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11 Polio and Warm Springs IN MY TEENS, I worked as a line boy at the Lexington Airport, right across the river in Ray County. Vernon Van Camp, the airport manager, was a tough taskmaster, and he seemed determined to teach me how to work hard. I was petrified, and I couldn’t do very much right. One day it was dark and cloudy outside, maybe even raining, and I was to wash three airplanes in the dark, dirtfloored hangar. So I washed those three airplanes from wingtip to wingtip and nose to tail. Then the sun came out and he rolled them outside, and there were soap streaks all over all three airplanes. Guess who had to wash them all again? One Saturday in 1944, a Culver Cadet airplane landed at Lexington. When the pilot stepped out, I saw the uniform of the Women’s Ferry Command. There weren’t too many female private pilots back then, so to meet a female pilot was a rarity. She was transporting the Cadet across country from the West Coast to be used as a drone to pull targets in the East. The right side of the cockpit, where a passenger would usually sit, was filled with a huge radio set used to control the plane from the ground. In those days, radios were heavy. This one was so heavy, compared to the small plane, that the pilot tried three times to take off and each time had to cut the engine. It didn’t help that there were telephone wires at the end of the runway. On the third try, she got over the wires by ten feet. Despite Mr. Van Camp’s training in work ethic, my first year at Wentworth Military Academy turned out to be scholastically uninspiring, although I worked hard and enjoyed all things military. I made the rifle team and was one of the freshman cadets who could take rifles apart and correctly reassemble them. Each of us was issued a 1903 Springfield bolt-action rifle, and we were admonished never to forget the rifle number. The same was true my second year when we were issued M1 Garand semi-automatic rifles. Again, we were admonished never to forget the rifle number. I did not forget. As per the instructions : the number of my ’03 Springfield was 3819965, and the number of my M1 was 4018591. Starting my second year, I was determined to improve my grades in order to make it to West Point. My sophomore year was barely under way when I P o l i o a n d Wa r m S P r i n g S 12 boarded a Wentworth bus for Columbia to perform with our band at halftime of the University of Missouri football game, just a few weeks before Thanksgiving in 1946. My throat was a bit sore, so I brought along a little bottle of Listerine. We put on a dandy show, but I was really tired after we packed away our instruments. I stopped at a clothing store in downtown Columbia where my father had worked during college in the 1920s and had a nice visit with a lady who had worked with him. Then I went to a room our band had rented in Columbia’s old Daniel Boone Hotel, flopped onto a bed, and passed out in inexplicable exhaustion. I was awakened to board the school bus for home, and then I must have slept all the way back to Lexington. I only remember trudging the few blocks from Wentworth back to my house at 1615 Franklin Avenue, making it up the stairs—my parents were asleep—and getting into the shower. I passed out in the bathtub, later awakening with the cold water rushing over me. I tried to reach up with my left arm to turn off the shower, but I couldn’t do it. My arm simply wouldn’t work. In my grogginess, I couldn’t understand what was happening to me. Finally, I was able to shut off the water with my right hand, struggle out of the shower, and pass out on my bed. I was utterly spent and in a mental fog. The next morning, Sunday, November 10, 1946, one of my parents must have come into the room, found me passed out, realized my incapacity, and called the doctor. The next thing I remember, I was being carried out my front door on a stretcher to...

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