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My Aunt Bobbie [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-01-18
I’m 77 today. In other words, I’m from the pre Polio vaccine generation. I remember the joy of our mothers when in the summer of 1955 they lined us up in our elementary school to receive the newly approved Salk vaccine. Polio was a great fear for all parents in those days.
As the idiot RFK Jr. stands ready to block Americans from vaccines, I fear for our future children.
The Salk vaccine was particularly poignant for our family because of Aunt Bobbie. She was my great aunt, my Mother’s aunt. The youngest of the four siblings in my Grandfather’s family. Only about 10 years older than my Mother. I remember Aunt Bobbie’s leg brace.
She had contracted Polio as a child. Living in a small Missouri farming and mining community, she did not have access to a hospital, but had to be cared for at home. The family stories of watching the ravages of the disease on her young body still make me shiver. But Bobbie was a “lucky” one. She mostly recovered. She did, however, have a shriveled, paralyzed left leg, and wore a clunky metal brace for the rest of her life.
Aunt Bobbie was mostly a happy outgoing woman. She had faced and overcome the worst life could throw. She was also, outspoken, and straightforward. I can only imagine the curses she would rain down on RFK Jr. And he would deserve every one of them.
Some of us are old enough to have dead and disabled pre-vaccine relatives. We remember them, and swear to fight anti-vaxx ignorance with our every breath.
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