The Year Kingsport Got Vaccinated Against Polio

Business was off at the State and the Strand. Things got so dismal that some days Legion Pool had no swimmers. It was 1953 in Kingsport and the specter of polio was taking its toll. Mothers were afraid to let their children play outside. Afternoon naps and daily baths were mandatory.\

Then on April 12, 1955 came the breath-taking news. “Salk Vaccine Announced Effective” was plastered across the top of the front page of the Kingsport Times.

“There is no doubt that children now can be vaccinated successfully to end the threat of polio and the anxiety it causes every year” the story began. You can’t know the joy that sentence brought to Kingsport mothers.

Sept. 15, 1948

Polio had terrorized the nation for half a century, striking down healthy children, crippling and paralyzing them. In his book about the discovery of the vaccine, “Breakthrough,” author Richard Carter describes the euphoria the vaccine announcement of April 12th brought. “People observed moments of silence, rang bells, honked horns, blew factory whistles, fired salutes.” Pittsburgh medical researcher Jonas Salk had solved the mystery of the disease.

Kingsport and Sullivan County began to move immediately. The next day the paper reported, “It is expected that the shots will begin sometime next week. Dr. J.W. Erwin, county health department director, has urged parents of first, second, third and fourth graders who have received parental request cards to return them to their children’s teachers this week.”

A polio vaccine had only been announced and already Kingsport’s health community was mobilizing to inoculate local kids.

The Thursday April 14th Times reported that the Salk vaccine was en route to Kingsport and that Dr. Erwin had scheduled free inoculations in area elementary schools beginning Monday April 18 at 9 a.m. and continuing until every grade school student under age 11 was inoculated.

Shots were slated for Lynn Garden, Washington, and Lincoln Elementary schools the first day; Bell Ridge, Jackson, Long Island, Johnson and Dickson on Tuesday; Fort Robinson, Douglass, Sullivan and Orebank on Wednesday; Central Heights on Thursday; and Gravely, Cedar Grove, West View and Kingsley on Friday. Local doctors would administer the shots with help from public health nurses. The paper even listed mothers who had volunteered to help in the massive effort.

The Times reported that the first shot on April 18 was administered at Washington school to Debbie Salyer. The paper noted there were “very few cry babies…and only a few cases of ‘scared sick’ first graders.”

I don’t know who the Times reporter was - there was no by-line - but that certainly wasn’t the case at Johnson on the second day. I was one of the 288 kids who got shots that day and I can tell you that every single one of us was scared sick.

Betsy Taylor Bales remembers, “I got sick in anticipation, standing in the line going into the gym where they were giving the shots and I was taken to the office. Somehow, they lost track of me and I remember someone asking me if I had the shot yet and I lied and said ‘yes,’ so I never got it.  I did take the oral vaccine later when it was served on sugar cubes. I believe this is the first time I've confessed to this.”

We were lined up in the front hallway, a trail of frightened kids, all pointed toward the gym, where Martha Snyder remembers there were a number of “nurses in starched, white dresses with starched, white caps and white lace up heels - most impressive.”

Jane Hultin was one of the public health nurses. She worked Washington School the first day, moved to Jackson on Tuesday, to Douglass on Wednesday and finished up the week at West View. Hultin remembers the mass inoculation well because “I only worked as a nurse for three or four years, until I stayed home to raise my daughter.”

Because everything happened so quickly, less than a week from announcement to inoculation, there was a shortage of equipment. Hultin says, “This was in the days before throwaway needles so we had to sterilize ours. I had a Revere Copperware pot and a friend at Eastman made a little holder for the needles.”

Hultin says she saw a lot of kids with big eyes but didn’t experience any problems. One reason for that, according to Snyder, may be the arrangement. “I don't think they let us all in to see others being shot. I think they let just a few in at a time to reduce the fear factor.”

When you are seven years old, which is what I was at the time, a needle looks a foot long and a half-inch thick. I remember standing in line, biting my lip. The only noise in the hallway was deep breathing. Then suddenly up ahead a kid burst into tears at the thought of getting a shot and all the kids around him started crying in sympathy. A gaggle of teachers raced over to calm the group. They no sooner had this group soothed than another kid in the back of the line started crying and the teachers raced back there. The teachers were running around like those jugglers on “Ed Sullivan” trying to keep plates spinning.

After the shots kids walked zombie-like back to class, a lollipop in hand.

One of the doctors that day, Dr. Jay Warren, had been a division commander at Normandy. He had seen action. But not like this. Dr. Lyle Smith, who was another of the doctors, recalls, “At the end of the day he told me, ‘I am so sore. One seven-year-old kid kicked me all over.’”

The newspaper noted that 1,117 kids were inoculated the first day of vaccinations; another 1,232 received shots the second day. By Friday 3,938 Kingsport area kids had been vaccinated against polio.

The polio vaccine was a medical miracle. In 1954, the year before the mass Salk vaccine inoculations, there were 38,476 new cases of polio in this country. In 1964 there were 121 new cases nationwide. In 1974 there were seven new cases. The last naturally occurring case of polio in this country occurred in 1979.

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We should tip our cap to the mothers and volunteers who mobilized Kingsport’s fight against polio a half century ago. Here’s who worked where during that hectic week:

Nurse Alma Godsey was in charge at Lynn Garden Elementary, with help from mothers Mrs. Willard Pardue, Mrs. James Rosser and Mrs. Emily Brown.

Nurse Jane Hultin headed the Washington school effort with volunteers Mrs. C.C. Roberts, Mrs. T.B. Yancey and Mrs. Merritt Shobe. 

Two nurses, Faye Cain and Mrs. Melvin Martin, were in charge at Lincoln, with help from volunteers Mrs. W.A. Tyler, Mrs. William Harrison, Mrs. Raymond Steadman and Mrs. Henry Burem.

Nurse Godsey went to Bell Ridge on Tuesday where she was assisted by Alma Glass and Mrs. James Dennis.

Hultin was nurse in charge at Jackson on Tuesday, assisted by Mrs. Tom Murrell, Mrs. Barbara Holmes and Mrs. R.W. Ingraham.

At Long Island nurse Miniclair Duncan got help from volunteers Flora Eidson and Mrs. Joe Pylant.

Our nurses at Johnson were Mrs. Cain and Mrs. Martin with parent volunteers Mrs. Trula Thomas, Mrs. W.W. Allerton and Mrs. W.P. McGuire.

The nurse in charge at Dickson was Mrs. Vera Gillespie with help from volunteers Mrs. Betty Penland, Mrs. Mildred Fletcher and Mrs. Marie Walkey.

On Wednesday nurse Godsey moved to Fort Robinson where she was helped by Mrs. Mabel Asbury and Mrs. W.W. Bailey.

The nurse at Douglas was Mrs. Hultin, with help from Mrs. C.C. Roberts.

Nurse Duncan was in charge at Sullivan with help from volunteers Mrs. Robert Banner, Mrs. Anna L. Erwin and Mrs. Violet Ring.

Nurse Gillespie ran the Orebank clinic with help from Mrs. Ethel Jessee and Zola Stump.

Thursday was a light day with only Central Heights students receiving shots. Nurse Gillespie received help from Mrs. James Asbury and Mrs. Ed Shaulis.

Five schools wound up the week with Friday vaccinations. Nurse Godsey with help from Mrs. Raymond Hutchinson covered Gravely. Godsey then moved to Cedar Grove where she was aided by Ann Davis and Doris Edwards. West View had nurse Hultin and volunteer Edythe Mann. Miller-Perry shots were overseen by nurse Duncan and volunteers Katherine Pomeroy and Mary Tanner. Kingsley school had nurse Gillespie and parents Mrs. Neil Faris, Mrs. Robert Phipps and Mrs. Jean Brown.

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A small group of Sullivan county students had volunteered to be polio pioneers, part of a group of 400,000 children nationwide who tested the Salk vaccine in 1954. Some 1,532 second graders in the county received the vaccine on April 27, 1954 with booster shots four weeks and five weeks later. Shelby County was also a field test site in 1954, the only two Tennessee counties to test the Salk vaccine.