For us, the World War II babies, and the first wave of Baby Boomers, the summer of 1952 looked to be much like our other awesome summers.

Adults were talking about a guy everyone liked called Ike, the faraway war in Korea, and that the U.S. was now safer since the testing of our new hydrogen bomb. Teens rushed home to watch American Bandstand. At night we’d sit in front of our black-and-white TV, so we could hear Ricky call out, “Lucy, I’m home!”

We counted down to late May and summer freedom, but our parents dreaded another “polio season,” when the virus targeted 5- to 9-year-olds. When America’s first polio outbreak took place in 1894 Vermont, American doctors were alerted to the new disease. By the late-1940s and early-50s, polio cases were averaging 25,000 to 50,000 cases annually.

Polio is a viral disease that enters a victim’s body though the mouth. Ninety-eight percent of the cases were mild, sometimes leaving a slight limp, while 1 to 2 percent became paralyzed. Losing full use of the legs necessitated braces, crutches, or wheelchairs. The chance of paralysis or death was much higher in adult victims. Community swimming pools and public water fountains were closed. These are two stories from the 1952 polio epidemic.

In our neighborhood in the early 1950s, four of us were best buddies. Four was a great number for summer. We played 2-on-2 at an alley backboard and touch football in the park. We even had batting practice: the pitcher, two in the field — one short and one long — and the batter.

No catcher meant you had to swing at everything. Any ball that got past you had to be chased down.

After a week of brushing away the classroom cobwebs, we were ready to play ball. We’d walk the mile to the Italian neighborhood, where we’d play in pick-up games —no parents, no uniforms, and no umps, because we called our own strikes, balls, and outs. It wasn’t Ozzie and Harriet, but it was the best of times to be a kid. Early evenings, kids ages 5 to 13, in our Omaha neighborhood played kick-the-can and hide-and-seek, until our mothers called us in to dinner.

In June, 1952, we 9-year-olds weren’t yet into our usual summer rhythm because Bob had missed the last two weeks of school. His mom called and told us to wait a few weeks and Bob would rejoin the gang of four. Weeks later, Bob’s mom called again. Bob wanted to see us and could we all come over together? She let us in the house and we walked back to the dining room where we had shared so many meals together.

Everything had been kept so hush, so were shocked to find Bob lying on his stomach in what we later learned was an iron lung. He looked up at us from a mirror on the floor. No one had told us what to expect. We talked about how we’d all soon be back together and left when Bob quickly tired and had trouble breathing. The three 9-year-olds walked home together, unable to stop crying.

Two week s later, Bob’s mother called our mothers. Bob had died in his iron lung. There were no visiting hours for a final goodbye. The funeral was private.

When we returned to school in the fall, there were other empty desks. Someone asked, “Where are they?” Sister Mary, usually a strict disciplinarian, hesitated and someone in the back and wisely out of her line of sight, yelled, “Polio!”

Like COVID-19, polio also made its presence felt in the rural areas of America. Stanton County in northeastern Nebraska had been first settled in the 1870s by German immigrants. During the 1948 and ’49 polio seasons, 11 county residents, all under age 19, were stricken by polio. A hallmark of Midwestern communities has always been that they take care of each other.

During those polio years, each town raised funds through the March of Dimes to pay the substantial hospital bills the polio victims’ families were facing. In late 1940s dollars, many of those bills were more than the cost of building a new house back then.

While the 1952 polio epidemic raged with 57,625 cases and 3,145 American deaths, it appeared that Stanton County was to be spared. The youngsters were back in school and there were no reported cases.

Early September, 42-year-old Reinhardt Goetsch, called “Pat” by family and friends, came in from mending a fence and told his wife he felt something coming on. He was rushed by ambulance to the hospital, but less than 24 hours later, polio took his life.

The Goetsch family immediately quarantined. Extended family members and neighbors began leaving food — meals and supplies on the front porch. One week later, one of their large barns caught fire; possible spontaneous combustion of hay. The local volunteer fire department couldn’t save the barn, but prevented the fire from spreading to the house, the other barns, and sheds.

Reinhardt “Pat” Goetsch was a valued member of his community, an elder in his church, and an elected official of the rural school district. His 325-acre farm had been passed down from his Prussian grandparents who had bought the land in 1883. Reinhardt’s death was the only polio case in Stanton County during 1952. His family is a microcosm of polio’s devastating impact in rural communities.

Wilma Goetsch, his 39-year-old widow, was left to raise their six children, all under 14, including a 2-month newborn, run the farm, and manage the hired hands. They planted corn and wheat and raised cattle, sheep, pigs, chickens, geese, and ducks for market and the locker, the family’s in-town freezer. Everyone in the young family stepped up, taking on extra chores. Wilma’s parents, retired farmers, came to help this now fatherless family through the crisis.

One of the middle daughters, 8-year-old Shirley, after chores, would head out to the machine barn to see her grandfather, Emil. Shirley says that he could repair anything, a “fixing” skill he passed on to her. My wife says, “He taught me how to mow!”

Each summer, you can see how much she still loves her mowing and the memories of her grandfather. It’s no accident that in our family she has the green thumb, her own tool belt, gardening and landscaping tools, ladders and the Prussian work ethic.

Memories of the family farm, her mother and father, and her five brothers and sisters are kept alive on our Family History Wall. In addition to their wedding pictures, two photographs especially bring a smile to her: her father, a grin and a “I caught you” look on his face, straining to hold up a 3½-foot-long catfish and the second one of him, end of the day, smiling and in his easy chair and wearing his smartly polished penny loafers.

The scourge of polio and the 1952 epidemic may be 68 years behind us now, but our generation understands some of the suffering and pain that lies ahead for the hundreds of thousands of families and friends who have lost loved ones in this COVID-19 pandemic. For these survivors, like it has been for us, those losses will be indelibly etched into their life-time memories.

Next week: FDR and Salk versus Sabi.

Tom Murphy is a former history teacher and state representative. He is a Kennebunk Landing resident and can be reached at tsmurphy@myfairpoint.net.

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