Fifty years ago today, Mike and Jo Simms exchanged wedding vows, stepped outside Stow’s Holy Family Church, and toasted their future by drinking three drops of Type I Sabin oral polio vaccine.
In doing so, the 18-year-olds became the vanguard of a movement to immunize all residents of Summit County from a disease so devastating, outbreaks would send hundreds of youngsters to Akron Children’s Hospital at the same time.
Within a month, more than 335,000 people — nearly 70 percent of the county’s population — followed the Simms’ lead, and the next year, the city of Akron recorded its last polio diagnosis.
Today, the contagious illness mostly known for its effect on the muscles of children is almost unheard of in the West, and on the cusp of becoming extinct in the world.
But the Simms remember when fear of the crippling virus ran rampant, with images of children in iron lungs and on crutches.
“It was definitely something everybody talked about in the ’50s,” Mike Simms said. “It seemed everyone knew someone who had polio.”
When the Simms were contacted by the Akron Beacon Journal in 1962 and asked to become the symbolic launch of the vaccine initiative, Mike Simms said his thoughts immediately turned to a former Holy Family classmate whose legs were always encased in large metal braces.
“I talked it over with my fiancee and we agreed to do it. They wanted a gimmick, something that young people would pay attention to,” Simms said. “I don’t know why they picked us. Maybe our wedding was on the right weekend.”
A photo of the bride and groom became the next day’s front-page centerpiece, accompanied by a list of 41 clinics that would be administering doses to adults and news that teams of doctors, pharmacists, nurses and citizen volunteers would be fanning out through all Summit County schools that week.
The effort, choreographed by the Summit County Medical Society and Summit County Pharmaceutical Association, featured more than 100 Akron Jaycees and their wives working to transport the vaccines from supply houses to clinics and Lions clubs volunteers handling traffic at the centers.
PTA groups helped administer at the schools. Pastors, priests and rabbis pushed the program during their services. Billboard companies, banks, department stores, transit systems and Boy Scouts helped carry the message through posters.
The Simmses, who now live in Rootstown Township but will celebrate their 50-year anniversary with family in Stow today, have since added five children, 10 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren to their family, and are thankful they all grew up in a polio-free culture.
The war on polio actually began in 1955 when a vaccine developed by Jonas Salk became widely available, but fear of the painful injections kept too many people at bay.
When Albert Sabin offered his painless oral option in 1962, there was “no question” the war would be won, said Dr. Dennis Weiner, a pediatric orthopedic surgeon who recently stepped down after 32 years as head of the Akron Children’s Hospital orthopedic department.
“With injections, even when we knew it was great, there are always going to be people who won’t do it. Back then, it was hard to convince people to take a shot. The oral vaccine was a revolutionary thing,” he said.
Survivor becomes surgeon
Weiner’s knowledge of polio doesn’t just come from his years of treating sufferers. He’s also a survivor.
He contracted polio in 1947 when he was about 7 years old, most likely during a tonsillectomy — a common thread among many polio victims.
“I spent about three or four weeks at Children’s Hospital. Actually, the hospital was so packed full, they converted [a church] adjacent to the hospital into a polio ward,” he said. “They put me in a crib because that’s all they had left.”
He was given therapy in large tanks of hot water and escaped the worst of the disease, even going on to play sports in high school and college.
“I was really very, very lucky,” said Weiner, who recalled losing classmates to the more deadly “bulbar” version of polio. “I’d go to grade school and find one or two kids would be gone.”
Weiner went to medical school at Ohio State University while polio was still prevalent. As an orthopedic surgeon, he operated on many children who were left with weak limbs as a result of the disease. But today, only folks in their 60s or older truly remember what it was like to live in that era, Weiner said.
“My [physician] residents now, they don’t even know what you’re talking about,” Weiner said. “They’ve never seen a case of it.”
Paula Schleis can be reached at 330-996-3741 or pschleis@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/paulaschleis.