LETTER: Little wheelchairs
I had a lifelong friend who had polio. Our mothers met in the maternity ward when our older brothers were born.
Jimmy had a wheelchair, which I thought was neat. One time he was so fragile that when nurses turned him over, they broke both his legs.
One Halloween, he could stand on his own, and the family took him to doors and hid so the neighbors could see him standing alone and celebrate.
He died when I was in ninth grade. The vaccine came too late for Jimmy. That’s how long his life was. When I was in Rotary, we thought polio was almost eliminated worldwide.
Donald Trump has always deeply envied and resented the Kennedy family. He found a way to horrify and “own” the family by choosing the crackpot of the family to oversee our health.
I think we will recover from the brutality and ignorance of the present time, but we will be reminded of these times by little wheelchairs.
Gerard Weiss
Upper St. Clair