This is my April column, but I wrote it in March to meet the paper’s deadline.

The word March holds memories from my younger years of the mid-1930s to 1950s. Today, few people hear the full word poliomyelitis, or Infantile Paralysis, outside of my generation and medical professionals, since Dr. Jonus Salk, researcher and virologist, developed the first safe serum for eliminating this dreaded disease.

It was one of the most frightening words you could hear uttered, short of the plague, in earlier centuries. In 1955, the Sabin oral vaccine was also approved. The virus effects the brain and spinal cord. The short version is known as polio.

Families of today know it as part of children’s vaccination’s, but may not know the horror of the disease itself. As a child I remember in downtown Seattle, on 4th Avenue, long tables placed along the sidewalk where passerby’s placed their dimes for funding research, and aid for those who had contracted polio.

We called it the “March of Dimes.” I saw heart-wrenching photos of children and adults who were placed in body machines called Iron Lungs, when the chest area muscles had become paralyzed and they could not breathe on their own. We saw other pictures in the movie theater news, along with cartoons and films. Being somewhat claustrophobic, it terrified me.

There was no heart–lung device like we have in hospitals today. I remember the day eight of us lined up in a clinic in Seattle; Don and I, and the six kids, in the mid 1950s for our first shots. The kids couldn’t figure what the fuss was all about, hearing us tell them it was something to celebrate, not to be afraid off.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt contracted polio at the age of 39 and became a great example for people who had various disabilities. Because of his case and the quickly spreading disease, he initiated the program “The National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis” in 1938, which became the March of Dimes. He was a hero to the kids of my generation as a man of courage, dedication and, of course, putting our dads to work on Work Progress Administration projects.

Just the month named March stirs up old memories of those years, and makes us older folk really grateful for the modern day advances in medical science.

Since the discovery of the vaccine for polio, and its success, the March of Dimes is now a benefit for babies who are born premature, and those with birth defects. We have a daughter who was born earlier than normal but fortunately survived to have children and grandchildren of her own. Prematurely born children have a better chance of surviving today than in the past, and to grow to be healthy children because of advances in medicine.

January is the month when fundraising walkathons for these projects is held, but donations are always needed. There has been a feeling by some that the March of Dimes fundraising should have folded after the scare of polio was over, yet the foundation chose to continue working for these babies who need special care and life saving techniques. After all, Roosevelt did call it a foundation for infants in the beginning. Isn’t that what infantile means? And, does it really matter which conditions and disease of babies is treated?

You can find more information online at www.marchofdimes.com.