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If you ask folks around here what they remember about 1945,

A child might say, “That was the year my daddy come back from the war.”

A mother is likely to look you in the eye and declare that polio could not keep us down.

And the
Hickory Daily Record
will say it was the year that the Miracle of Hickory closed its doors.

If anyone knows about them things, it's me, Ann Fay Honeycutt, for sure.

But if you ask me what I remember,

I will say it was the year Franklin D. Roosevelt died and I got one of his flowers.

I will tell you that yellow rose give me the courage to do the right thing even if it was hard.

I will say it was the time in my life when I learned that all of us is fragile as a mimosa blossom.

But the miracle of it all is,

When push comes to shove, we can be just as tough as Hickory.

It mostly hurts at first. After a while it starts to feel better.

What's Real? What's Not?

Polio epidemics were very real and very scary. The first major epidemic in America, affecting tens of thousands of people, came in 1916, and polio returned every summer after that. No one could predict where it would strike.

In 1944, western North Carolina was hit by polio. Health officials chose Hickory as the place to treat patients because it had a camp that could become a hospital.

The emergency hospital expanded from one building to fourteen wards. Sometimes men worked overnight, in the rain, to get the next ward built. Some wards had canvas tent roofs, wooden floors and half-walls, screens on the upper half of the walls, and flaps to keep out rain. As cooler weather came, builders turned the tent wards into permanent buildings.

North Carolina's governor sent prisoners to do laundry and kitchen work. The Red Cross and the March of Dimes recruited doctors and nurses from around the country.

Hickory residents donated lumber, food, blankets, electric fans, and toys. Many volunteered their time and hard work. Reporters from national magazines wrote about “the Miracle of Hickory.” The March of Dimes made a movie about the hospital, which showed in theaters across America to raise money to fight polio.

Although most public buildings were racially segregated at the time, former patients remember whites and blacks sharing wards. However, the
Hickory Daily Record
refers to a “colored convalescent ward.” Apparently the races were separated when they left the contagious ward.

Who Was Real and Who Was Not?

Ann Fay Honeycutt and Imogene Wilfong (and their families and friends) are fictitious characters. Most of the hospital staff is fictitious as well. However, some of the characters were real people who made Hickory's emergency hospital a true miracle.

Dr. H. C. Whims was the county health officer, and Dr. Gaither Hahn was a local physician. Both worked selflessly to establish the hospital and care for polio patients. Mrs. Earle Townsend was making blackberry cobbler for campers when Dr. Whims told her to send the children home. She stayed to cook for patients and hospital staff.

Dr. Dorothy Horstmann was one of three Yale University researchers who came to Hickory to study the spread of polio. Frances Allen was the local public health nurse who visited homes and collected specimens for Yale researchers.

The hot packs that Ann Fay and Imogene endured were the treatment methods of a woman named Sister Elizabeth Kenny. Miss Kenny was an Australian army nurse who pioneered a treatment for polio patients, replacing body casts and splints with moist heat and massage. Australian doctors shunned her methods, so she brought them to the United States. At first American doctors were skeptical, but within a few years many recommended Kenny's methods for restoring mobility to affected muscles.

The little girl named Shelby was a patient at the Hickory
hospital, as was Danny Moury, whose father made a home movie of the hospital. I saw the movie and interviewed Danny and Shelby as well as other patients who shared their memories of the hospital and how it felt to have polio.

Miss Ruth, Ann Fay's physiotherapist, is fictitious, but I named her for a wonderful physical therapist named Ruth who worked during three other polio epidemics and helped me with my research. Her compassion and the twinkle in her eye were very real!

Dr. Robert Bennett was director of physical medicine at the polio rehabilitation center in Warm Springs, Georgia, during this time. He made numerous visits to the Hickory and Charlotte hospitals to assess the progress of patients.

Franklin D. Roosevelt was an active thirty-nine-year-old politician when polio struck him in 1921. He dropped out of politics and focused on trying to walk again. Then in 1924 he visited a resort in Georgia with warm springs. He loved the place so much that he bought it and turned it into a rehabilitation center for people with polio. The next thing “Doctor Roosevelt” knew, he was in the warm pools leading other polios in his favorite water exercises.

But his friends wanted him back in politics, so he interrupted his plans to learn to walk again. He ran for governor of New York and then for president of the United States. As president, he had less time to spend at Warm Springs, but it was still one of his favorite places to relax. He died there on April 12, 1945.

Not everyone agreed with Roosevelt's politics. But he was loved by millions because he cared about the average American and proved that people with disabilities can do great things. Because of his example, America began to see that people with disabilities should have access to the same
activities that able-bodied people enjoy.

Even poor Americans like Ann Fay were welcome at Warm Springs. It still operates as a leading rehabilitation center. A visit to quiet Warm Springs offers a look at the Roosevelt Institute for Rehabilitation, the historic warm-water pools, Roosevelt's Little White House, and the FDR State Park.

Polio Today

During the epidemics, Americans were eager to help the March of Dimes, which was begun by Roosevelt and his friends in 1938. Through the President's Birthday Balls and other fundraising events, the organization raised millions of dollars for polio care and increased research.

Since 1908, scientists had known that polio was caused by a virus. In 1952, two scientists (one of them was Dorothy Horstmann) proved that the poliovirus travels in the blood-stream before it attacks the nervous system and causes paralysis. This meant that a vaccine could prevent paralyzing cases of polio. But which scientists would create the vaccine, and how would it work?

Two scientists, Albert Sabin and Jonas Salk, wanted to put a bit of the poliovirus into healthy people. They hoped the body would then produce antibodies to fight the disease. In 1954, when Salk successfully vaccinated children against polio, Americans idolized him. But eventually Sabin's vaccine proved more effective and easier to give, and for decades it replaced Salk's vaccine. Now both are used, in different parts of the world, depending upon the need.

The Western Hemisphere was declared free of polio in 1994, and the World Health Organization is close to ridding the entire world of polio.

Unsolved Mysteries

With the arrival of the vaccine, polio research declined. Polio faded from our memories, and many questions went unanswered. We never learned for sure why polio flared up in summer. We don't know why polio affected a particular area one summer and moved to another the next.

We do know that the poliovirus is passed through contact with human feces. The germs enter the mouth, multiply in the intestine, and then move to the spinal cord, where they may cripple parts of the nervous system. We know that a boy like Bobby might have contacted the virus from the latch on the outhouse door, from a doorknob, or from any person who had the germs on his hands. Since Bobby's twin sisters complained about tummy aches, they could have had mild cases of polio that they got from Bobby and passed on to Ann Fay.

Oh, and What About the Dog?

“Polio Pete” showed up at the emergency hospital during the early part of the epidemic and was adopted by the hospital staff. By mid-August, the
Hickory Daily Record
reported that Pete had gone missing. Later his body was found under one of the hospital buildings.

Newspaper reporters speculated that Pete's master was a patient in the hospital, but no one ever knew whose dog he was. I thought a faithful dog like Pete deserved an adoring owner like Bobby Honeycutt.

Finding the Story

A few years ago I called the director of my local historical association. I told him I'd be attending a history-writing workshop and had an assignment to find an interesting local
story. The director suggested the “Miracle of Hickory” and the 1944 polio epidemic.

I hurried to our city library for more information and spent the afternoon reading stories of my townspeople pulling together in a crisis. Right away I wanted to write about this event. I didn't know who my characters would be, but I was excited by a library book I'd found—Alice E. Sink's
The Grit Behind the Miracle
, a nonfiction account of Hickory's polio epidemic and emergency hospital.

Sink's book is filled with events, dates, and important figures. It contains personal stories of patients and staff at the hospital. I quickly learned that all the details of my story were hidden in history itself; I simply had to dig for the details.

Much of my research involved reading old copies of the
Hickory Daily Record
. Like Ann Fay Honeycutt, I found advertisements, war news, and stories about the polio hospital. I traveled to nearby towns to read old issues of
The Charlotte Observer, The Charlotte News
, and the
Greensboro Daily News
.

I read books about polio, President Roosevelt, World War II, and racial segregation. I visited historical sites as far apart as Warm Springs, Georgia, and Auschwitz, Poland. I interviewed museum directors, a physical therapist, and patients who'd had polio.

To learn about life in the 1940s, I scanned books about antiques. I listened to old radio shows and forties music. I interviewed senior citizens and World War II vets.

The problem with research is that once I start, I can't seem to stop. I fill my shelves with great books on my subject. I'll mention a few resources that were especially helpful.