Thomas J. Boyd Museum

Open to the public since June 30, 2007, this exhibit is the final component in a five-year project in the Town of Wytheville Department of Museums’ Summer of Polio Initiative, which also included two public forums and an oral history project culminating in the 2005 publication of “A Summer Without Children.”The exhibit includes listening stations (excerpts from the original interviews), two iron lungs (adult and infant) and a 1950 newsreel made during the epidemic in Wytheville by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis.

Highlighted is the book, “A Summer Without Children: An Oral History of Wythe County, Virginia’s 1950 Polio Epidemic” by Linda Hoofnagle Logan, Coordinator of Heritage Education, Department of Museums, Wytheville, Virginia, published in 2005. Containing more than 130 photos and excerpts from period newspapers, this book takes the reader inside a record-breaking polio epidemic in 1950 notable for an unusually high per capita case count that summer. First-person accounts, private archives, and interviews with survivors and witnesses lend a unique recollection of the stark images of an unforgettable summer. According to cultural anthropologist, Dr. Stevan Jackson, “The story of the polio epidemic of Wytheville, Virginia is now told by those who lived it. The story is now understood by those who did not.” (Copies can be ordered from The Museum Shop, 115 West Spiller Street, Wytheville, VA by phone: 276-223-3457 or email: lindal@wytheville.org.)

Thomas J. Boyd Museum
295 Tazewell St
Wytheville, VA 24382
276-223-3330

museum@wytheville.org The Thomas J. Boyd Museum permanent exhibit, “Summer of Polio,” is an interactive exhibition focusing on the summer of 1950 when Wythe County made national and world news due to the record-breaking number polio epidemic cases.