- "November 15th, 1953, Tom was taken ill with polio and was in the hospital for three months. He was severely affected in his right leg and must be exercised twice a day. However, with his usual,
wonderful disposition he has come through this
better than his parents. We must all learn to live with this, and on the whole have been okay but there have been some bad moments." At that time, in '53, I was eight years old, I was running races in the back of the
school yard with friends, and I kept on falling down and then I went to the nurse
and I had a bad headache and I went home with a headache. My mom picked me up and every time I lifted my head up in bed, it hurt like the devil. And she called our family doctor, he came out to the house and he thought I had
what they called grip, which was kind of a viral
cold or something like that. And it got worse and worse, and began having breathing issues and pain in my body and so forth. So they took me to Hahnemann
Hospital in Center City. There, they put me in a children's ward. They didn't really know what I had. They thought I had spinal
meningitis, in fact. They treated me. They gave me a spinal tap
and it wasn't definitive. And then they started giving me these big, hunker penicillin
shots every two hours, day and night for two weeks. And to this day, I'm not
very fond of injections. I knew something was wrong
because I was very thirsty. So I climbed out of bed and my legs just crumpled underneath me and I ended up on the floor and stayed there for a while until they did their
rounds and found me there. And then they finally got the diagnosis. I had polio. They sent me off to Norristown, to Montgomery Hospital where
they had isolation ward. And they put me in a glass room. There I lay on the stretcher basically. And on the stretcher, it's like my whole body had rigor mortis. I was completely stiff like a board. I couldn't lift my head up, I couldn't move my arms, legs, anything. And eight years old, I'm thinking, "What the heck is this?" it was a little worrisome. I thought something serious is going on. And then I noticed my parents, they would come but they
were not allowed in. They had to stand outside in a gown and look at me and all this stuff. And anything that I owned, they told me they burnt everything, all my clothes, all my books, all my toys, everything. So I was traveling light. And then after a couple of
weeks the virus had peaked and I was no longer virulent. So they then moved me to Sacred Heart Hospital in Norristown, which is a Catholic hospital but they had nuns there,
and they were the nurses. And I was not a Catholic, so I wasn't really intimate with nuns and interacting with 'em. But turned out they were terrific people and they took very good care of us all. But when I first got there, and I was still having
trouble with breathing. And so that's when they
hooked me in an iron lung. And I wasn't there for long. I was only in there for a couple of weeks. It was frightening. But I was taken out and manipulated, my body, I mean, stretched. So I was rigid when I went in. When you get polio, it affects your whole body. It might hone in on a particular place. But I didn't have bulbar polio, which is the one that
really is the tough one. But I had trouble
breathing, I remember that, shortness of breath. And that was without
running around or anything. I was just laying there and
I'd get shortness of breath. I mean, I wasn't in there 24/7 but I was in there a lot, especially the first week. It was kind of soothing. That's my memory of it, because it just pushed and pulled, it pushed and pulled and pushed and pulled, atmospherically. So it was all over your
whole body at the same time. It was actually kind of
relaxing, a little hypnotic. And once you got used to that
sucking and blowing sound, it was kind of reassuring. "Well, I guess I'm still breathing, "that's a good thing." I did better there, in the iron lung, than I did on the rocker bed, this bed that I just was strapped onto, and it would very slowly go back and forth and I guess push the
weight against my diaphragm and lift the weight off the diaphragm. And that would be the
sleep aid, I guess it was. And that went on for way
too long, in my opinion. I mean, I had a hard time sleeping and was not relaxed at all. And they had these draw shades that came down and covered
the complete window, blackout shades, kind of. I remember that only until I
saw the little crack of light at the very bottom when I
knew the sun was coming up, soon as I saw that, bam, I was asleep. (laughs) I could relax for a minute. It wasn't the dark, I'm not afraid, and I'm just gonna take a little nap and I'd out for a while. But the iron lung itself, my recollection was it was
actually kind of calming. It wasn't the only iron lung there. And in the iron lung next to
me was this lovely adult woman, she had three children, and she lay there, and she could speak and I could speak, our heads were kind of sticking out and she was very maternal toward me, which was quite amazing. She was in there the whole
three months that I was there. And her husband and her three kids, little toddlers, would come every day. And she would lay there and
look at the mirror above her and talk to them. For me, it was a very rude awakening, for an eight-year-old
to realize our fragility and how we kind of just go along with life thinking everything's gonna
be perfect forever and ever. And I learned at a very early
age that that just ain't so. And I realized the value of
being as well off as I was. After a couple of weeks, they kept on checking on me and they checked my vitals, I'm supposing every day, and have a breathing thing to
see how well I'm breathing. And they moved me out, finally, of the iron lung. By that time, I had became quite worried about the physical aspect of
my body and what was going on. I could move my head by then and I could move my arms a little bit. But anyway, after a couple weeks they put me into a regular bed with another lad from
Norristown, Wesley Davis. He and I were about the same age and about the same affliction. And we became quite good friends. The care, I was treated
with the Sister Kenny Method which is the nurse from Australia who came up with this method of putting steaming hot
wool pads around your limbs, and then once they got you warmed up, Miss Van Horn, lovely woman, zaftig chum and eyeglasses
with those beads here to pick it up, half frames. But she was a very sweet
but no-nonsense person. And she would stretch you, she'd put you into these
amazingly painful places. And that's one thing I remember was everybody would scream
out because it hurt. And she would do one at
a time down the hallway and they had this thing
with a hot blankets, the hot pads in it, they'd roll down and
they'd plug into each room, you'd lay there and and
hear this progression of screams getting closer, and
closer and closer. (laughs) And then finally it was
your turn to scream. It limbered up the joints. Everything is stiff, like I said, like a board. And very little, slowly, slowly, they made you bend a little
bit further each day, each day, each day. And it worked. And we all became limber in the end. And that was very great. It gave us more mobility. And we had a great deal of fun. Wesley and I, we would
go up in the elevator and feed the monkeys they had
in the science department. And they took us on trips, there's a little zoo
up in Norristown there. Then eventually started swimming therapy at the Norristown YMCA. We'd go there and swim. I mean, it was like a family in there. I was lucky to have people
around in the same situation because we all shared that stuff. And I think that made
it easier on everybody, at least it did for me. The nuns, they made a leg brace for me. And then I had wooden Kenny crutches, armband crutches. And they took me into the rehab room and they had gym mats on the floor. And they'd get me walking around, and walking around, and
doing all this stuff. And after I got pretty good at it they would sneak up behind me and they would kick a crutch
out from underneath me, and I would go down to the ground. And they did that numerable times to teach me how to fall. And to this day, I
still have all my teeth. I mean, I've calculated, I've fallen probably more
than 500 times in my life. So you better learn how to do that or else you'll be in bad shape. My mom and dad were absolute troopers. I mean, they drove, I mean, they lived 45 minutes away and they visited me every single day for that whole time I was in the hospital. One day, they had, not one but two flat tires and so there was no spare. And they called up, "So sorry, we can't make it." And I might've even been relieved to have a break there for a minute. I don't know. (laughs) I mean, they were very, very caring. And I have wonderful family. I have two brothers, and they would visit and then I had friends
that would come and visit that my mom would drag along. And for me, it was like the first
experience away from home, and my first traveling experience. And initially I was afraid, but after I kind of got
ahold of what was going on and realized I was meeting all these wonderful supportive people. And the parents of all the people that came to visit the
children were wonderful and they would visit everybody. And it was really quite amazing. And at the same time, my community, where I grew up, was very generous. And they would send me these cards, like a train that had dimes on the wheels and the quarters on the engine. And they built a little HO
thing for me, for my bed. It was really quite an outpouring. And I think it was because I
statistically took the place of maybe their child and they realized that it
could have been anybody. I was kind of mandated
to be kind of heroic even though I didn't necessarily feel so. But it became obvious that
that was the response. They wanted a stiff upper lip. They wanted a smiling guy, and "I'll be all right,
don't worry about me." And so I kind of rose to the occasion and I was, and continue to be upbeat, and personal and so forth. In the beginning when
they burned everything, they burnt my Daniel Boone, Davey Crockett coonskin hat. Which was a big rage then, Davey Crockett was on everything. Fess Parker. And then years ago I sold a patent of mine
to a medical company and they wanted me to come to
California to demonstrate it. And it was in Santa Barbara where Fess Parker owns the Red Lion Hotel or something like that. And all the people that
I was associated with were getting their picture
taken with Fess Parker. After that was done, he was walking back to go in the hotel, I walked up next to him and I started singing one
of his songs as I walked by. And he kind of stopped
and he finished the song, which was great. We sat down and we talked, and I told him about the
polio and the coonskin cap and all that stuff. And then two days after I got home, I got a box and it had a coonskin
cap signed by Fess Parker, Daniel Boone and all that kind of stuff. So it was a sweet ending
to a lovely experience. I missed three months of school, and back then they let
me go back to my class. They thought it was important
that I stay with my peers and forget what I didn't. And I still, to this day, can't read Roman numerals. I missed that. Of course, the schools, they were not at all
handicapped accessible. I had not learned yet how
to go up and down stairs. So here I am in this classroom and the next class I
had to go upstairs for. So the teachers were good enough to let me out five
minutes early from class so I could struggle up those steps. And in the beginning,
I went up on my butt, I sat down on the second step and then I pushed myself up, and take the crutches
and take 'em up a step and went to the next one. Within a week, I was
walking up and down steps. After a couple three months,
my upper body kicked in. I developed musculature. And I was doing two steps
at a time on my crutches. I mean, the school was an important part of the acceptance thing. I mean, it was a small school. These are friends before,
during, and after. And that was fortunate. I do remember that when the
first sugar cube dose came out I was in junior high school, I was probably 13. And I remember asking the doc, "What are the chances of
me getting polio again?" He said, "Oh," he said, "Probably like one in a million." And I said, "Give me that
sugar cube." (laughs) So I got vaccinated. I mean, I wasn't gonna
take any chances. (laughs) We don't need to do this again. Now, I look back on my whole
life with the disability and I really think, I mean this just sounds a little weird but next to my lovely wife, and daughter, and now granddaughter, polio was one of the best
things that ever happened to me. Because it drew me out. It gave me a very optimistic
feeling about people and also a great sense of adventure, because I was no longer
afraid to go places. And when I was 18 or 19, I realized that I had a limited amount of mobility in my life, and I was strong now, I'm not gonna be strong forever, so let's get it on. And as a consequence, my wife and I have lived
all over the world, in India, in Bali, Indonesia, and Greece. And we've been around
the world four times. I've climbed Borobudur, I've climbed the Acropolis twice. From Germany to India
overland back in the '70s, six months on the road. I've done all this stuff. I don't think I would've done any of that if I hadn't had polio. I really don't. And now I've gotten into this business of designing crutches
and these crutch tips and I've sold more than
a million crutch tips. So actually, financially it's
paid off as well. (laughs) And I've got over 15,000 clients. This group of disabled people
are the most amazing people. It's just remarkable to me how people thrive under adversity.
