In the spring of 1944, when I was 2 ½ years old, my mother took me with her to visit a friend in Boca Raton who had a son five years old. His name was Jimmy, and his last name started with a “B” and ended with an “N”; but I’d rather not fully spell it so as not to embarrass anyone. Anyway, he and I were playing, and I was probably teasing him, when he suddenly grabbed me by the ankles, lifted me up high in the air and slammed me down hard to their living room wood floor on my back. I landed with the bottom of my neck hitting first, followed by the back of my head, knocking me unconscious.

When I didn’t move for a few minutes, my mother picked me up and rushed me to the Good Samaritan Hospital in West Palm Beach, which was the closest hospital at the time. Mother later told me that I was unconscious for quite a while. When I finally awoke at the hospital, but still didn’t move, the doctors discovered I was paralyzed from the neck down. My five-year-old friend and his parents were devastated, of course, as were my parents and sister. They kept me in the hospital for a while, trying to get me better, but apparently nothing was working. Mother and Dad were praying real hard, of course, as were many of their friends and relatives in Deerfield.

One day, my father’s sister, Nova Adams, brought her 3-year-old daughter, Sandra, to visit me in the hospital. Unbeknown to anyone at the time, Sandra had been exposed to whooping cough, and was just beginning to experience the effects. When she arrived at my bedside, according to my mother, little Sandra leaned in through the bed railing a far as she could, to look at me up close. Suddenly she coughed loudly right in my face. Mother quickly pulled her away and politely suggested that Aunt Nova take her home since she appeared to be sick. Mother was not happy that someone brought a sick child to visit me.

She and Dad continued to pray, and Mother remembers asking God why He would allow a sick child to be brought to my bedside, exposing me to even more danger. A few days later I started to cough, and the doctors said I had caught the whooping cough too. Mother and Dad were frantic.

I would surely die now, they thought.

But something was happening to my body as I coughed. Suddenly I started moving my legs. Then I moved my left arm, and later on my right arm. I was getting better. I was overcoming the paralysis. My mother always believed that it was a God thing and he had sent little Sandra to visit me with the cure I needed: whooping cough.

The doctors apparently could not figure out what was happening with me.They tested me for polio, which was rampant at the time, but the tests were negative. Eventually they discharged me from the hospital, but requested mother to bring me back to see Dr. Martin once a week at the “Children’s Clinic” in Palm Beach. Those appointments continued on for several years, but eventually dropped to once every two weeks. I never felt sorry for myself because nearly every other child I saw at the clinic was really bad off. Some were even in iron lungs, which was a round cylinder device with only their head sticking out.

I remember getting back and right arm massages, and sometimes they would wrap me in a smelly brown blanket and put me in a hot tub of water. One day my mother got really mad at the nurse who was massaging me. She and the nurse had been talking about “the war” in Europe. The nurse, who had an accent, told Mother that she was from a place called Normandy in France, and that she was worried about her house there. She went on to say that she preferred the Germans to be there because they would take better care of her house than the Americans. My mother’s face got red as she told that nurse that one of her brothers was there and she did not appreciate what the nurse had said. Then Mother went to the clinic supervisor and told him she did not want that nurse working on me. I never saw that nurse again.

Eventually, they said I only needed to come once or twice a year. That was good. However, I remember Dr. Martin telling Mother and Dad that when I reached twelve years old, he wanted me to have a special examination. At the time I didn’t realize how special it would be, nor how it would affect my life for several years thereafter.

David Eller, Publisher