By Jim Winnerman and Sydney Jones
Poliomyelitis, commonly shortened to polio, was once one of the most feared diseases in the world. In 1952, the polio epidemic reached a peak in the United States with almost 58,000 reported cases and more than 3,000 deaths. Polio can be particularly devastating to children. Most frequently, it can leave them with legs that are paralyzed. As a result of a breakthrough polio vaccine released in 1955 and its oral equivalent in 1962, wild poliovirus has almost been eliminated. But polio has not been entirely eradicated. October 24th is World Polio Day, and in honor of all the efforts still being made to end the disease and vaccinate against it, we talked to two polio survivors from Missouri.
Recil Skinner-Columbia
Recil Skinner is known for a lot of things, one being “four truths and a lie,” which is a game that she uses to introduce herself at polio speaking events or for classrooms presentations. They go like this:
(1) “I’ve been thrown out of a hot-air balloon. (2) I was the 1951 March of Dimes polio poster child. (3) I was in prison for three years.” At this point she’ll smirk slightly, but will continue on. (4) “I’ve been chased by a chimpanzee. (5) I survived a tornado hitting my house in 1998.”
Recil will then admit that she wasn’t the polio poster child. She was, indeed, chased by a rogue chimpanzee at an animal sports event and lowered from a hot-air balloon still close to the ground to decrease its weight.
Recil’s polio journey started in 1951, when she was just three years old. That afternoon, she was running around her yard and collecting colorful autumn leaves as they spiraled down lightly onto the grass. When she complained that she felt ill, her mother recognized what appeared to be flu-like symptoms.
The next morning when it was time to get up, Recil tried, but her legs would not move. Her mother and father tried repeatedly to help Recil stand up, but her body only became more immobilized. After calling their doctor, the Skinner family immediately drove to the hospital. In the hospital bed, Recil steadily lost all ability to move except for blinking her eyes. Although the hospital wanted to transfer her to an iron lung (a machine to help polio patients breathe), they didn’t have one small enough for her. Doctors made the decision to place her inside of a smaller respirator that mechanically pushed and pulled air in and
out of her lungs. Recil recalls that she and her mother both hated this respirator. Every time Recil would begin to speak, the machine would either force her to breathe in or out.
During the next six months, Recil began to make progress with rigorous massages, hot baths, and muscle stretching therapy. Slowly, she regained use of her neck, arms, and torso—but not her legs. “I had some degree of mobility, but polio left me with more strength in some parts of my body than others,” Recil says.
After she was discharged, Recil was walking with leg braces and crutches, which would be needed for the rest of her life. In spite of her physical limitations, there was no stopping her from achieving her ambitions in grade school and college. Numerous articles were published extolling Recil’s achievements in high school, including one in the Chillicothe Constitution Tribune on February 25, 1966, that said she was a member of the Latin Club, Speech Club, Math Club, Future Teachers of America, and other activities.
When Recil was 14, she traveled to the Warm Springs Foundation in Warm Springs, Georgia. Due to the after effects of polio, she needed rehabilitation to correct her spine and surgery to help straighten her legs and feet, Recil says. She spent six months at Warm Springs in a full body cast.
Recil describes Warm Springs as more of a retreat rather than a hospital. They would provide schooling, fun activities, and regular visits to a private movie theater for the children. At Warm Springs, Recil made friends with other children with polio who were her age whom she could relate to. She recalls that she and her female friends had “hospital boyfriends” and acted just like any other teenager. “We would roll our gurney out of our rooms a lot and make the nurses go looking for us,” Recil says, laughing.
After high school, Recil attended and lived in the dorms at Northwest Missouri State College (now Northwest Missouri State University), graduating in 1970 with a degree in speech and language pathology. “I initially thought I would go to the University of Missouri, but when I visited Northwest State, a fraternity offered to take care of me. It was all boys, and that clinched the deal,” she says with a grin. “I could walk short distances but not around campus. They only forgot me once.”
Continuing on with her education, she received a master’s degree in public school counseling from Truman State University in 1988. Recil had always wanted to be a speech pathologist and enjoyed a career in the field for 28 years, working both in public
schools and at the Missouri Department of Corrections as a speech pathologist.
Recil worked with all prisoners at the Missouri Department of Corrections except for male death row inmates. Her job was to screen prisoners with reading tests and help them get the proper care or special education that they needed. Many of the prisoners were “rough,” as Recil describes. Despite the day-to-day risks associated with this job, Recil worked there until her retirement in 2001 and was deeply devoted to her work. “I think I am the only person that ever cried when they had to leave prison,” she said in a presentation she gave in 2021 at an Overland Park, Kansas, Rotary Club meeting. “I really loved my job.”
In 2007, Recil fell, breaking her left shoulder, followed by another fall and a fracture of her left femur in 2022. Now, she uses a scooter for mobility and independence. “I always wanted to be independent and never wanted to live with my mother and father or my brother, and they did not want that either,” she reflects. Recil maneuvers the scooter with ease and can drive circles around anyone. Recil’s newest adventure is having her car fitted with hand controls so that she can continue to drive.
Today, at age 76, Recil is an active advocate for polio awareness. She frequently speaks to school and church groups and at Rotary service clubs. Rotary International has made it a goal to eliminate polio and other preventable diseases.
In the past few years, Recil has lost part of her home to a tornado, her father, a lot of the mobility in her body, and her fiancé, but she continues to love life. “I haven’t done anything particularly great in my life,” she humbly says. “But I’ve got a lot of good stories.”
Warren Winer-St. Louis
As a professional actuary, using mathematics, statistics, and financial theory to assess the risk of potential events in the insurance industry, sometimes Warren Winer would mentally calculate his own life expectancy. He figured his chances of living past 67 with his legs paralyzed from polio since the age of three were not good, but he never dwelled on that outcome.
Likewise, he never grieved over the fact that the disease required him to use crutches and leg braces throughout his life. “I occasionally have thought it would have been nice if I had been born a few years later after the Salk vaccine came out in 1955, but I never saw myself as a victim,” he says.
He contributes much of his success in life to how his mother, Isabell Winer, addressed his paralysis early on when he entered kindergarten at age five.
She would accompany him to school and stay with him until classes were well underway, and she worked with his teachers to ensure he was being included in a way in which he could participate. She became a scout leader, so that he could experience activities, such as horseback riding and camping, like other boys did.
As a result, he says he always simply thought to himself, “Here is what I can do, and here is how I will do it.” In high school, socializing was never a problem for him. “My parents had a swimming pool, and I always had friends over to swim, hang out in the sun, and play cards,” he remembers. “I have played cards all my life—since fifth grade—and still enjoy a good game of bridge today.”
After graduating from high school at age 18, he drove himself to Stanford University, where he majored in mathematics and philosophy, earning a bachelor of science in 1968.
After graduation and heeding the advice of his uncle to pursue a career as an actuary, he joined the General American Life Insurance Company, advancing to vice president positions in senior management for the following 40 years before retiring in 2014.
Now, at 78 he has enjoyed 49 years of marriage to his wife, JoLynn, fathered two children, and is enjoying his four grandchildren.
While he has not been bothered by post-polio syndrome, a group of potentially disabling symptoms that appear decades after an initial polio diagnosis, the illness has taken a toll on his body. In fact, he missed eighth grade due to major back surgery, which was necessary due to the paralysis of his legs.
“After walking for years using crutches, when I reached age 68, my shoulders finally said, ‘That is enough,’ ” he recalls. Surgery on both shoulders made the use of crutches impossible, and now Warren relies on a motorized scooter to get around.
“Warren never considered himself to be disabled,” says his wife JoLynn. “He would never park in a handicapped parking space, feeling someone else needed it more.”
When asked to volunteer at Paraquad, a nonprofit which seeks to assist people living with disabilities in becoming independent, JoLynn says Warren initially turned down the opportunity, thinking his life was not out of the ordinary and he had nothing to contribute. Once he ended up joining, though, he served more than two decades on the board of directors, eventually becoming its chairperson.
“Polio helped shape my life, but it did not make it horrible,” Warren says reflecting on his past. “I have had a better life than many people who were healthy most of their lives.”
Article originally published in the October 2024 issue of Missouri Life.
