If you want to understand the impact of polio -- if you want to comprehend the heartbreak polio victims feel about the return of infantile paralysis -- if you want to sense the bewilderment that polio victims feel about vaccine skepticism -- then walk a mile in Stacy Smith’s shoes.
That mile-long walk is going to take a while. And the shoes? They’re Dr. Comfort orthopedic shoes, big enough to accommodate the braces on both his legs that extend from his upper thighs through the bases of his feet. Walk a mile in those shoes and ask Smith, who for more than three dozen years was a beloved anchorman on Pittsburgh’s KDKA television station, to tell you how at age 6 months, virtually every inch of his body except his eyes was paralyzed. How he had 13 surgeries, spending months away from his parents and brothers in another city, and only learned to walk at age 4.
Or take a stroll in the shoes of Paul Steiger, who at age 4 awakened with a staggeringly high fever and soon thereafter was in a rehab center. He made a substantial but not full recovery from polio and, like Smith, is suffering a rebound from the disease. That stroll with Steiger, who was managing editor of The Wall Street Journal and the founder of the Pro Publica investigative news organization, isn’t going to be brisk, either, especially if it involves even slight hills. But along the way, he will have time to tell you how he, too, was separated from his brother and parents for treatment.
