In 1955 my classmates and I marched single file from our classroom to the school nurse’s office for an injection of the Salk polio vaccine.  For weeks we had known the vaccination day was coming.  That morning, we stood next to our desks in our classroom and marched out in that order.  I remember young girls in their dresses, white socks, and leather shoes and boys in plaid shirts and blue jeans and PF Flyers quietly walking out of the room and down the stairs to the first floor.  We were lined up along the wall on the left side of the main corridor with another classroom of kids in front of us and another classroom behind.  Teachers hushed the talk and in the quiet we could hear some children up ahead crying.  A poke with a needle was a scary thing, yet looking at the long line in front and behind me meant that every one of my friends was going to get a shot.  Scared, yep, but we knew why we were in a long line that day.  When it was my turn, I watched Carol, my friend in front of me, rub her arm as she got back into line outside the office, felt the prick of the needle, and was told to “Hurry on”.  I was vaccinated against polio.

The year before children in an elementary school on the other side of town participated in the national Salk vaccine field test.  Our Iowa school district had been selected to be part of a field test in which 50% of children would get the Salk vaccine and 50% would get a placebo.  Parents were provided with consent forms to sign for the field test and every parent consented.  The success of the national field study showed that infection with the polio virus, the pandemic of the early 1950s, could be prevented with a vaccination of Salk vaccine.  Within the year a nationwide campaign to vaccinate all school children was underway.

My friends and I knew that polio was real.  Beyond the headlines and stories in the daily newspaper reporting the growing number of children infected with polio, we knew.  One our classmates, Steve, lived in an iron lung in the living room of his home.  His head stuck out from the barrel-like breathing machine that used vacuum cleaner motors to raise and lower air pressure in the barrel to help him breathe.  When the time came, we would all choose a shot in the arm to prevent being in an iron lung.

Class reunions are communal strolls down memory lane.  Yearbooks and dog-eared photos are passed around and stories are told and retold.  Most tales are of our high school days with a few from junior high.  The Class of 1966 represented a pathway from two junior highs and fifteen elementary schools.  We had many memories along the path to graduation.  The one common story from our elementary school memories, however, is always the day we got the Salk shot.  The story goes like this. 

“The hallway was filled with kids inching their way along the wall toward a needle.  It was so quiet.  I cannot remember any classmate saying ‘No, not me’.  I cannot recall my parents even raising a ‘Should we…’.  Everyone was afraid of getting polio and if a vaccination put an end to polio, we were going to get vaccinated.  It’s funny now, but of all the shots in the arm (and other places) I have received, that is the shot I remember most clearly.  Remember when John said, ‘That didn’t hurt.  I’ll take another.’  Hey, we stopped polio, didn’t’ we.”  And they always add, “I remember when we were given the Sabin vaccine in 1960?  It was on a sugar cube!”

Many of my classmates now sleep in death.  Life is what it is.  I look at my elementary class photo of Mrs. Meyer’s home room and see each of their childhood faces and recall every name.  On those vaccination days in 1955 we did what we were supposed to do.  Steve’s face is not in that photo.  He was a polio victim.