Polio Place

Sorting through a file of old papers and report cards, I came across this record of receiving my Sabin oral immunizations. My mother had obviously followed the instruction to keep the form, since I was 13 at the time and immunization was no longer that big a deal. But I do remember vividly my Salk vaccination years earlier at my elementary school in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. Not because of the needle, but because science had found this new way to fight a fearsome childhood disease that was very real to me and my schoolmates. Being among the first generation of kids to receive the vaccine was exciting — almost as if we’d put a man on the moon.