Maybe I should deal with them separately. We closed bowling alleys, and swimming pools, and beaches in the summer 497,000 Americans were paralyzed, and then that magical moment in 1955 when there was a cure. The president of the New York Stock Exchange went in the Army for $21 a month as a private, William McChesney Martin, later chairman of the Federal Reserve.Īnd at the time of polio, there was terror in the country. But Americans, through 20 million victory gardens, raised a third of the country's vegetables. We were all at risk.Īnd it was - and especially after the beginning to have the war, it was a time of collective sacrifice, where there were shortages of alcohol, tobacco, meat, butter, you name it. And there was - it was a time of collective national sacrifice.
I mean, I would compare it, Judy, to the time after World War II began or the polio epidemic in the '50s. Well, the only way I could make sense of it is by what we have been through before.
