Beth
Beth Inman loved biking care-free on the cloistered Daycroft School campus in suburban Connecticut during the summers.
Her playground was a sprawling 18 acres, formerly Rosemary Hall, accented by weeping willow trees and a babbling brook curving through the fields and apple orchard.
Beth’s parents were hired house parents (chaperones of sorts) (f1) at the k-12 boarding school of approximately 130 Christian Science students. The family lived in a second-floor apartment in the girls dormitory. Her father was a yearbook advisor and loved taking photographs.
One day in mid-October 1972, during her second-grade, Beth experienced a severe headache that would not go away.
She was the youngest and the last of the school group to contract polio (short for poliomyelitis, an infectious viral disease that affects the central nervous system. It is known to cause temporary or permanent paralysis and can be a life-threatening disease.)
We spoke via Zoom on Oct. 10, 2021. Beth’s story in her own words:
Campus Life
I had polio when I was 7, but I was about 10 when I got my first brace. Zack and I were friends. (He was the other house parent child and also Audrey’s brother from the second featured story). We would run around campus in the summertime, riding our bikes and what not.
Beth was living with her parents in the girls dormitory in 1972.
I remember going up and down the halls. When I first contracted polio, I was in bed.
Beth says there was a Christian Science practitioner (f2), maybe several on hand “knowing the truth” about the situation.
“I mean, I’m sure there was like a team of people (laugh)…given the craziness of the situation.”
My mom was pretty amazing in that, [my dad] didn’t want me to have physical therapy so she went and found a dance teacher on Greenwich Avenue, and I would go to her dance studio and basically did physical therapy… is what I was doing (laugh). But you know, [my mother] could call it dance class. (f3),
First Recollections
The outbreak unfolded over an 18-day period. Many players on the football team contracted the virus, but Beth was probably the last one at the school to do so, according to the CDC timeline.
I honestly don’t know [how I became aware of the outbreak on campus]. It’s funny you say that about the football players because there were pictures that my father took of [my brother] Paul as a child. But I remember in one of the pictures, he’s holding up a cup of water to one of the football players (laugh). So that could have been the nexus of the outbreak (laugh).
Beth’s younger brother Paul offers a cup of refreshment to football player Kirk Maddock (David Kennedy’s best friend from first feature story) in a surely staged photo.
photo by E. Ray Inman III
First Symptoms
I asked my mom a little bit about it at some point and she said that I had a terrible headache and that I was complaining just how much my head hurt. And it wouldn’t go away. And so, I’m sure I spiked a fever at that point. I mean I remember being in bed and wanting to get up and just not being able to move.
The Football Team
I think I was probably scared. Just probably really out of it, in the fog of the illness. But you know, then (chuckle) it became, like, I don’t know the timing of this was, but I remember being carried around campus.
[Video Transcript: Like I remember the football players would carry me up the stairs, because where we lived in the dorm was up the stairs, and down the hall.
So the girls would call out, ‘Man on the floor!’ And they would carry me down the hall.
They would carry me to the cafeteria. And so that part of it was, dare I say, was kind of fun. That was some nice attention.]
Adaptive Equipment
Then I progressed to using a walker and different kinds of adaptive equipment and the brace was kind of where we landed when I was about 10. That’s when I started wearing a KAFO -- Knee Ankle Foot Orthosis (f4). In the old days, that would be steel and leather. These days it’s titanium and carbon graphite.
Fear Factor
I’m sure my parents [were afraid]. I don’t think I knew any better. I just wanted to feel better. You know? Because I was a child, I adapted. I got back on my bike. I was riding my bike all the time. Once I got the brace, that complicated riding the bike. But in that period, when I got able to get on my feet and before I got my brace, I rode my bike everywhere.
It’s possible that even after I had my brace that I took my brace off to ride my bike. I don’t remember, but. My bike was a big deal. That was the real freedom.
How did your family get into Science?
That would be my father. His mother was a Christian Scientist, and she died when he was 3. To be honest, there was some alcoholism with his father and subsequent step-mother. It may have been his way of saying, ‘I’m not going to get involved with any of that.’
He was one of the most devout Christian Scientists I’ve known in my life. And he was sure I was going to make a full recovery. When he had colon cancer, he was sure he was going to make a full recovery. He was on his deathbed, sure that God was going to answer his prayers. It’s horrible and tragic. But when he and my mother met. She was not religious and she basically took on his beliefs.
Dropping C.S.
When I was a freshman in college. My sister Elaine got really sick.
Elaine had this rare genetic condition called FAP - Familial Adenomatous Polyposis - where one develops numerous precancerous polyps in the large intestine.
Because of her sister, Beth got tested and was diagnosed with FAP as she was heading off into her first year at college. She was very involved with Christian Science at the time but a year later when she got the surgery, she had decided she was done with Christian Science.
I was working with a practitioner, and different things happened during the course of that relationship that just really turned me off to the notion of what a practitioner does.
Also, just as a person, she told me things that didn’t square. I was young, but I wasn’t that young. You know? I felt like she thought I was pretty naïve and could say anything to me and that was the wrong way to go. I had the surgery then and that was kind of it.
Pray Away
Did you think you could pray away polio, like your dad did?
Oh sure. Here’s the thing. I was 7 when I contracted it. He died when I was 12. He died knowing that I wasn’t ‘healed’, ya know? I don’t know how old I was when I made my peace with it, but my biggest goal in life was not to get over polio. It was to manage my situation.
To be honest, it was probably more important to manage my weight, and since I knew I couldn’t be as active as I wanted to be, that I had to be careful about that.
Of course, my mother was a force to be reckoned with. A lot of what I felt and believed came directly from her. I mean she was strong as an ox. She came from a difficult childhood and adolescence and then she came here by herself (from Greece).
When we landed in Greenwich at Daycroft, I think it was a little bit of a nest for her. There was safety in knowing we had a place to live. And we had this community.
Then the church too was a very supportive part of our lives. And to be honest, my involvement with the religion probably had more to do with the relationships I had at that church. I mean Bill Foster was a real important person in my childhood; Babu Krishnaswami was another one. The Harpers. They were a part of what made me the person I am.
Mother’s Guilt
I know my mother felt a lot of guilt for the fact that I contracted polio. And I’m sure she felt it was her fault. And she felt bad that I never made a full recovery. But she was also going to do everything she could, like she would mop floors to make sure I went to college, that kind of thing. She would do anything she could to make sure that I could do the things I wanted to do in life.
She pushed me and I didn’t always like it. But I probably wouldn’t have made it as far as I did in my recovery without her because she pushed me so hard. She found these ways to work around my dad to get me what I needed.
Finding Support
Have you had a chance to talk about or reflect on it over the years since internet access?
In my early 20s, I found out about a conference for polio survivors, maybe in Philadelphia, I remember going to that conference. Have you ever heard of Judy Heumann who was involved with Crip Camp? I met her at this conference.
The doctors were talking to a roomful of people who had had polio and were saying that polio was a hand-picking virus. And that there was this polio personality. And there was a lot of laughter in the room, because they would describe this was the kind of person that you usually meet who’s had polio. We all kind of laughed because it was all true.
I think that conference was very important. Getting involved with disability rights action was very important. Meeting other people with disabilities, because I didn’t know a lot of other people with disabilities, so I was getting involved with groups that way.
When we were living in Bethel, Conn. I went to a post-polio support group. I was in my early 20s. There were these three other women who were within 10 years of my age and everyone else was in their 60s and 70s. So we looked at each other. These people were complaining because they can’t get the right golf swing. They’re in their 70s. They don’t understand what I’m going through as someone with post-polio.
So the four of us just started getting together and talking about different things. And it was fascinating to me because these were people not much older than me who had interventions that were never an option for me.
So they had muscle transplant surgeries. They had different kinds of interventions, but that muscle transplant surgery stuck with me because in spite of all that, they were not much better off than I was, having had basically no interventions. That was real interesting and those were important relationships to me at the time.
Better Braces
Around ‘97, (a few years after moving to Brooklyn), I did this tour of different rehab facilities looking for a better brace, because I was convinced that there was something better than what I had. I went to four or five different places, and basically there was nothing better.
The guy at the hospital for special surgeries wanted to put me back in a steel and leather brace with a tether around my waist (laughs), and I said, ‘No, I don’t want to do that.’
I remember I went with (my son) Parker to see this guy at RUSK who was an older Korean doctor. He took out a safety pin and started poking my leg with it. Parker was getting real upset. I said, ‘What are you doing?’ He said, ‘Well, I want to know if you have sensation.’ I said, why don’t you ask me? (laughs) Weirdest thing. And I’ve told other doctors about this since then, and they’ve said that was an ‘old school’ doctor.
So I came to Atlanta in ’04, I saw this doctor at Emory, Dr. (Dale) Strasser and he’s just retired. He was the doctor in Georgia for people who had polio.
I went to see him on a not very regular basis because I’d need a prescription to go to him if I needed a new brace or something like that, or if I was having an issue where I needed to go for physical therapy or something. He was very involved with the Atlanta Post-Polio Association and I’ve had a little bit of involvement with them, but again it’s a group of people who are significantly older than me.
And I’m in my later 50s, and pre-COVID it was a nice little social opportunity to meet other people. But like there were two women, who were still wearing those steel and leather braces, because that’s what they were used to, and they were probably 20 years older than me. I was really shocked.
Post-Polio and COVID
The last time I saw Dr. Strasser was right before he retired and he told me, he was very animated, he was excited, because he said,
‘Here I am getting to retire, and these long-term COVID cases are very similar to people with post-polio syndrome. They’re having a lot of the same symptoms.’ -Dr. Dale Strasser
So I think he’s probably staying involved with that research. He’s a resource as someone who knows a lot about post-polio syndrome.
I’ve been lucky in that respect, I have to say. Knock on wood. I really haven’t had a lot of problems that could be associated with post-polio syndrome. And it’s probably just because I’m relatively active and you know, that’s a big part of my pain management. And just basically general well-being. If I’m not active, then I’m going to pay the price for it
Family Communication
Did you ever talk to your parents about that time?
I asked my mom, and she really didn’t remember.
We just really, (chuckles), tells you a little bit about our family. We just never talked about it. We really didn’t talk about my father. It’s just weird. It’s weird how. I don’t know if that’s repression or what that is, because there was always curiosity on my part.
I just didn’t want to make my mom feel bad by asking her about it,
and so it was probably within the last 10 years that I actually even asked her about it.
One of the reasons I did was because I read this article about Francis Ford Coppola, and I never knew that he had polio. In the article, he talked about lying in bed and visualizing these scenes and feels that was how he got involved with filmmaking. That was a result of his illness.
I guess I was trying to maybe make her feel better by telling her about that. But that was when I asked (my older brother) Crist also, and he had no memories at all.
Others with Symptoms
There were people who had sun stroke and different things like that on campus and probably didn’t realize it was polio. And so I think there were a lot of people who got sick, like Zack, and got better and then just didn’t really think about it. Didn’t understand that it had been polio.
My mother mentioned that the CDC came in and gave vaccinations and was not by choice necessarily.
Headmaster Cobbey Crisler
He was my hero (chuckle). One of the things they did, he and Janet [his wife], they had me at the headmaster’s house. [I remember] they put an anemone shell in my Jell-o. They just did all these crazy wonderful things. I was sleeping on a canopy bed and all these lovely little surprises. I believe that he loved me and cared about me. Janet too. I don’t have anything bad to say about him.
A few years older than Beth was another Daycrofter, David Kurtz. His dad was upset about the mandated vaccination and Cobbey’s handling of that without his permission. Consequently, he pulled David from Daycroft in the middle of the year and enrolled him at Brunswick Academy in Greenwich where they called him the ‘polio prep’.
You’re kidding? Wow. That is unbelievable.
Right? Kids are cruel.
Yes! Especially wealthy white kids. (laughs)
State health investigators had placed the fruit punch cooler in the gym as ground zero. They learned there were two communal cups and people would swish it around with their hand. Have you theorized how you contracted the virus?
My mother made a quip at some point, ‘Well I don’t know how I would have gotten you under control if you hadn’t had polio.’ Because I was everywhere, just running all over the place, all the time. It is kind of odd that I contracted it and Paul didn’t being that he was a baby. But I was probably getting into all kinds of stuff at that age. Kids share stuff (and shrug) I don’t know.
How do you simultaneously protect religious freedoms and the society at large?
That’s a good question. My child is fully vaccinated, from the time he was a baby. There was never any question in my mind. There was a little hubbub when the chicken pox vaccine came out because people were like, ‘Why would you vaccinate them against chicken pox, that’s not a deadly disease’ and this kind of thing. I don’t know if it’s a more standard thing now that kids get that as a vaccination. By the time it came out, he had already had chicken pox anyway. So it wasn’t much of an issue.
In terms of religious freedom, I don’t really know the answer to that.
Like would I have done it differently if I were my parents? Yes. Like I would have done the commonsense thing (chuckle) which is to have vaccinations.
To me Christian Science is a form of brainwashing. It puts you in this state of mind where you’re not, it’s not reality. Like I understand the need for beliefs like that. And I understand people who have not had a lot of struggle in their life, that they can faithfully live with a religion like Christian Science. But I have had one thing after another and like no, religion is just is not an important thing to me.
I think you asked earlier about my faith. I was involved with a Unitarian Universalist congregation for 10 years in Atlanta and my struggle with them was to make it a more welcoming congregation for people with disabilities, and I served on the board for four years and I still couldn’t get anything done. And that’s why I left because they were all about talking about it, but not about doing it.
I’ve met some wonderful people I’ve remained friends with through that connection, but I have not regretted leaving it. I’d much rather go for a two-hour walk on Sunday morning, do some other kind of communing that doesn’t involve organized group like that.
Anything you’d like to ask other Daycrofters?
I will look forward to reading what you find out. I don’t have any questions for them, but I definitely have fond regards for them, especially people who contracted polio like I did and fought to have what would be considered a recovery from it.
The last thing I remember hearing about Larry is that he had gone to law school. So I hope he’s still around and kicking ass.
I look forward to hearing what you find out, because my memory is so patchy.
To be honest, I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it. I’m a much more forward-looking person. I think it’s important to know your history too.
Footnotes
1. House Parents
You had “house parents” in the boys and girls dormitories watching over about 60 boys and 60 girls each. There were two sets of house parents on each floor, one on either end. They looked out for trouble, but students always flooded their apartments, making brownies, watching Monty Python, listening to CSNY, or just hanging out and gabbing because the students were bored. It was a FULL-time job. Beth’s mom and dad were house parents in the girls dorm. And this will become important later - They lived on the second floor.
2. C.S. Practitioner
A Christian Science practitioner is essentially a metaphysician who treats maladies with prayer. They are certified by the church after attending special instruction, providing references and a verified healing due to prayerful treatment.
3. FAQ: What’s wrong with going to physical therapy?
Physical therapy or anything that reinforced the notion of living in a mortal body in a material world would have been frowned upon by the Church. To give you an idea, the religion’s founder defined Flesh in this way: “An error of physical belief; a supposition that life, substance, and intelligence are in matter; an illusion; a belief that matter has sensation.”
4. KAFO
The KAFO is basically a leg splint, that covers the leg starting from the hip to the knee to the ankle and continues to the foot, used to stabilize the joints and help the leg muscles. Oddly you can still find the old models for sale on Etsy as “antiques from the 80s” for around $300. Some are advertised as “steampunk” and collectible memorabilia.