168: The Miracle of Hickory: A Hospital in 54 Hours

WEBVTT

00:04.029 --> 00:09.534
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just before sunrise on Saturday, June, twenty-four, nineteen, forty-four.

00:10.875 --> 00:21.123
[SPEAKER_00]: In the woods by Lake Hickory, North Carolina, floodlights cast long shadows over a bustling campfire, turned construction zone.

00:22.364 --> 00:28.169
[SPEAKER_00]: Dozens of volunteers, men too old for the war, women in hinkerchiefs.

00:29.530 --> 00:33.013
[SPEAKER_00]: Even off duty soldiers, work throughout the night,

00:34.554 --> 00:40.259
[SPEAKER_00]: Hammers claimed against nails and saws were through pine boards.

00:41.721 --> 00:46.265
[SPEAKER_00]: A line of cars, ambulances, and even a borrowed hurts.

00:47.226 --> 00:51.350
[SPEAKER_00]: Wines down a dirt road toward a freshly painted stone building.

00:53.032 --> 00:58.697
[SPEAKER_00]: Each vehicle carries a precious burden, a child stricken with polio.

01:00.568 --> 01:06.293
[SPEAKER_00]: By the time the sun peaks over the pines, the first stretcher is gently lifted out.

01:07.815 --> 01:15.341
[SPEAKER_00]: A little girl, feverish and limp, is rushed past rows of canvas tints into a newly erected ward.

01:16.723 --> 01:21.907
[SPEAKER_00]: Nurses and crisp white uniforms stand ready by rows of donated

01:23.931 --> 01:32.055
[SPEAKER_00]: One volunteer, wipe sweat and saw dust from his brow, as another calls out, bed ready over here.

01:34.056 --> 01:40.979
[SPEAKER_00]: In a corner, a machine pumps rhythmically, the sigh of an iron lung, helping a boy breathe.

01:42.360 --> 01:49.123
[SPEAKER_00]: Parents hover anxiously at the camp's entrance, eyes full of worry and fragile hope.

01:50.628 --> 01:54.389
[SPEAKER_00]: Just fifty four hours ago, this place was a summer camp.

01:55.390 --> 01:56.830
[SPEAKER_00]: Now it's a lifeline.

01:58.271 --> 02:06.234
[SPEAKER_00]: The people of Hickory have built a hospital out of sheer desperation and love, and every second counts.

02:13.215 --> 02:16.416
[SPEAKER_00]: Hello friend, welcome back to hometown history.

02:17.496 --> 02:25.738
[SPEAKER_00]: The podcast that takes a stroll down the main streets and back alleys of the past to uncover how local stories shaped the world.

02:27.038 --> 02:33.740
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Shane Waters, and today we're exploring the story of a community, but accomplished the impossible.

02:35.277 --> 02:40.883
[SPEAKER_00]: In the summer of nineteen forty four as a deadly polio outbreak threatened North Carolina.

02:41.684 --> 02:48.391
[SPEAKER_00]: The small city of Hickory built a full scale polio hospital in just fifty four hours.

02:49.833 --> 02:52.576
[SPEAKER_00]: It was later dubbed the miracle of Hickory.

02:54.315 --> 03:02.257
[SPEAKER_00]: outed ordinary people in the midst of World War II, all together to fight a terrifying disease on the home front.

03:03.277 --> 03:08.138
[SPEAKER_00]: And what does their courage teach us about resilience and cooperation?

03:09.918 --> 03:15.199
[SPEAKER_00]: To understand it, we need to go back to a time of fear and uncertainty.

03:16.240 --> 03:22.161
[SPEAKER_00]: Back to the late spring of nineteen forty four, when polio came to Hickory

03:25.159 --> 03:35.865
[SPEAKER_00]: In the first half of the twentieth century, few things frightened American parents more than Polio, also known as infantile paralysis.

03:37.866 --> 03:42.308
[SPEAKER_00]: Polio was a highly contagious virus that could strike without warning.

03:43.709 --> 03:45.990
[SPEAKER_00]: One day a child might have a slight fever.

03:46.971 --> 03:52.474
[SPEAKER_00]: The next day they could be paralyzed, unable to move or even breathe on their own.

03:53.857 --> 04:05.000
[SPEAKER_00]: There was no cure in no vaccine yet, only primitive treatments like immobilizing braces or scalding hot compresses to ease the symptoms.

04:06.800 --> 04:16.843
[SPEAKER_00]: If the virus paralyzed the chest muscles, patients had to rely on a bulky mechanical ventilator known as an iron lung to stay alive.

04:18.508 --> 04:25.854
[SPEAKER_00]: polio tended to surge in the hot summer months, striking mostly children, though adult weren't immune.

04:26.875 --> 04:33.480
[SPEAKER_00]: Even President Franklin D. Roosevelt had been left wheelchair bound by polio years earlier.

04:52.143 --> 04:58.306
[SPEAKER_00]: But in the nineteen forties, North Carolina was about to face one of its worst epidemics.

04:59.467 --> 05:05.410
[SPEAKER_00]: Picture the summer of nineteen forty four world war two its raging overseas.

05:06.731 --> 05:10.633
[SPEAKER_00]: Many local doctors and nurses are away serving in the military.

05:11.973 --> 05:18.917
[SPEAKER_00]: On the home front, American steel was wartime rationing in constant worry for their loved ones abroad.

05:20.385 --> 05:25.869
[SPEAKER_00]: In North Carolina, an unseen enemy was creeping in, polio virus.

05:27.250 --> 05:37.078
[SPEAKER_00]: That year, polio cases spiked dramatically across the state, with eight hundred and sixty-one cases in nineteen forty-four alone.

05:38.539 --> 05:45.845
[SPEAKER_00]: Among the hardest hit areas was the western Piedmont region, around Hickory, in Catawabah County.

05:47.696 --> 05:53.799
[SPEAKER_00]: The first case in Catawabah County was confirmed on June first, nineteen forty-four.

05:55.460 --> 06:02.044
[SPEAKER_00]: Within twenty-four hours, six cases were identified in the county and sixty-eight across the region.

06:03.445 --> 06:06.506
[SPEAKER_00]: It became clear that polio was spreading fast.

06:08.327 --> 06:15.231
[SPEAKER_00]: Local newspapers like the Hickory Daily Record began reporting new cases almost daily.

06:16.707 --> 06:29.996
[SPEAKER_00]: families of sick children, frantically sought help, traveling to the nearest major hospital with a polio ward, Charlotte Memorial Hospital, fifty-five miles south in Charlotte.

06:31.377 --> 06:39.383
[SPEAKER_00]: But soon even Charlotte's polio ward was full, with army tents pitched on its lawn to handle the overflow.

06:40.920 --> 06:48.628
[SPEAKER_00]: desperate parents driving down from the mountains, learned there was no room left, in Charlotte, or their ailing kids.

06:50.376 --> 06:55.599
[SPEAKER_00]: Many got only as far as hickory before being turned back by the grim news.

06:57.280 --> 06:58.701
[SPEAKER_00]: Fear gripped the region.

06:59.581 --> 07:02.803
[SPEAKER_00]: People didn't yet know exactly how polio spread.

07:03.944 --> 07:06.205
[SPEAKER_00]: Some suspected flies or mosquitoes.

07:07.286 --> 07:10.828
[SPEAKER_00]: Others worried it was in the water or even the air.

07:12.502 --> 07:15.383
[SPEAKER_00]: rumors and folk theories flew.

07:16.823 --> 07:19.644
[SPEAKER_00]: Towns with known polio cases were shunned.

07:20.624 --> 07:24.425
[SPEAKER_00]: Travelers would roll up their windows tight as they passed through.

07:25.906 --> 07:30.107
[SPEAKER_00]: Even in the stifling June heat, afraid to breathe the air.

07:31.788 --> 07:36.629
[SPEAKER_00]: Memories of earlier epidemics had taught people to fear public gatherings

07:38.014 --> 07:44.100
[SPEAKER_00]: In mid-June, North Carolina's Board of Health warned parents to keep children away from crowds.

07:44.961 --> 07:53.869
[SPEAKER_00]: No playgrounds, no swimming pools, no summer camps, no movie matnais, not even church or Sunday school.

07:56.131 --> 08:03.338
[SPEAKER_00]: Hickory, a town of about fifteen thousand, was known for its tight knit community, an industrious spirit,

08:04.907 --> 08:10.051
[SPEAKER_00]: But by June, nineteen forty four, that spirit was tested by polio.

08:11.633 --> 08:15.656
[SPEAKER_00]: On June seventh, the Hickory paper announced the area's first case.

08:16.677 --> 08:22.482
[SPEAKER_00]: A seventeen month old girl from town had fallen ill and had been taken to Charlotte Memorial.

08:23.995 --> 08:27.358
[SPEAKER_00]: Within days, more local children were stricken.

08:27.378 --> 08:33.164
[SPEAKER_00]: A four-year-old girl, then a ten-year-old boy, then a twelve-year-old.

08:34.385 --> 08:35.946
[SPEAKER_00]: The numbers climbed steadily.

08:37.128 --> 08:42.693
[SPEAKER_00]: By June fourteen, at least ten cases had been reported in three counties around Hickory.

08:43.914 --> 08:45.255
[SPEAKER_00]: Parents were terrified.

08:45.876 --> 08:48.919
[SPEAKER_00]: This was the start of a full blown epidemic.

08:50.577 --> 08:55.960
[SPEAKER_00]: Local health officials urge the public to stay calm, but take precautions.

08:57.181 --> 09:07.787
[SPEAKER_00]: Dr. H. C. Williams, Hickory City Physician, and the Catawabac County Public Health Officer, spoke on the radio to the press to quail panic.

09:09.188 --> 09:11.909
[SPEAKER_00]: Community hysteria does not help at all.

09:12.449 --> 09:16.712
[SPEAKER_00]: He warned, pleading with residents not to become panic-stricken.

09:18.687 --> 09:30.377
[SPEAKER_00]: By June sixteen, Dr. Wham's had no choice, but to officially declare an epidemic in Katowawak County, and ban all children, wealth and under, from public gatherings.

09:31.918 --> 09:40.425
[SPEAKER_00]: The headline in the Hickory Daily Record, the layered, polio epidemic bars public places, to tots twelve and under.

09:42.056 --> 09:52.202
[SPEAKER_00]: Dr. Wims was quoted in the paper, sounding the alarm, an epidemic of infantile paralysis definitely exist in Catawabah County.

09:53.663 --> 10:01.288
[SPEAKER_00]: He ordered that children stay away from churches, theaters, playgrounds, swimming pools, anywhere kids might congregate.

10:02.468 --> 10:11.694
[SPEAKER_00]: At the same time, he again urged to calm, noting that panic would help no one, and emphasizing the importance of early treatment

10:13.123 --> 10:16.666
[SPEAKER_00]: parents must call a doctor at the first sign of symptoms.

10:18.467 --> 10:23.911
[SPEAKER_00]: As June war on, the situation in Hickory grew more dire by the day.

10:25.112 --> 10:30.736
[SPEAKER_00]: New cases popped up, not just in the city, but in surrounding rural communities.

10:32.117 --> 10:38.982
[SPEAKER_00]: On June, nineteenth, over one weekend, seven more cases were reported in Catawabak County.

10:40.243 --> 10:42.525
[SPEAKER_00]: The evidence was pointing to possible causes

10:44.300 --> 10:59.947
[SPEAKER_00]: Several of those patients had recently been swimming, and local streams or ponds, or drinking raw milk from backyard cows, or living in homes without window screens, supporting the theory about flies spreading the virus.

11:01.468 --> 11:12.093
[SPEAKER_00]: These clues were all local officials had, since the true culprit, virus laid in fecal contamination in water, wasn't fully understood yet,

11:13.828 --> 11:16.810
[SPEAKER_00]: Meanwhile, the nearest hospitals were overwhelmed.

11:18.071 --> 11:32.320
[SPEAKER_00]: A visiting epidemiologist from the National Foundation for infantile paralysis, the organization founded by FDR later nicknamed The March of Dimes, arrived in North Carolina to assist.

11:33.785 --> 11:45.159
[SPEAKER_00]: but when news came that Charlotte Memorial and even a specialized orthopedic hospital in Gistonia could accept no more polio patients from outside their areas.

11:46.160 --> 11:49.765
[SPEAKER_00]: It was clear that Hickory and its neighbors were on their own.

11:51.567 --> 11:53.989
[SPEAKER_00]: Something had to be done immediately.

11:55.110 --> 12:01.095
[SPEAKER_00]: The lives of dozens of children and potentially hundreds more, hung in the balance.

12:02.416 --> 12:04.618
[SPEAKER_00]: This is where our story truly begins.

12:05.919 --> 12:08.261
[SPEAKER_00]: The town faced with a frightening question.

12:09.582 --> 12:13.245
[SPEAKER_00]: When no one else can help, can we save ourselves

12:16.857 --> 12:20.799
[SPEAKER_00]: On the morning of Thursday, June, twenty second, nineteen forty four.

12:21.599 --> 12:26.741
[SPEAKER_00]: Three men met in Hickory's high school auditorium under urgent circumstances.

12:28.122 --> 12:31.143
[SPEAKER_00]: Dr. H. C. Wimbs, the county health officer.

12:32.223 --> 12:42.608
[SPEAKER_00]: Dr. Gayther Han, a local physician who chaired the county chapter of the National Foundation for Infantile Parallysis and Dr. C. H. Crap tree.

12:44.009 --> 12:49.994
[SPEAKER_00]: The NFIP's state representative gathered to confront the crisis head on.

12:50.975 --> 12:52.797
[SPEAKER_00]: Word had just arrived from Charlotte.

12:53.537 --> 12:56.360
[SPEAKER_00]: Every polio bed in that city was now filled.

12:57.241 --> 12:59.743
[SPEAKER_00]: Even the army tensed on the lawn.

13:00.904 --> 13:04.648
[SPEAKER_00]: No more patients from Hickory, or anywhere else could be admitted.

13:05.688 --> 13:08.491
[SPEAKER_00]: Get stonias or the pedicospital was full too.

13:09.732 --> 13:11.913
[SPEAKER_00]: The child in the Hickory area fell ill.

13:12.673 --> 13:15.094
[SPEAKER_00]: There was literally nowhere to send them for care.

13:16.215 --> 13:22.278
[SPEAKER_00]: There were responsibility to treat these sick kids at fallen on these three local leaders.

13:24.098 --> 13:29.241
[SPEAKER_00]: They realized instantly that Hickory needed its own treatment center and fast.

13:30.221 --> 13:39.065
[SPEAKER_00]: Other communities might have waited for state or federal authorities to step in, but this was wartime, and resources were stretched then

13:40.888 --> 13:42.649
[SPEAKER_00]: The decision was made then and there.

13:43.630 --> 13:47.213
[SPEAKER_00]: Hickory would build an emergency polio hospital itself.

13:48.114 --> 13:55.840
[SPEAKER_00]: With a daunting plan, essentially creating a new hospital from scratch, but necessity left no alternative.

13:56.921 --> 14:05.648
[SPEAKER_00]: As one account later put it, it was out of necessity, generosity, and compassion that the miracle of Hickory was born.

14:08.049 --> 14:11.230
[SPEAKER_00]: They immediately set about finding a suitable location.

14:12.950 --> 14:16.371
[SPEAKER_00]: Schools, churches, and public halls were considered.

14:17.551 --> 14:21.772
[SPEAKER_00]: But those in town were too small or too close to population centers.

14:23.113 --> 14:26.593
[SPEAKER_00]: Fortunately, Dr. Han had already been moaning an idea.

14:26.613 --> 14:28.714
[SPEAKER_00]: A rather daring one.

14:30.135 --> 14:39.842
[SPEAKER_00]: Just three miles north of Hickory, on the wooded shores of Lake Hickory, lay a sixty-two acre property, known as the Lake Hickory Health Camp.

14:41.283 --> 14:48.007
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a fresh air camp built during the depression as a charitable summer camp for underprivileged kids.

14:49.568 --> 14:59.235
[SPEAKER_00]: The camp had one sturdy horizontal stone building, constructed by WPA labor a few years earlier, and lots of open land,

15:00.625 --> 15:11.132
[SPEAKER_00]: crucially, the camp was county owned, which met Dr. Wims as public health officer had the authority to come and do it for emergency use.

15:13.074 --> 15:20.178
[SPEAKER_00]: The three doctors agreed unanimously, the health camp would be transformed into a temporary polio hospital.

15:21.499 --> 15:29.585
[SPEAKER_00]: Within half an hour of the meeting start, Dr. Wims gave the order, evacuate the camp immediately

15:31.142 --> 15:35.787
[SPEAKER_00]: At that time, about fifty-seven children were staying there for their summer respite.

15:36.608 --> 15:40.452
[SPEAKER_00]: By that afternoon, buses and cars had taken them back home.

15:42.274 --> 15:49.461
[SPEAKER_00]: A newspaper headline flashed the news that very day, new polio cases will be treated at health camp.

15:50.722 --> 15:53.325
[SPEAKER_00]: Hickory was going to care for its own.

15:55.600 --> 15:57.101
[SPEAKER_00]: Now the real race began.

15:58.162 --> 16:02.465
[SPEAKER_00]: The trio of physicians essentially sketched out a battle plan on the spot.

16:03.466 --> 16:06.108
[SPEAKER_00]: They divided up duties like a military operation.

16:07.149 --> 16:11.552
[SPEAKER_00]: Dr. Wims as the local authority would oversee converting the camp.

16:12.693 --> 16:17.534
[SPEAKER_00]: rounding up equipment, getting tents, and directing construction crews.

16:18.675 --> 16:31.818
[SPEAKER_00]: Dr. Hahn took charge of communications and supplies, putting out calls for material, coordinating with local government, and securing whatever hospital furniture, and gear he could find.

16:33.505 --> 16:43.309
[SPEAKER_00]: Dr. Crabtree would tap to the National Foundation's resources, requesting funds, doctors, and nurses from outside, Hickory.

16:44.589 --> 16:51.932
[SPEAKER_00]: Each man picked up the phone and started mobilizing help, both locally and from across the state and nation.

16:53.632 --> 17:00.695
[SPEAKER_00]: One of Dr. Hans' first cause was to the editor of the Hickory Daily Record, the town's main newspaper

17:01.923 --> 17:08.631
[SPEAKER_00]: Within hours, the paper's presses rolled with an announcement, calling for all hands on deck.

17:10.152 --> 17:22.206
[SPEAKER_00]: Hickory citizens learned that a polio treatment center was being set up at the old health camp, and that volunteers, supplies, and donations were needed, immediately.

17:24.032 --> 17:32.097
[SPEAKER_00]: At that same time, local radio station, WHKY, interrupted regular programming with urgent bulletins.

17:33.497 --> 17:47.946
[SPEAKER_00]: Announces listed items required at the new hospital, baby cribs and beds, bedding and bandages, kitchen stoves, refrigerators, buckets, soap, even office furniture.

17:49.061 --> 17:53.863
[SPEAKER_00]: almost anything a hospital might need, because this one had nothing.

17:55.524 --> 18:12.453
[SPEAKER_00]: They also begged for manpower, carpenters, electricians, plumbers, nurses, cooks, drivers, anyone who could swing a hammer, wheeled a paintbrush, or wash a load of laundry, and Hickory answered the call

18:14.030 --> 18:17.393
[SPEAKER_00]: Almost immediately offers of help poured in.

18:18.274 --> 18:25.520
[SPEAKER_00]: Three local lumber companies dispatched trucks loaded with fresh cut pine lumber for the site that same day.

18:26.501 --> 18:27.322
[SPEAKER_00]: Free of charge.

18:28.463 --> 18:37.771
[SPEAKER_00]: Construction crews of skilled tradesmen volunteered in mass, showing up with their own tools by sundown on June twenty second.

18:39.132 --> 18:45.317
[SPEAKER_00]: the National Guard sent soldiers to clear trees and brush to make space for new buildings.

18:46.818 --> 19:02.730
[SPEAKER_00]: The city of Hickory organized a prison work crew inmates from a state penitentiary to dig a three mile long water line from town out to the remote camp ensuring a steady water supply

19:04.458 --> 19:12.627
[SPEAKER_00]: Incredibly, even women prisoners from Raleigh were brought in to help run the camps kitchen and laundry services.

19:14.149 --> 19:20.016
[SPEAKER_00]: Civic organizations, church groups and ordinary neighbors all stepped forward.

19:21.345 --> 19:29.429
[SPEAKER_00]: One eyewitness recalled floodlights being set up around the camp, so that the construction could continue throughout the night.

19:30.570 --> 19:31.170
[SPEAKER_00]: And it did.

19:32.571 --> 19:36.313
[SPEAKER_00]: Hickory's volunteers worked around the clock in shifts.

19:38.435 --> 19:46.958
[SPEAKER_00]: The very next day, Friday, June, twenty-third, the work continued, even as summer rainstorms rolled through.

19:47.978 --> 19:51.319
[SPEAKER_00]: Volunteers kept sawing and hammering in their ponchos.

19:52.500 --> 19:59.082
[SPEAKER_00]: A local national guard unit brought in heavy equipment to speed up the clearing of land for additional wards.

20:00.783 --> 20:07.845
[SPEAKER_00]: Electricians from Duke Power wired the stone cabin and the newly constructed wooden barracks for electricity.

20:09.691 --> 20:20.516
[SPEAKER_00]: By Friday afternoon, two large US Army hospital tents arrived from Charlotte, procured by Dr. Crabtree, and were erected on site.

20:21.797 --> 20:28.280
[SPEAKER_00]: Complete with wooden plank floors, built by Hickory Carpenters, before the tents had even got there.

20:30.061 --> 20:34.783
[SPEAKER_00]: The Army also contributed dozens of Canvas Cots and other equipment

20:36.165 --> 20:38.626
[SPEAKER_00]: Hickory's women were just as crucial to the effort.

20:39.646 --> 20:50.730
[SPEAKER_00]: Seemstresses set up sewing machines in the high school gym, and began cutting and stitching hospital gowns, and linens after the newspaper put out a plea for their skills.

20:52.531 --> 21:03.135
[SPEAKER_00]: Housewife scoured their addicts and basements, for spare electric fans, knowing the polio words would be swalltering in the southern heat, without them

21:04.798 --> 21:10.662
[SPEAKER_00]: They wrestled up washing machines to donate, and gathered toys to comfort the sick children.

21:11.943 --> 21:15.506
[SPEAKER_00]: The city's cook and restaurant owners prepared trays of food.

21:16.426 --> 21:19.589
[SPEAKER_00]: Since the camp's own kitchen wasn't operational yet.

21:20.785 --> 21:28.967
[SPEAKER_00]: Women in town took turns, cooking hundreds of meals, and their home kitchens, and delivering them by car to the site.

21:30.287 --> 21:33.128
[SPEAKER_00]: It truly was a community effort at every level.

21:34.128 --> 21:39.970
[SPEAKER_00]: Neighbors, helping neighbors, even if those neighbors were strangers from another county.

21:42.008 --> 21:48.010
[SPEAKER_00]: By late afternoon on Saturday June, twenty-fourth, an astonishing transformation had taken place.

21:49.151 --> 21:52.732
[SPEAKER_00]: It was just fifty-four hours after the idea was conceived.

21:53.733 --> 21:59.275
[SPEAKER_00]: The Hickory Emergency Infantile Parallysis Hospital was ready to open its doors.

22:00.635 --> 22:07.118
[SPEAKER_00]: A convoy of ambulances and cars were already en route, bringing the first patients

22:08.657 --> 22:16.082
[SPEAKER_00]: The initial medical staff was admittedly thin, only twelve nurses, all volunteers, to start with.

22:17.023 --> 22:21.686
[SPEAKER_00]: Plus a handful of local doctors, but more help was on the way.

22:22.747 --> 22:30.793
[SPEAKER_00]: The truly hard part, treating dozens upon dozens of critically ill children, was about to begin.

22:33.185 --> 22:39.571
[SPEAKER_00]: It carries brand new polio hospital, officially opened on June, twenty-fourth, nineteen forty-four.

22:41.132 --> 22:44.455
[SPEAKER_00]: That first weekend, sixteen patients were admitted.

22:45.576 --> 22:48.278
[SPEAKER_00]: Many arrived in the arms of frantic parents.

22:49.299 --> 22:53.243
[SPEAKER_00]: Others came in on stretchers, escorted by red cross workers.

22:54.385 --> 23:04.416
[SPEAKER_00]: They came not just from Hickory, but from all over Western North Carolina, and even parts of Tennessee, South Carolina, and Virginia.

23:05.938 --> 23:14.988
[SPEAKER_00]: The patients kept coming, one account noted, in cars, ambulances, even herses went by local undertakers.

23:16.950 --> 23:26.574
[SPEAKER_00]: By the end of the hospital's first week, forty-five patients filled the cot's intense, and another dozen sick children had been examined on site.

23:27.874 --> 23:29.055
[SPEAKER_00]: Many more would follow.

23:30.615 --> 23:35.957
[SPEAKER_00]: The conditions were basic and improvised, but the care was cutting edge for its time.

23:37.258 --> 23:41.420
[SPEAKER_00]: The staff did everything known to modern medicine to fight polio.

23:42.760 --> 23:47.704
[SPEAKER_00]: Word were segregated by illness severity rather than by race or color.

23:48.945 --> 23:55.510
[SPEAKER_00]: A deliberate decision by the organizers to treat all patients equally black or white.

23:56.631 --> 24:06.659
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, Hickory's emergency hospital ended up treating fifty-five African American patients alongside whites without formal segregation.

24:07.500 --> 24:11.944
[SPEAKER_00]: Likely the first integrated hospital setting in North Carolina's history

24:13.262 --> 24:18.394
[SPEAKER_00]: There was no time or space for prejudice, and this all hands fight for life.

24:20.423 --> 24:31.152
[SPEAKER_00]: Inside the tents and hastily built wooden wards, the nurse applied the kidney method of polio treatment, which was considered experimental, but promising.

24:32.213 --> 24:45.725
[SPEAKER_00]: This approach pioneered by Australian nurse, Cister Elizabeth Kenny, emphasized hot packs, warm baths, and gentle exercise to keep paralyzed limbs limber.

24:47.335 --> 24:57.139
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a stark contrast to the traditional treatment of the day, which involved immobilizing paralyzed arms or legs in plaster casts and braces.

24:58.819 --> 25:08.002
[SPEAKER_00]: At Hickory, under the summer canvas, you would see rows of small children wrapped in steaming wool blankets, soap and hot water.

25:09.043 --> 25:12.144
[SPEAKER_00]: With nurses carefully massaging atrophied muscles,

25:13.869 --> 25:18.572
[SPEAKER_00]: buckets of hot water and piles of wooden cloths became familiar sight.

25:20.033 --> 25:27.157
[SPEAKER_00]: The aroma of boiled wool and mint allotions would linger in many patients' memories for a lifetime.

25:29.712 --> 25:33.357
[SPEAKER_00]: The work was growing and conditions far from ideal.

25:34.418 --> 25:37.802
[SPEAKER_00]: Summer storms turn the camps dirt lanes into mud.

25:38.883 --> 25:49.016
[SPEAKER_00]: In the early days before proper latrines and incinerators were set up, waste was burned on sight to prevent any spread of contagion.

25:50.870 --> 25:52.772
[SPEAKER_00]: The heat and humidity were oppressive.

25:53.693 --> 26:02.202
[SPEAKER_00]: Nurses sweat through their white uniforms, as they hurried between beds, checking fevers, and comforting frightened children.

26:03.383 --> 26:06.587
[SPEAKER_00]: Many volunteers had never seen polio close up before.

26:07.448 --> 26:08.749
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a heart-rending sight.

26:10.100 --> 26:14.483
[SPEAKER_00]: Some children lay motionless, except for the rise and fall of their chests.

26:15.704 --> 26:20.207
[SPEAKER_00]: Others whimpered in pain as the virus inflamed their spinal cords.

26:21.749 --> 26:28.994
[SPEAKER_00]: If you, in critical condition, struggled for each breath until precious iron lungs could be obtained.

26:30.235 --> 26:37.244
[SPEAKER_00]: An iron lung respirator arrived on June twenty-third and saw its first use a few days later.

26:38.045 --> 26:42.530
[SPEAKER_00]: On a twenty-seven-year-old patient completely paralyzed from the chest down.

26:43.975 --> 26:50.118
[SPEAKER_00]: that young man named Boyce Rash, from Ash County, sadly did not survive.

26:51.158 --> 26:56.281
[SPEAKER_00]: He died on September twenty first, one of the twelve casualties at Hickory.

26:57.681 --> 27:05.845
[SPEAKER_00]: Only after his death, the doctors discovered he'd had a different paralysis illness, not polio at all.

27:07.543 --> 27:10.705
[SPEAKER_00]: The psychological toll on the caregivers was enormous.

27:11.725 --> 27:21.110
[SPEAKER_00]: Imagine building a hospital in two days and then immediately confronting a ward full of sick and disabled children, fighting a terrifying disease.

27:22.431 --> 27:27.133
[SPEAKER_00]: As the first deaths occurred, the nurses and volunteers took it hard.

27:28.313 --> 27:31.635
[SPEAKER_00]: By early July, three young patients had died.

27:32.536 --> 27:35.197
[SPEAKER_00]: In each loss shook the staff deeply.

27:36.763 --> 27:45.106
[SPEAKER_00]: Many of these workers had bonded with the children under their care, and in a crisis like this, there was little time to process grief.

27:46.486 --> 27:58.970
[SPEAKER_00]: Still, they pressed on, fueled by a sense of mission and flashes of hope, a child regaining the ability to wiggle her toes, or a fever, finally breaking.

28:00.608 --> 28:04.733
[SPEAKER_00]: Icaris emergency hospital, rapidly grew in those first weeks.

28:05.835 --> 28:12.523
[SPEAKER_00]: Seeing the influx of patients, Dr. Han ordered construction of additional wards, almost immediately.

28:13.744 --> 28:17.950
[SPEAKER_00]: More wooden barracks went up, and the army sent even more tents.

28:19.431 --> 28:28.516
[SPEAKER_00]: By the hospital's third week, it housed a ninety-two patients and had expanded capacity to handle up to one hundred at a time.

28:29.877 --> 28:36.300
[SPEAKER_00]: The dusty road leading to the camp was oiled to keep down the clouds of dust from constant traffic.

28:37.561 --> 28:41.343
[SPEAKER_00]: A second iron-long arrived as donations flowed in.

28:43.059 --> 28:49.041
[SPEAKER_00]: help was coming from far beyond Hickory as news of this extraordinary endeavor spread.

28:50.582 --> 28:58.205
[SPEAKER_00]: Doctors and nurses from across the country answered the call that Dr. Crabtree and the NFIP have put out.

28:59.748 --> 29:09.278
[SPEAKER_00]: Physicians from prestigious institutions like Harvard, Yale, John Hopkins, and many others arrived in Hickory to land their expertise.

29:10.540 --> 29:16.186
[SPEAKER_00]: Among them were infectious disease specialists, psychotherapists, and orthopedists.

29:17.267 --> 29:21.752
[SPEAKER_00]: All descending on this makeshift camp hospital in rural North Carolina.

29:23.222 --> 29:29.307
[SPEAKER_00]: The American Red Cross recruited and sent several hundred nurses to staff Hickory's awards.

29:30.668 --> 29:35.612
[SPEAKER_00]: These included veteran nurses, as well as younger student nurses and training.

29:36.633 --> 29:43.258
[SPEAKER_00]: Nick named the Angels of Mercy by locals, who came from nursing schools up and down the east coast.

29:44.912 --> 29:57.219
[SPEAKER_00]: Many of these outside nurses were put up in private homes by Hickory residents for free, and the city even provided school buses to shuttle them to and from the camp each day.

29:58.800 --> 30:07.265
[SPEAKER_00]: Hotel Hickory downtown also housed some of the medical staff with cost covered by the National Foundation.

30:09.167 --> 30:12.489
[SPEAKER_00]: One local hero was already on the ground from day one.

30:13.449 --> 30:14.910
[SPEAKER_00]: Nurse Francis Allen.

30:16.171 --> 30:24.415
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, Francis Allen was the only public health nurse employed by Catawabac County at the start of the epidemic.

30:26.016 --> 30:29.237
[SPEAKER_00]: She became a lunch pen of the Hickory Operation.

30:30.258 --> 30:36.741
[SPEAKER_00]: In her own words years later, nurse Allen recalled the exhausting routine she undertook.

30:38.730 --> 30:41.451
[SPEAKER_00]: Doctors from Yale gave me specific instructions.

30:42.371 --> 30:47.532
[SPEAKER_00]: Each home was to be visited to collect specimens when a new patient was admitted.

30:48.492 --> 30:51.673
[SPEAKER_00]: These visits required a lot of travel from daylight to dark.

30:52.934 --> 30:58.155
[SPEAKER_00]: I forgot one visit and went to a county that took me up a small unpaved road.

30:59.295 --> 31:03.316
[SPEAKER_00]: I then had parked my car and walked about a quarter mile to the house.

31:04.416 --> 31:06.437
[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, there were dogs to combat

31:07.624 --> 31:09.425
[SPEAKER_00]: but luckily, no dog bites.

31:10.625 --> 31:18.048
[SPEAKER_00]: The family proved cooperative, and I collected and put on ice, their specimens, it take back to researchers.

31:19.489 --> 31:23.710
[SPEAKER_00]: I traveled to Wilkesburg, called Wilkes in Alexandria counties.

31:24.791 --> 31:29.372
[SPEAKER_00]: I was in the hospital every day, where patients were treated by the Kenny Hot Pack method.

31:30.513 --> 31:35.595
[SPEAKER_00]: Schools were closed, and children were asked to stay home, rather than being crowds.

31:36.625 --> 31:40.167
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, the whole town was somewhat quarantined for a time.

31:41.707 --> 31:48.771
[SPEAKER_00]: Later, as the number of cases became fewer, the worst cases were transferred to Charlotte Memorial Hospital.

31:50.671 --> 31:58.255
[SPEAKER_00]: Through July and August, nineteen forty four, a Greece improvised hospital held the line against Polio.

31:59.805 --> 32:04.227
[SPEAKER_00]: by summers and close to three hundred patients had come through its doors.

32:05.407 --> 32:08.549
[SPEAKER_00]: The community's selflessness was noticed and celebrated.

32:09.869 --> 32:19.954
[SPEAKER_00]: Stone Crane, an American Red Cross disaster relief official who visited Hickory, praised what he saw as nothing short of extraordinary.

32:21.294 --> 32:25.376
[SPEAKER_00]: He said it was the most outstanding example of cooperative effect.

32:26.097 --> 32:29.358
[SPEAKER_00]: He had witnessed in over thirteen years of emergency work

32:30.770 --> 32:40.236
[SPEAKER_00]: Hickory's local newspaper editors proudly reprinted his words, holding them up as proof of what their town's unity had achieved.

32:42.077 --> 32:48.461
[SPEAKER_00]: Yet even as the hospital succeeded in treating patients, a shadow hung over Hickory.

32:49.910 --> 32:54.812
[SPEAKER_00]: The very name Hickory started to carry a stigma in the outside world.

32:56.132 --> 32:58.874
[SPEAKER_00]: People began calling it Polio City.

33:00.114 --> 33:04.096
[SPEAKER_00]: Some fearful residents of other towns avoided traveling to Hickory.

33:05.176 --> 33:12.839
[SPEAKER_00]: A few local merchants worried that the city's economy would suffer if outsiders were to afraid to visit and do business.

33:14.257 --> 33:21.323
[SPEAKER_00]: There were even factions within the community who resented the hospital's presence, despite the good it was doing.

33:22.443 --> 33:27.307
[SPEAKER_00]: They wanted life back to normal, and as soon as the hospital closed, the better.

33:28.848 --> 33:37.035
[SPEAKER_00]: But others saw the miracle of Hickory as a badge of honor, a source of pride that outweighed any temporary loss of commerce

33:38.594 --> 33:50.726
[SPEAKER_00]: Though the word miracle implies heavenly intervention, one writer noted, the successful effort came about because of an abundance of courage and compassion.

33:52.008 --> 33:56.012
[SPEAKER_00]: He agreed to turn what could have been a nightmare into a point of pride.

33:58.706 --> 34:06.108
[SPEAKER_00]: By the fall of nineteen forty-four, the worst of the polio outbreak in western North Carolina began to ev.

34:07.508 --> 34:12.489
[SPEAKER_00]: Things in large part to the Hickory Hospital's containment and treatment efforts.

34:13.450 --> 34:16.170
[SPEAKER_00]: The epidemic never spread far beyond the region.

34:17.111 --> 34:21.712
[SPEAKER_00]: It was largely confined to eighteen counties in the western part of the state.

34:23.132 --> 34:37.618
[SPEAKER_00]: In total, Hickory emergency infantile paralysis hospital would treat four hundred and fifty-four polio patients over about nine months and incredibly only twelve of them would lose their lives.

34:38.598 --> 34:43.540
[SPEAKER_00]: The lowest mortality rate of any polio hospital in the country at the time.

34:45.121 --> 34:52.644
[SPEAKER_00]: What had started as a desperate local response was now being healed as a model of effective, compassionate care

34:54.656 --> 35:08.844
[SPEAKER_00]: as early as July, nineteen forty four national media took notice of what was happening in hickory reporters and photographers from life magazine showed up at the camp to cover this remarkable story

35:10.512 --> 35:13.373
[SPEAKER_00]: in his July at thirty first nineteen forty four issue.

35:14.293 --> 35:19.755
[SPEAKER_00]: Life devoted four full pages to photographs of the hickory polio hospital.

35:20.836 --> 35:24.037
[SPEAKER_00]: Showing nurses tending rows of children in their cards.

35:24.797 --> 35:27.538
[SPEAKER_00]: In volunteers carrying lumber and supplies.

35:28.998 --> 35:35.160
[SPEAKER_00]: The images, black and white snapshots of determined faces and make shift hospital tents.

35:36.221 --> 35:39.922
[SPEAKER_00]: Broad hickory's heroism two millions of American readers

35:41.430 --> 35:54.177
[SPEAKER_00]: Around the same time, a short documentary film was produced by Paramount Pictures, titled Miracle of Hickory, narrated by Academy Award-winning actress Greer Garson.

35:55.588 --> 36:06.373
[SPEAKER_00]: It played as a news reel in movie theaters nationwide, inspiring audiences with a dramatic tale of a community at Delta Hospital overnight.

36:07.613 --> 36:21.879
[SPEAKER_00]: Perhaps most famously, the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis and FIP published a thirty-two page booklet, late in nineteen forty-four, titled The Miracle of Hickory.

36:23.267 --> 36:32.056
[SPEAKER_00]: This official pamphlet, complete with photos and stories from the Hickory Hospital, was used as a fundraising tool by the NFIP.

36:33.797 --> 36:40.404
[SPEAKER_00]: It portrayed Hickory as a triumph of American volunteerism and medical ingenuity in wartime.

36:41.840 --> 36:48.764
[SPEAKER_00]: The phrase Miracle of Hickory actually comes from the title of this NFIP booklet, and it stuck.

36:49.905 --> 36:55.668
[SPEAKER_00]: From then on, the fifty-four-hour hospital was enshrined in history under that name.

36:57.409 --> 37:01.112
[SPEAKER_00]: National magazines heaped praise on Hickory's people.

37:02.613 --> 37:09.197
[SPEAKER_00]: In February, nineteen forty-five, Coronette Magazine ran a feature on the town's polio battle.

37:10.041 --> 37:17.307
[SPEAKER_00]: in which the author proclaimed at this moment the town of Hickory became great for all time.

37:18.708 --> 37:27.475
[SPEAKER_00]: The line referred to that mid-June day when Hickory citizens rose to meet the crisis and it captured the pride that many felt.

37:29.316 --> 37:36.542
[SPEAKER_00]: Two outsiders, Hickory went from being an obscure, peed-mont town to a symbol of community heroism

37:38.259 --> 37:39.780
[SPEAKER_00]: back on the ground and hickory.

37:40.460 --> 37:43.121
[SPEAKER_00]: That pride was balanced by pure exhaustion.

37:44.542 --> 37:48.604
[SPEAKER_00]: Many of the volunteers and staff had been going full tilt for months.

37:50.124 --> 37:53.086
[SPEAKER_00]: But gradually, the patient load began to lighten.

37:54.466 --> 38:00.049
[SPEAKER_00]: By late nineteen forty four, new polio cases in the area declined sharply.

38:00.069 --> 38:02.370
[SPEAKER_00]: That's called a rather approached

38:04.068 --> 38:07.529
[SPEAKER_00]: The emergency hospital had done its job so well.

38:08.230 --> 38:19.914
[SPEAKER_00]: That by December, the National Foundation itself began suggesting it might be time to consolidate resources and transfer the remaining patients to larger facilities.

38:21.315 --> 38:23.416
[SPEAKER_00]: Some in Hickory resented the idea.

38:24.216 --> 38:29.018
[SPEAKER_00]: They felt their hospital should continue serving the region, as long as it was needed.

38:30.513 --> 38:39.137
[SPEAKER_00]: Others, mindful of the polio city stigma and ready to get back to normal, supported closing it as soon as feasible.

38:40.437 --> 38:44.219
[SPEAKER_00]: In the end, the decision was made to close the Hickory Hospital.

38:44.859 --> 38:49.121
[SPEAKER_00]: In early nineteen forty five, once it became safe to do so.

38:51.024 --> 38:55.388
[SPEAKER_00]: On March fifth, nineteen forty five, with the epidemic truly waning.

38:56.229 --> 39:05.739
[SPEAKER_00]: The remaining eighty seven patients were carefully moved in a grand convoy back to Charlotte Memorial Hospital, which now had open beds.

39:07.120 --> 39:24.713
[SPEAKER_00]: This final transfer was an invented self, a mile long motorcade of twelve ambulances and seventy cars, carried the polio patients, ranging from just ten months old to twenty-nine years, down out of the foothills and back to Charlotte.

39:26.154 --> 39:30.358
[SPEAKER_00]: the people of Hickory stood along the roadside to wave goodbye.

39:31.459 --> 39:36.063
[SPEAKER_00]: Many of the young patients and their parents wept upon departure.

39:37.004 --> 39:41.688
[SPEAKER_00]: They had grown to love the Hickory staff who cared for them with such kindness.

39:42.889 --> 39:51.457
[SPEAKER_00]: According to a newspaper report, the children left with mixed feelings because of the affection and care received in Hickory.

39:52.737 --> 40:05.780
[SPEAKER_00]: The Hickory Daily Record editors wrote a fond editorial, bidding R of R to the departing kitties, wishing them well and promising that Hickory's role in their lives would not be forgotten.

40:07.321 --> 40:13.222
[SPEAKER_00]: And so in the spring of nineteen forty five, the miracle of Hickory officially came to an end.

40:14.663 --> 40:20.364
[SPEAKER_00]: After nine months of round the quag operation, the emergency hospital closed its doors

40:22.000 --> 40:27.087
[SPEAKER_00]: Almost overnight, the bustling camp by the lake fell silent again.

40:28.509 --> 40:33.115
[SPEAKER_00]: Volunteers dismantle the army tents, impact away supplies.

40:34.236 --> 40:37.541
[SPEAKER_00]: The borrow cuts and cribs were sent back to warehouses.

40:39.230 --> 40:58.283
[SPEAKER_00]: All the temporary wooden additions, the makeshift wards and mass halls, were left standing for the moment, but the sense of urgency and crisis was gone, one local paper noted pointedly, so ends the final chapter of the miracle of Hickory.

40:59.063 --> 40:59.804
[SPEAKER_00]: It's history now.

41:01.202 --> 41:04.783
[SPEAKER_00]: Yet in many ways, the story was only beginning to echo through history.

41:04.803 --> 41:16.808
[SPEAKER_00]: In the coming years and decades, Hickory's extraordinary, polio hospital would inspire countless people and even change the way America fought the disease.

41:19.737 --> 41:24.380
[SPEAKER_00]: The miracle of Hickory left a legacy far beyond the summer of nineteen forty four.

41:25.400 --> 41:29.322
[SPEAKER_00]: For one, it vindicated a new approach to polio treatment.

41:30.403 --> 41:43.010
[SPEAKER_00]: The success of sister kinies rehabilitation methods and Hickory, the hot packs, gentle exercise and hydrotherapy, provided powerful evidence to skeptics in the medical establishment.

41:44.050 --> 41:51.978
[SPEAKER_00]: Many children treated a hickory, recovered strength in their limbs that might have been lost under the old immobilization technique.

41:53.319 --> 42:04.830
[SPEAKER_00]: Hope is once viewed as unorthodox therapy, gained credibility, and polio care began to shift toward rehabilitation instead of just casting and bracing.

42:06.512 --> 42:11.953
[SPEAKER_00]: The Hickory Hospital was also remarkable for its inclusivity during a segregated era.

42:12.794 --> 42:18.775
[SPEAKER_00]: In total, patients from seventy-four counties across five states came to Hickory for treatment.

42:19.956 --> 42:29.238
[SPEAKER_00]: Of the four hundred and fifty-four admitted, fifty-five were African-American, and one was Native American, and unlike at most southern hospitals,

42:29.558 --> 42:30.639
[SPEAKER_00]: in nineteen forty four.

42:31.639 --> 42:35.002
[SPEAKER_00]: These children were not separated into colored words.

42:35.942 --> 42:41.606
[SPEAKER_00]: They were cared for alongside the white patients receiving the same compassion and therapy.

42:43.007 --> 42:49.751
[SPEAKER_00]: This may have been the first instance in North Carolina where black and white patients were treated together in the same facility.

42:50.772 --> 42:53.093
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't a loud act of social protest.

42:53.654 --> 42:58.457
[SPEAKER_00]: It was born of practical necessity and basic humanity in a crisis

43:00.053 --> 43:08.395
[SPEAKER_00]: But it does stand as a quiet step forward, a preview of the integration that would slowly take hold in health care in the years to follow.

43:10.176 --> 43:14.097
[SPEAKER_00]: The immediate physical legacy of the hospital itself was short-lived.

43:15.037 --> 43:24.200
[SPEAKER_00]: After the war, the site was used temporarily to house returning World War II soldiers and their families who needed a place to stay.

43:25.617 --> 43:39.363
[SPEAKER_00]: In April, nineteen fifty-seven, the cluster of wooden buildings that Hickory's volunteers had thrown up so quickly were finally torn down to make way for a new national guard armory on that spot.

43:40.963 --> 43:43.945
[SPEAKER_00]: Only the original stone camp building remained.

43:44.945 --> 43:51.808
[SPEAKER_00]: It still stands today, in Hickory's JC Park, a humble monument to what took place there.

43:53.222 --> 43:58.264
[SPEAKER_00]: a North Carolina highway, historical marker, now stands near the site.

43:58.284 --> 44:16.232
[SPEAKER_00]: He wrecked it in two thousand, with an inscription reminding passerby's of the great outbreak of polio in June, nineteen forty-four, in the emergency hospital that stood one-half mile northeast, a quick summary of an amazing feat.

44:18.491 --> 44:23.653
[SPEAKER_00]: The spiritual legacy of the Miracle of Hickory has been far more enduring.

44:24.753 --> 44:29.755
[SPEAKER_00]: The story became a cornerstone of March of Dimes fundraising in the late nineteen forties.

44:30.756 --> 44:45.521
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, the idea of the polio poster child, a cheerful child to fiber, used as the face of fundraising campaigns, originated in North Carolina's polio drives, influenced by Hickory's example,

44:47.275 --> 45:05.046
[SPEAKER_00]: After the war, the National Foundation introduced its first official poster child in nineteen forty-six, opting to present an optimistic image of recovery, guided by the miracle of Hickory campaign, rather than a sad or frightening one.

45:06.387 --> 45:08.709
[SPEAKER_00]: The sight of smiling young polio survivors

45:09.673 --> 45:17.937
[SPEAKER_00]: Living proof of what donor dollars and community action could achieve helped the March of Dimes galvanized Americans to give.

45:19.058 --> 45:33.526
[SPEAKER_00]: It's no exaggeration to say that the miracle of history was used as inspiration in the nationwide effort that ultimately funded the vaccines to conquer polio and conquer polio they did.

45:34.620 --> 45:42.929
[SPEAKER_00]: A decade after Hickory, and nineteen fifty-five, Dr. Jonas Sorks, Julio Vaccine, was introduced to the public.

45:44.411 --> 45:50.237
[SPEAKER_00]: Parents who remembered the horrors of Julio, lined up by the thousands to vaccinate their children.

45:52.150 --> 45:57.353
[SPEAKER_00]: Within a few short years, polio outbreaks in America became a thing of the past.

45:58.433 --> 46:05.697
[SPEAKER_00]: The disease that had closed playgrounds and haunted every summer, practically vanished from the United States.

46:07.357 --> 46:12.740
[SPEAKER_00]: But the example of Hickory lives on as a gold standard of community resilience.

46:14.232 --> 46:24.338
[SPEAKER_00]: Every ten years of so, local newspapers, historians, and the survivors themselves gather to commemorate what happened in that summer of

46:26.514 --> 46:41.899
[SPEAKER_00]: On the fiftyth anniversary in nineteen ninety four, a reunion was held for patients and staff of the Hickory Polio Hospital, elderly men and women came, some walking with canes and braces, others perfectly spy.

46:42.919 --> 46:47.401
[SPEAKER_00]: All of them once children whose lives were touched by the miracle of Hickory.

46:48.702 --> 46:58.671
[SPEAKER_00]: They shared stories of kindness, the nurse who sang lullabies at bedside, the day they took their first steps again with the help of a physical therapist.

46:59.872 --> 47:03.936
[SPEAKER_00]: The way the towns people adopted them as their own kids for those months.

47:05.623 --> 47:13.766
[SPEAKER_00]: One prominent former patient was Harlan Boyle's who at fifteen had been struck by polio and treated in Hickory.

47:14.986 --> 47:19.147
[SPEAKER_00]: He recovered and later went on to become North Carolina's state treasurer.

47:20.968 --> 47:27.630
[SPEAKER_00]: Boyle's credited the Hickory effort with saving his life and giving him a chance to live a full life of service.

47:29.306 --> 47:38.851
[SPEAKER_00]: Local historian Richard Eller, who grew up in Hickory, later reflected that the miracle of Hickory set a high bar for what a community can do.

47:39.892 --> 47:41.673
[SPEAKER_00]: It became part of the town's identity.

47:42.533 --> 47:45.975
[SPEAKER_00]: No one who lives in Hickory today needs to be reminded.

47:46.856 --> 47:51.298
[SPEAKER_00]: Their hometown has a story, and it's one that makes some stand a little taller.

47:52.793 --> 47:57.175
[SPEAKER_00]: in downtown Hickory, a public artwork commemorates the miracle.

47:58.176 --> 48:16.945
[SPEAKER_00]: And every so often, when a new epidemic or health scary emerges in the news, someone brings up the tale of Hickory North Carolina, in that time an entire hospital spring up, practically overnight, because ordinary people decided it must be done.

48:18.465 --> 48:23.829
[SPEAKER_00]: A retrospective article about Hickory's nineteen forty four polio fight summed it up beautifully.

48:24.729 --> 48:28.171
[SPEAKER_00]: The true miracle was not the building of a hospital in three days.

48:28.991 --> 48:37.236
[SPEAKER_00]: It was how the people of Hickory opened their doors and hearts to help polio victims in need, while others simply gave in to fear.

48:38.837 --> 48:45.289
[SPEAKER_00]: In a time of crisis, this community chose compassion over panic, action over helplessness.

48:46.431 --> 48:49.597
[SPEAKER_00]: That is the lasting legacy of the miracle of Hickory.

48:52.803 --> 48:58.324
[SPEAKER_00]: Friend, the story of the miracle of Hickory is more than just a chapter in a history book.

48:59.224 --> 49:05.526
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a mirror reflecting what community spirit can achieve, even in the face of overwhelming fear.

49:06.986 --> 49:14.768
[SPEAKER_00]: If the past few years have taught us anything, it's of the challenges of epidemic disease are not confined to history.

49:15.988 --> 49:22.493
[SPEAKER_00]: During the COVID-nineteen pandemic, for example, we saw echoes of a great story in modern form.

49:23.494 --> 49:34.082
[SPEAKER_00]: Convention centers turned into emergency words, neighbors selling masks for one another, volunteers delivering meals to frontline workers.

49:35.423 --> 49:41.147
[SPEAKER_00]: Crisis strikes, an ordinary people find extraordinary ways to come together

49:42.868 --> 49:49.993
[SPEAKER_00]: In nineteen forty four, the people of Hickory didn't have the medical miracles of vaccines or antivirals.

49:51.073 --> 49:57.758
[SPEAKER_00]: They had ration books, war bond drives, and telegrams delivering bad news from the seas.

49:59.231 --> 50:04.394
[SPEAKER_00]: They could have easily been paralyzed by despair when Polio came to their doorstep.

50:05.575 --> 50:09.957
[SPEAKER_00]: Instead, they picked up hammers and built hope with their hands.

50:11.298 --> 50:23.085
[SPEAKER_00]: They exemplified what we today might call grassroots activism, or mutual aid, terms that boil down to communities, solving problems collectively.

50:23.885 --> 50:26.427
[SPEAKER_00]: When institutions are stretched to thin,

50:28.264 --> 50:33.527
[SPEAKER_00]: One striking parallel is how he agrees effort was described in wartime imagery.

50:34.427 --> 50:37.109
[SPEAKER_00]: People called it the medical equivalent of war.

50:38.169 --> 50:44.893
[SPEAKER_00]: A home front battle against an invisible enemy fought with bandages and compassion instead of bullets.

50:46.634 --> 50:56.539
[SPEAKER_00]: During COVID-nineteen, we similarly heard metaphors of war against the virus and saw health care workers hailed as soldiers on the front lines

50:57.902 --> 51:03.744
[SPEAKER_00]: Behikari's tale reminds us that entire communities are the army in such a war.

51:04.785 --> 51:09.046
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't just doctors and nurses, though they were heroes indeed.

51:10.107 --> 51:18.770
[SPEAKER_00]: It was everyone, from lumbermen, to school teachers, from black prisoners to white socialites, each contributing what they could.

51:20.021 --> 51:24.643
[SPEAKER_00]: Victory against Polio didn't come from one miracle cure in nineteen forty four.

51:25.524 --> 51:30.506
[SPEAKER_00]: It came from thousands of small acts of courage and kindness knitted together.

51:32.307 --> 51:35.488
[SPEAKER_00]: There's also a lesson in how Hickory responded to fear.

51:36.549 --> 51:40.471
[SPEAKER_00]: In any epidemic, fear can spread faster than the disease itself.

51:41.871 --> 51:45.373
[SPEAKER_00]: In Hickory, some wanted to flee or stigmatize the sick.

51:46.660 --> 51:54.248
[SPEAKER_00]: We saw that initially with the polio city label, but the community's leaders actively pushed back against panic.

51:55.029 --> 51:55.830
[SPEAKER_00]: They educated.

51:56.691 --> 52:06.201
[SPEAKER_00]: They communicated transparency through radio and newspapers, and they issued common sense precautions without descending into hysteria.

52:07.757 --> 52:15.059
[SPEAKER_00]: In our own times, whether dealing with a pandemic or any disaster, we grapple with misinformation and fear.

52:16.239 --> 52:18.579
[SPEAKER_00]: Itkary's story offers a hopeful example.

52:19.639 --> 52:29.742
[SPEAKER_00]: When guided by reason, empathy, and transparency, people can resist the pool of panic, and instead channel their energy into positive action.

52:31.482 --> 52:36.863
[SPEAKER_00]: The miracle of itkary also resonates a story of unity across divides

52:38.352 --> 52:43.674
[SPEAKER_00]: In nineteen forty four of the south was segregated and the nation deeply divided in many ways.

52:44.634 --> 52:47.855
[SPEAKER_00]: But a hiccups pull your hospital for a brief moment.

52:48.415 --> 52:49.936
[SPEAKER_00]: Those divisions fell away.

52:50.856 --> 52:54.177
[SPEAKER_00]: Disease didn't discriminate and neither did the caregivers.

52:55.608 --> 52:57.749
[SPEAKER_00]: That example speaks to us today as well.

52:58.550 --> 53:06.274
[SPEAKER_00]: Calamity can remind us of our common humanity, whether it's a virus, a natural disaster, or any crisis.

53:07.175 --> 53:12.017
[SPEAKER_00]: We are stronger and more humane when we face it together without prejudice.

53:13.218 --> 53:21.643
[SPEAKER_00]: The integrated wars of Hickory were quiet preview of progress, more and not from politics, but from shared purpose.

53:23.351 --> 53:27.714
[SPEAKER_00]: Finally, consider the legacy of hope that Hickory gave to the world.

53:28.634 --> 53:40.482
[SPEAKER_00]: The images of smiling children recovering in Hickory's tents went far and wide, inspiring donations to the March of Dimes, which funded the research for the polio vaccine.

53:41.683 --> 53:49.468
[SPEAKER_00]: In a very real sense that little emergency camp helped bring about the vaccine that ended polio's terror

53:50.958 --> 53:52.939
[SPEAKER_00]: Hope is contagious too.

53:54.060 --> 54:00.924
[SPEAKER_00]: A positive story in the midst of a grim time can galvanize people even more than fear does.

54:02.024 --> 54:13.311
[SPEAKER_00]: When we face daunting challenges today, climate change, global pandemics, social strife, remembering stories like histories can galvanize us.

54:14.431 --> 54:20.475
[SPEAKER_00]: It shows us that solutions start locally, with regular folks rolling up their sleeves

54:21.998 --> 54:30.645
[SPEAKER_00]: Listening to the voices from nineteen forty four hickory across the years, we hear not just a tale of one town's triumph, but a message.

54:31.606 --> 54:34.449
[SPEAKER_00]: When trouble comes, look to your hometown.

54:35.549 --> 54:44.337
[SPEAKER_00]: You may find that the miracle you need is already there, waiting in the welling hands in generous hearts of your neighbors.

54:47.539 --> 54:48.441
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Shane Waters.

54:49.202 --> 54:50.705
[SPEAKER_00]: Every hometown has a story.

54:51.547 --> 54:58.219
[SPEAKER_00]: This one was built in fifty four hours out of hope, hard work, and a community's love.

54:59.441 --> 54:59.882
[SPEAKER_00]: Good night.