It might sound crazy to think of using photography to (re)capture something that happened many years ago. I'm not sure it's even possible, but I'm going to try.

Over 60 years ago there was a polio outbreak in the town I now live in. It's almost a forgotten time. The only reminder today is small monument. But I've chanced upon snippets of information here and there that make it seem worthy of researching. I live across the street from several mineral springs. The springs are capped off now, but they were once famous for therapeutic reasons. People from all over the country flocked to the springs in an attempt to mitigate pain and suffering as a result of diseases, including polio.   

I don't think today we can really even imagine what it must have been like to live in a town where there was an outbreak of polio.  I can't, but only because I was too young.  My older sister is a polio survivor. She came down with polio in 1955. Ironically, vaccines were being administered, but they were new and there were still some unknowns.

 I was just a year old in 1957. I had a middle sister who was 5 at the time. My oldest sister was 7. One day my mom took my middle sister and me to be vaccinated for polio. My older sister didn't go. I don't know the reason why. Perhaps it's because she was in school and children were being vaccinated there. Or maybe on that particular day she had a conflict. The plan was to take her for vaccination a day or two later. I'm not totally clear on what happened. My knowledge of the events is based on correspondence I read from my parents to and from relatives. I read those letters some time and I'm going from memory.

 For some reason right after my middle sister and I were vaccinated, the vaccine was made unavailable for several months. It was during that time period that my older sister came down with polio.    

 My older sister had a fairly serious case of polio. I remember reading a tearful letter written by my mom where my sister wasn't expected to live through the night. Other letters stated that doctors said she probably wouldn't live to be 21 and she certainly never would have children.

 Even though my sister has had over 100 surgeries in her life, many of them major, she is now 56-years-old and she had a son who is in college studying engineering at Cal Poly SLO. These are both miracles in the truest sense of the word. They are answers to prayers from many years ago.

 One of my earliest childhood memories is looking through a small window in a door in Alta Bates Hospital in Berkeley. On the other side of the window was a room lined with beds. In those beds were children, most of whom were crying in pain. My grandmother, who worked at Alta Bates at the time, held me up to see. One, though I couldn't tell which, was my sister. I think that my grandmother wanted to me to see what my sister was facing. Some people might think it best to protect a young child from such a sight. But I'm grateful that my grandmother though it was important to see truth and reality, and not be sheltered.

 I have many vivid memories regarding polio. I remember my sister being  in a full body cast for a year. I remember the smell of ether. I remember not getting to do certain things as a family. But, as tragic as disease and hardship are, goodness and hope can also be found.

. My sister was a poster child for the March of Dimes. She got to meet Max Baer, the boxer, who was truly a compassionate man. Perhaps the most interesting sidebar is that  because of my sister's condition, my mother was "Queen for a Day". You may or may not recall that popular show in the '60 where one woman would be crowned "Queen for a Day" because of audience response to a particular life experience. The Queen would receive many prizes.

 I recall being in LA to visit relatives in the early '60s. My mother and grandmother went to Burbank, They had tickets to the show. My dad took me up to Griffith Park where we walked around for what I felt was far too long.  When my mother and grandmother returned to pick us up later in the day my grandmother said, "You'll never guess what happened. Your mother is queen for a day."

It really didn't hit me then. I didn't care. I just wanted to get going to Disneyland or someplace fun. But when I got back home the following week the fun started. Every day it seemed a  truck would pulled up to our house and unload all sorts of neat things, from furniture, to toys and, of course, bicycles. It was like Christmas every day .

I say bicycles of course, because that's the reason my mother was Queen for a Day. All she'd asked for was a bicycle built for two. When she was screened as a contestant -- as I think many of the people in the audience are -- she said that we like to go bike riding as a family. However, my older sister couldn't participate because she was crippled from polio. But with a bicycle built for two my sister could ride on the back, and my dad could peddle and steer the bike.

I vaguely recall watching the show several weeks after it had been taped. I guess there's always a delay in game shows and such. Anyway, the TV was BW and it was fuzzy. We never had the greatest reception in the San Joaquin Valley.

Fans of the show may recall that after each participant tells her story the audience applauds. The person with the loudest applause wins. There was an  applause meter on screen. The response to my mom's story sent the applause meter to maximum, which was a somewhat rare event.

 Not everyone who was hit hard by polio survived. Those that did are special in certain ways. My sister accomplished a great deal. We lived in California, but she attended high school in Germany as an exchange student. She's traveled extensively. She has undergraduate and postgraduate degrees from UC Berkeley. Until she retired recently she worked as a genetics counselor/researcher in the UC system. She is not a complainer but a doer. My sister's condition taught me something extremely valuable. Life isn't fair. But we need to make the most of what we have, and stop worrying about what we lack.

 I've seen a lot of documentary work. Just because someone takes a hard line doesn't mean they lack compassion. Honesty and compassion are closely related, IMHO. If you try and tackle a difficult subject without either one, it doesn't work.

 I don't know how I'm going to tell a story about the Hickory polio outbreak of 1944, but I'm going to try. I've always liked photography because I believe it's an honest medium. Sure it can be subjective. But there's a certain realness to it. Maybe not quite so much with new technology, but I won't go into that.