EAST GRAND FORKS, Minn. -- There are certain things that are still vivid in Bob Peabody’s mind even today, 75 years after his bout with polio.
As a quarantined patient, he remembers seeing mattresses rolled up on beds where a patient had been only the day before – a signal that someone had died.
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He remembers the fear that gripped everyone everywhere – fear that they might contract the mysterious, crippling disease that brought debilitation and sometimes death.
He remembers how the world waited anxiously for an effective polio vaccine to end every parent’s nightmare.
Peabody, 82, an East Grand Forks businessman, also recalls some of the early symptoms that landed him in a hospital as a 7-year-old in the mid-1940s.
“I remember there was a lot of muscle aches and funny things,” he said. “When, as a young child, you’re trying to tell your parents things, you don’t know what you’re really trying to tell them.
“I remember distinctly being carried to the hospital. My limbs were not functioning the way they should be.”
Peabody and his family were among the millions across the country who were gripped with the terror of contracting polio and were anxiously awaiting a vaccine to stanch the tide of fear, in much the same way society today has yearned for an effective vaccine for the novel coronavirus.
Peabody was in the care of longtime Grand Forks physician Dr. Ralph Leigh, an “excellent” doctor, he said. “But I don’t know if (the doctors and nurses) knew exactly what they were dealing with, to begin with.”
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He was initially hospitalized at Deaconess Hospital in Grand Forks, in a sunroom with patients who had similar symptoms. He estimates that he was there a week or two, “while they were trying to figure out what it was I might be dealing with.”
He was then moved to East Hall, on the east edge of the University of North Dakota campus, where doctors were experimenting with treatments, “because nobody, I don’t think, had a great deal of experience,” he said. The building’s two floors were “full to the top with people that had polio, and that’s where you were quarantined. And that’s where I first heard that word (polio) and understood what it was.”
In dorm-type quarters, Peabody remembers about six to eight beds in his room. The metal beds had a very thin mattress that could be rolled up.
“When somebody died, the procedure was to take that mattress and roll it up and tie the bedding to it to keep it from unrolling,” he said. “And you just knew – when that was what you saw when you woke up – that somebody had departed for a better world.”
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, as many as 35,000 people were disabled by polio each year in the 1940s – notably including then-President Franklin Roosevelt, who generally hid his paralysis from the general public and was unable to walk without the aid of others or heavy leg braces.
Polio was highly contagious, spread through contact with fecal matter or droplets – such as those produced by a sneeze or cough – from others. The disease was greatly feared; according to the CDC website, parents were frightened to let their children go outside, and travel and commerce between cities were sometimes restricted. But by the 1950s, vaccines became widely available and today, the U.S. has been polio-free since 1979.
‘We knew what death was’
Patients of all ages were quarantined in the UND facility, Peabody said. Most in his room were “probably older than I was, but maybe only by a couple years.”
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Treatment in an iron lung was done in another room at another end of the hallway, he said. “That equipment, just to look at it, scared the bejeezus out of you. No one wanted anything to do with it – not so different from the ventilator today.”
Polio had affected his legs, and mainly his left side, he said. For about three months in the summer of 1945, Peabody could only see his family from a second-story window at scheduled times. He was pushed in his bed or a wheelchair to see them through the window.
He got a penicillin shot every four hours while in quarantine, he said. “I had so many needle marks it looked like I was a junkie – I don’t know if they knew what they were doing or they were shooting in the dark. I do know I had minor, minor defects compared to what other people had.”
Peabody recalls looking out the building’s south window at the old Great Northern railroad tracks “and trying to figure out in the back of my little mind, ‘How do I get out of here and get on one of those trains and run away?’ ”
Treatment for polio at that time might not be considered humane today, he said, “because they were really concerned about you being crippled or deformed.”
At bedtime or for daytime naps, patients’ feet would be secured to stirrup-like objects at the end of the bed; the staff used strips of old Army blankets that they heated – “I can remember the smell of that today and it still makes me sick” – and wrapped around patients’ legs or arms “and that’s how you slept,” he said. “Everybody slept on their back; nobody slept on their side or their stomach, that I remember.”
Though he was only 7, he remembers the fear.
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“I think I would be totally remiss if I didn’t say I was afraid,” he said. “We knew what death was, because it was happening all the time. The thought process had to be, ‘Are you going to be the next one, or is Charlie in the bed next to you going to be the next one?’ Those thoughts I know were there.”
Fear prompted parents to restrict their children’s activities.
“I remember distinctly that we could not go out and play in the cold rain,” he said. Many believed that water played a role in carrying the disease. Swimming in public pools was strongly discouraged.
In his own neighborhood, his parents warned him and his siblings to stay away from a nearby house because of concerns about its water system.
“Everybody in town was scared,” he said. “We had a placard on the door or in our window that identified our house, that we were quarantined, not really liked, and I think that was kind of the procedure then.”
Fear caused some people to shun him.
After discharge from the hospital, most of his pastimes were things he could do by himself, like drawing or playing marbles, “not because I wanted to,” he said, “but because nobody wanted to associate with me for fear that there might be something still there.”
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It probably wasn’t until high school when that attitude disappeared, he said.
Swimming, skating
Peabody also credits his recovery to Leigh’s instructions to skate and swim as much as possible; they were essential to regaining his health and physical abilities, he said. “I stayed out on the rink long after everyone else had left.”
Peabody eventually recovered and excelled as a skater who played hockey at UND, where he was a goalie on UND's 1959 national championship team. A large photo of Peabody hangs today at Ralph Engelstad Arena.
Recovery was a long process though. He figures it took about 15 or 20 years after being diagnosed with polio “before the left side caught up to the right side,” he said.
“If it wasn’t for my involvement with sports and the skating and the swimming that I was instructed to do, I don’t know if I wouldn’t be one of the unfortunate persons who would be using a crutch or whatever,” he said. “I maintain that’s what made me as healthy as I am today.”
Vaccine breakthrough
The worry over polio that consumed Americans in the 1940s and early ‘50s began to dissipate after Jonas Salk developed a vaccine in 1953, about 20 years after researchers began to develop one for the dreaded disease. The vaccine became widely available in 1955 and, due to Salk’s efforts, the U.S. has been polio-free since 1979. A different oral polio vaccine was developed by Albert Sabin and came into commercial use in 1961.
While some people today are hesitant, or refuse, to accept vaccination for the coronavirus, people welcomed the polio vaccine, Peabody said.
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He also sees a lot of similarities between then and now.
The fear that permeated society then is evident in the public’s reaction of COVID-19 today, he said. “I think there’s subconscious fear – fear is just part of our makeup, our humanity.”
He had no misgivings about receiving the coronavirus vaccination, he said. “I was ready to get in line as soon as I could do it. When I got my second COVID shot, I felt like I was relieved of all the bad stuff that’s out there – whether I was or wasn’t, it sure psychologically made me feel a lot better.”
And, looking back at his bout with polio some 75 years ago, he said, “I’m lucky.”
