Scott Swanson
Barbara Story was 5 years old in 1946 when she contracted polio and ended up in an Omaha hospital for about three months.
Her Aunt Agnes, who also lived in Omaha, sent a get-well card addressed to her at St. Anthony’s Hospital. Problem was, it never arrived until just over a month ago.
“I think it went to the wrong hospital,” said Story, now 68, a Sweet Home resident since 2008. She said she was too young to remember which hospital she was actually in.
She and her younger brother had both contracted polio, a disease also known as infantile paralysis, which, until polio vaccines were developed in the 1950s, struck hundreds of thousands of people in the United States and elsewhere in epidemics. Today the disease has been nearly eradicated.
Story got a much more severe case than her brother, she said.
“I came close to death. They did CPR on me. It was a horrible experience.”
Both her legs were paralyzed and she had to undergo years of “grueling” therapy that included relearning how to walk. One of her legs ended up shorter than the other, a problem that was corrected with orthopedics.
“I don’t know anything different because that’s how I learned to walk,” she said.
The get-well card was returned to her aunt, a lifelong spinster, who apparently stuck it in a box, which ended up in the basement of Aunt Agnes’ home. When she died, Story’s cousin found it, unopened, and gave it to her. The envelope carries the original Omaha postmark of Sept. 13, 1946.
“I was amazed,” Story said. “It was unbelievable to get a get-well card almost 64 years later.