact that we had caught them was satisfaction enough.
In my excited state of running, I forgot about the trails we were using which contained trees, and of course, trees have roots and roots are usually exposed. I nicely tripped over one of these roots and landed squarely in the small stream that flowed through our school playground.
Obviously I was almost soaking wet and went to the office to warm up and have my mother to take me home. Chills and fever led to a cold.
And this cold led to more trouble as I eventually had trouble walking as I would fall down when I put weight on my right leg. The first doctor I saw replied that I was just probably trying to get attention with my falling; a doctor in nearby Griffin suspected polio.
Only later with the help of a family friend who often served as a substitute teacher did my mother obtain an appointment with Doctor William Bennett in Atlanta and as soon as he saw me walk into his office, he exclaimed, “That boy has polio!”
Dr. Bennett confirmed his diagnosis and referred me to Warm Springs in Georgia, made famous by President Franklin D. Roosevelt who had fallen victim to polio (better known as infantile paralysis) when he was younger and who had used the pool made famous by Native Americans who believed those warm waters had healing powers.
I did not realize then that I was headed for four different hospital stays, three surgeries, many numerous trips back to Warm Springs Institute for many, many checkups. While a patient there I had visits every weekend from my parents and three brothers which I greatly enjoyed. On one of those visits they came in our green Chevrolet pickup truck and took me riding in it, with me riding on the back of the truck and thrilling me to no end.
One of the biggest problems I faced when I was in the hospital was the one concerning enemas. Imagine asking a nine-year old boy if he had had a bowel movement (BM) since the day before the nurses asked. If we said “No”, then we could expect a visit from the orderly or the nurse to give us one. I soon learned to say “Yes”! when asked. My first learning experience with the orderly was a severe pain in my soap-filled stomach to clean out my system. I am glad today that this old-fashioned procedure is no longer followed.
While today I believe that this belief in healing waters was mainly emotional, I cannot and will not refute that strong belief, for it was an emotional healing and to some extent a physical healing. What Warm Springs did for me and countless thousands of other youngsters and adults was to provide a safe environment for us to receive healing of mind and body.
A big thanks goes out to the March of Dimes which then gave financial support to people like me; nowadays March of Dimes and Warm Springs minister to birth defects of children. And friends I made while there I still share with today, with one in particular as we have met on several occasions since boyhood days and our times there; we correspond occasionally and he has visited my wife and me even though he now lives in Illinois with his wife.
I have gone back to Warm Springs to reminisce about my time there because I guess I could say I grew up there and matured into young manhood. I say that because I was a teenager and helped produce a campus newspaper for our residents. I even resided in a place designated for young adults as we were treated as such, each one of us being mainly responsible for making sure we got ourselves to treatments, getting to the meals on time and other similar responsibilities. I finally got home for good August 7, 1954, only to face the death of my paternal grandmother later that month.
Life since then has been good to me, for the most part. I praise God for all that He has done for me: given me a mother who loved me and never giving up on me, my wife Diane until her death in 2002, and my wife Linda since 2005. All three women are Godly, Christian women and we’ll be together in heaven when we have passed from this life.