HIS life changed forever one summer day in 1952. Paul Alexander was six years old and cooling off in light rain outside his family home when his head and neck began to hurt. He ran inside and his mother gasped when she saw him.
“God, please, no,” she said.
Paul’s face was flushed with fever and she went cold with fear.
“She knew right away I had polio,” Paul, who lived in Dallas, Texas, recalled.
The devastating disease was rampant in the US, affecting at least 60 000 people – most of them children – that year alone.
Polio causes flu-like symptoms and the virus can attack the spinal cord or brain, causing paralysis and sometimes death.
Paul deteriorated fast and his
