Old Lafayette: Remembering when polio struck fear in Tippecanoe County

Dr. Jonas Salk's discovery and development of a vaccine against infantile paralysis is pretty much taken for granted nowadays.

But not so many years ago, as the summer plodded toward its end in late August, the fear of polio was always present.

A severe polio epidemic was recorded in the United States in the summer and early fall of 1934; and then in late August of 1946 another scare arose.

That scare prompted local public health officials to step up polio detection measures in Tippecanoe County, but fortunately no cases surfaced here.

In the late summers of 1947, 1948 and 1949, a few polio cases - none fatal - were reported in the community.

But the late summer of 1950 proved to be scary, indeed.

Many cases began to be detected in late August and early September, especially in the Clarks Hill and Stockwell areas.

By Oct. 6, 1950, there had been 21 diagnosed cases of infantile paralysis in the county. On Oct. 11, both the Clarks Hill and the Stockwell schools were closed as a precautionary measure,

On Oct. 6, 9-year-old Bonnie Lee Halsema, of Rt. 11, died.

She was the fourth person to die of polio in Tippecanoe County that fall.

By Oct. 9, three more polio cases were diagnosed, running the total to 24. 

On Oct. 10, 1950, Mildred Arndt, 8 years old, of Rt. 11, became the county's fifth polio fatality of the year.

The St. Joseph Addition of Lafayette's St. Elizabeth Hospital was turned into a polio treatment center.

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It was late October before the local polio concern was eased. No more new cases were reported. The Stockwell and Clarks Hill schools reopened on Oct. 16.

By the spring of 1954, the new Salk vaccine began to be available for testing in limited amounts. On April 28, 1954, it was announced that anti-polio injections had been given to 1,150 second-graders enrolled in local schools.

The program was part of a test of the vaccine on a million young Americans, 16,000 of them from Indiana.

People watched the "polio season" closely in the late summer of 1954. There was no alarming outbreak in Tippecanoe County.

By April 1955, the 1954 tests having indicated the Salk vaccine was reliable, plans were announced to inject 5,500 Tippecanoe County school pupils beginning on April 18.

For the most part, the advent of the Salk vaccine has stopped polio as a crippler and killer.

But on Aug. 26, 1956, there were four diagnosed cases of polio in Tippecanoe County, and Mrs. G.J. Booth, 22, died that day. She was the second polio fatality in the county that year. Ritchie R. Crum, 21, had died Aug. 10.

The Salk vaccine has made the world safer against polio, but every year about this time its living victims and their friends and relatives, no doubt remember when its terror was very real.

About the series:

Each week, the Journal & Courier is reprinting some of the best of Bob Kriebel's Old Lafayette columns. Today is a look back at the tragic effects of polio in Tippecanoe County. This is taken from a column published Aug. 27, 1978.