Valentines and Vaccinations

Grant had just finished building a cozy little home in Lehi for his wife, Virginia, and their four young boys. It was a labor of love he undertook in the evenings and on weekends. His days were spent working at Geneva Steel, the post-war employer that fed many Utah Valley families headed by returned soldiers. One autumn day, Grant felt ill at work and went to the infirmary. Virginia was notified; her husband had been taken to the hospital. Grant had polio.

Grant was in the hospital for months. In February, Virginia, and another wife of a polio patient organized a Valentine’s party for the polio ward. The Salt Lake Trib reported on the event:

“The three older sons of Mr. Smith were busy handing out valentines to everyone–including the nurses. They also kept after young Kayl–just learning to talk–to say ‘Hello’ to his dad. … The Smith boys told their dad how they had traveled through Lehi ‘gathering pop bottles for Pop’ and then selling them to contribute to the recent polio fund drive.”

I can’t get through the article without crying. Young Kayl is my dad, and he grew up without his. Grant died on February 24, 1953. The next month, Jonas Salk announced on CBS radio a successful test of his polio vaccine. Two years later, his vaccine was licensed and children’s vaccination campaigns were launched.

Can you imagine how relieved Virginia must have been when her boys lined up to get their polio vaccine sugar cubes? It’s all I can think about with yesterday’s news that the FDA gave emergency use authorization to Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine. This, just 336 days after the genetic blueprint of a novel coronavirus was made available. It’s nothing short of a miracle.

Doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine will arrive in Utah next week. Health care workers will receive them first (yes, and thank you!), then caregivers and patients in long-term care facilities, followed by teachers, first responders, and those 65 and older. It’s possible that my parents could receive their first doses of coronavirus vaccine in February 2021.

Vaccination. That’s a valentine I think Virginia could get behind.

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I learned this morning that a few weeks before I was born, scientists announced smallpox had been eradicated. A disease that killed an estimated 300 million in the 20th century, eradicated through vaccination. #science