Navratil, Joyce - Floyd County

General Comments :

My older sister died of polio just before her 16th birthday and my 5th birthday in 1951. She went to school on Monday because there was a dance that night, and she was "on the committee". We were told later that she didn't dance that night. She died Thursday, March 29th at 2 a.m. I can still see my father carrying her down from her upstairs bedroom on Wednesday afternoon to take her to the doctor. The doctor came out to the car to see her and told my parents to take her home and keep her warm. After she died, we were told that she had two types of polio -- one was bulbar. My mother never got over her death. It is impossible to know how different our lives would have been had she never contacted the disease or if she would have lived, but obviously the lives of my parents and two other sisters were not the same as they would have been if polio had never entered our lives.