Way back in the 1960s, James Erwin, my boss at Tyson who was over the field men, talked to us about a new field man he’d hired. James, who’d been an agri teacher at Lincoln before coming to Tyson, was a great boss and knew lots of people. He explained that the new employee had been a victim of polio. He was concerned whether he could handle the job, but wanted all of us to give him a chance, and a hand if he needed it. James considered him a hard worker, but handicapped, he might have problems keeping up.
I met Don Umberson and liked him. Besides the fact he that had a strained walk, he was open and ready to do his part as a team member. Fresh out of the University of Arkansas, he and his wife Caroline were ready to go. He had not been working with us long, and he had a truck-car wreck turning left off College, on Dickson. At the time I was over Tyson vehicles, and he and I had a long talk that Saturday morning about what happened. The next Monday morning I had to explain to Mr. John Tyson the circumstances of the accident. I must have satisfied Mr. John, he only told me to tell him to slow down. I agreed, and nothing more came of it.
Through the years, Don worked up the Tyson ladder, ran the leghorn division and then was over the broiler field men. He and Caroline had bought a farm south of Lincoln near his old home place. In a few years, they added breeder hen houses. I was their field man, and I remember teasing her about the big new brick house they built on the corner. She did most of the work at the hen houses then, and I teased her, “Why, you’re going to have to hire a maid to keep that house clean, no more time than you have left.”
We happened to meet last week and had supper together. We laughed about old times. I had always wanted to know about his polio. Today, thanks to Dr. Saulk and his vaccine, polio is about wiped off the face of the earth.
Don said that at about 6 years old, when he was stricken, they took him to Dr. Baggett in Prairie Grove. The doctor sent him on to the Fayetteville City Hospital. Caroline said he was the first of many victims that summer. They were so afraid of his contagiousness, Don said, they kept him isolated in a broom closet for five days. Can you imagine a small sick boy in quarters like that? Later he got a room, and then they sent him to the Children’s Hospital in Little Rock. He was in a room there with ten iron lungs and his own cot down on the end. He called his bed a slab.
The iron lung was a large respirator machine that the victims layed in that forced them to breathe. They could not exist outside of them. Twenty-four hours a day they were in those machines. It sounded like a horrible fate to me. I once visited a classmate who had polio and he was in one. We soon moved away, and I could not keep track of him… but I always wondered what became of him.
Don said at the time he probably needed to be in one of them too, but they didn’t have any more of them available. He spent six months in rehab and finally came home.
They also told me it was a bad summer in that western end of Washington County, Arkansas. Several more were stricken with the dreaded disease. Some even died from it. Caroline listed potential causes, like the fact that everyone swam in the creeks, and drank water from the shallow wells and springs.
If you have a computer you can look the disease up on Google. It comes from fecal sources that are taken in by the mouth. I can recall when, in the 50s, everyone feared it. At one outbreak my mother made me quit going into town to use the public swimming pool. No one knew where it came from, and everyone was so afraid. I was just mad I couldn’t go swim.
Don was very fortunate, he’s had a successful career. He and Caroline have children and grandchildren they consider a blessing. They enjoy a life of farming now with their breeder hens and cattle. He told me at the end of our conversation that he is one of the lucky ones to have survived.
Western novelist Dusty Richards and his wife Pat live on Beaver Lake in northwest Arkansas. For more information about his books you can email Dusty by visiting www.ozarksfn.com and clicking on ‘Contact Us’ or call 1-866-532-1960.
