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FRIDAY, THE 13TH, AT HARRISONBURG HIGH

In her salutatory, delivered in May of 1943 at Harrisonburg High School, Mary Ann Miller emphasized the importance of facing the future with determination and courage. Many a salutatorian in the school's long history must have used these same words, but none struck closer to home or were as sincerely felt. You see, Mary Ann was paralyzed by polio and covered from neck to toe in a cumbersome scaffolding of metal braces. "The only thing I could move was my mouth," she told me, laughing, "and I talked all the time."

She attributes the survival of her devastating illness to the sacrifices, dedication, and love of her parents. She attributes her academic successes to the encouragement and devotion of her teachers and peers at Harrisonburg High. But, of course, Mary Ann Miller herself was her own best example of determination and courage.

Achieving success in that which one sets out to do is difficult enough for able-bodied people, no matter how determined they are. For a person handicapped by polio, it is a tremendous triumph. It was even more so in 1943. The passing of The Americans With Disabilities Act was fifty years away, and the care of the disabled was largely left to the ingenuity of their families, teachers, and friends.

Mary Ann had contracted polio on the 13th of November 1936. She was twelve years old, and she remembers the day well. She had been helping her brother John deliver the paper, the Daily News-Record, early that raw morning. Both children promptly came down with a cold that evening, and while John was able to get up the next morning, Mary Ann could not move. "I was quite lazy then," she laughed, "and my mother thought I just felt like staying in my nice, warm bed." But on the way to the bathroom, she collapsed. It had taken exactly one day for the poliovirus she had somehow contracted to infect her central nervous system and to begin its methodical march of destruction through her body.

The epidemic proportions and, consequently, the terror of poliovirus infection in the first part of this century were without precedent. The illness could strike anytime, anywhere, and created such fear that people avoided all places of public gathering, such as swimming pools, theaters, ball games, celebrations. Parents kept their children close to home. Still, the illness struck, as it did Mary Ann Miller, in a small town, far away from big city congestion.

Poliomyelitis, also called "infantile paralysis" or simply "polio," is primarily a gastrointestinal viral infection spread by contact with contaminated feces or by oral ingestion. At its least severe, the virus may mimic a "bug." Intestinal discomfort, fever, weakness, sore throat are some of the symptoms. At its most severe, the virus attacks the central nervous system and destroys the motor neurons that control muscle activity. The result is paralysis and, in severe cases, a failure of the cardiovascular and respiratory systems, causing death.

Once contracted, there is no effective treatment for polio, and there is no cure. Although the discovery of the Salk and Sabin vaccines in the early fifties brought a phenomenal decline of the disease within the United States, polio has by no means been eradicated.

Mary Ann's doctors did not, at first, recognize the seriousness of her illness. No case of polio had been reported in Virginia that year. Once diagnosed, however, the nightmare of polio changed the family's life forever. Her parents, Edna Daugherty McMullen and William Berry Miller, were forced to summon all their mental, spiritual, and physical resources if their daughter was to live. Mary Ann still does not know the extent of their financial sacrifices.

But one can only imagine the terror of the child. She loved to run and jump and dance and play with her friends. Lying flat in bed, unable to move, she was isolated from one day to the next from her sister, her brother, her friends, because no one knew at what stage the illness could be transmitted. Her sister, Jean, who was seven then, remembers that she and her friends, Joe Deadrick, "from up the street," and John Showalter, "from down the street," used to find ways to amuse her from a distance. They often dressed up in costumes and performed shows for Mary Ann on top of the small roof outside her window to cheer her up and to make her laugh. It was the only communication they had for many months.

Few people had an exact knowledge of the treatment for polio. Whatever knowledge was gained at the laboratories of major medical centers trickled only slowly into the Valley. People did the best they could with what they had. A nurse, Margie Steele, was hired. But in spite of her dedication, Mary Ann did not improve. When she contracted pneumonia, her doctor's prognosis was that she would not survive.

But that prognosis had not consulted Mary Ann's mother who refused to accept it. Mobilizing every friend, neighbor, family member, state agency she could think of, from here to Richmond to Washington, she was able to get Mary Ann the only available bed in one of the most coveted treatment centers of the time, Warm Springs, Georgia.

A non-profit organization that subsequently gave birth to the March of Dimes, the National Infantile Paralysis Foundation at Warm Springs was established in 1927 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He had himself contracted polio in August of 1921 and believed that exercising in the natural springs, which discharge water at eighty-eight degrees, alleviated some of the symptoms of paralysis. The center, built near the small community of Warm Springs, which held barely five hundred souls, treated thousands of polio victims.

The Millers took Mary Ann there in May of 1937, in a makeshift ambulance, their own white, two-door Plymouth. Outfitted with a narrow cot that had been borrowed from an undertaker and placed over front and back seats, --the back of the passenger seat having been removed--, they somehow got their paralyzed child inside. "It was exactly seven hundred and seven miles," she remembers, "and after they dropped me off, they drove straight back because my dad had to work the next day." No interstate highways, of course, in those days. Mr. Miller drove, and Mrs. Miller, in the back seat, took care of her child as best she could on this long and hopeful journey.

Warm Springs, Mary Ann remembers, was a wonderful place. The pain of being, suddenly, different was lessened considerably by a dedicated staff and by the knowledge that there were others like her. At first lonely and frightened, without her family which had meant comfort and home and hope to her, she gradually improved. She was fitted with braces and could leave her bed. She began to make friends. She remembers particularly fondly two young summer interns, and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The interns were determined to get her to move at least one small limb. This they accomplished by taping knitting needles to tongue depressor and these, in turn, to her hands. They then insisted that she learn to knit. She did. One stitch at a time. Sometimes, that stitch took all day, but she never gave up. "She knits the most beautiful things," her sister Jean said. "Sweaters and afghans, you name it, her house is full of them. All beautiful." It was the beginning of an immensely creative life.

As for FDR, he would whiz into the center in his hand- controlled convertible, load it up with as many kids as would fit, and take them to the small town of Warm Springs for ice cream.

"He was a very kind, very friendly man," she remembers. "Very caring and concerned about us. Though he was the president, in Warm Springs, he was like everyone else. He often put on barbeques for us, and we had Thanksgiving dinner with him. I met him for the first time at the dedication of the chapel at Warm Springs, which he had built. The chapel was all white and in the shape of a cross, with stain glass windows at the end of each wing. There he walked for the first time in years. I can see him still, supported by Secret Service men and by his canes, he walked down that aisle. It must have been excruciating, but he did it. We all felt very close to him, and I was devastated when he died." [At Warm Springs, April 12, 1945.]

After two years of therapy, it was decided that nothing more could be done for Mary Ann at the center, and her mother brought her home. But this only invited new challenges. No one knew how to take care of a young woman entirely strapped in metal. Besides, Mary Ann was no longer willing to spend her days in bed. Most pressing, however, was her education. She had, after all, lost two years of schooling, and Mrs. Miller saw no earthly reason why Mary Ann should not graduate with her class.

"Somehow," Mary Ann said, "we all learned together how to take care of me, and my uncle, J. B. Dundore, a Virginia craftsman, built me a ladder back chair with casters on it. So I was able to get around."

The education part was more difficult. Mobilizing once again all the forces at her disposal, Mrs. Miller called on all the teachers she could think of and persuaded them to tutor her daughter. Mary Ann learned, in one summer, all that she needed to enter Harrisonburg High School in the fall.

On a brisk autumn day in 1939, Mrs. Miller helped her daughter into the white, two-door Plymouth, loaded the ingenious wheelchair into the back, and delivered both to school on time. When she pulled up in front of the building, Mr. Roy Spitzer and a second janitor came out, got a good grip on the chair and, with Mary Ann's braced arms secured around their necks, they carried their fragile cargo inside. When they set her down, her best friend, Julia Nelle Blosser, took over and wheeled her into Mrs. Aslinger's classroom.

Mrs. Aslinger set the tone of Mary Ann's academic destiny right from the start. "You'll do just fine, dear," she said. "Don't you worry."

And fine she did. With the all the encouragement, dedication, and love teachers commonly give abundantly and selflessly. Teachers such as Mrs. B. L. Stanley, Miss Margaretta Coffmann, Miss Sallie Blosser, Miss Aurelia Barton, and others too numerous to list here.

Miss Barton, for instance, saw no reason why Mary Ann should not apply for a scholarship. Somehow finding extra time in her own busy schedule, she coached Mary Ann in grammar, anticipating the questions that might be asked at the exam. "Prefixes and suffixes, and I don't know what else. This went on for weeks," Mary Ann laughed.

She got her scholarship.

But her teachers did more. They encouraged her to write short stories. They helped with science projects, because Mary Ann had an interest in entering the medical profession. They anticipated her special needs and made certain that she got from classroom to classroom on time, and to the various student activities she was involved in. She had, after all, to be carried from floor to floor.

In a recent conversation, she asked me to find out if H.H.S. had, now, an elevator. I climbed the mountains of construction debris surrounding the school and found Mr. John Heubach, Principle at H.H.S. I learned that, in spite of its long history, one hundred years to be exact, the school's two elevators and an extensive and, in its own way, ingenious system of ramps had been installed only this summer.

"How," I asked, "did Harrisonburg High School attend to the needs of its physically challenged students in all these years without elevators and ramps?"

"Wherever possible," Mr. Heubach said, "we simply moved the infrastructure."

He laughed, because I said, "What?"

"Physics, biology, chemistry," he added, "we moved to where they were accessible to these students. To the first floor, if feasible. We also dealt with the students on a one to one basis, both in terms of teaching or accompanying them to where they had to go. Or, yes, carried them if that's what was called for." If necessary, in case of immobility, the school will make arrangements for homebound instruction.

"We deliver!" Mr. Heubach said, not even attempting to hide his pride. He invited me along on a spur of the moment tour through H. H. S. As we walked, I could not help but see the building through Mary Ann Miller's eyes. "It's odd," she told me a few days ago, "but I still remember the sound, the scraping of the metal stirrups of my braces on the floor as I pushed myself, by my feet, in my chair, along these long hallways." They are even longer now, Mary Ann, but it should be a little easier now, in spite of that, to get you from room to room, from floor to floor, from building to building.

Up and down stairs, through hallways and corridors, climbing ramps and going down, I found, skillfully incorporated into the new architecture, the growing pains of a very small school (graduating two students the first year) that had burst out of its seams and had become a marvel of glass and light.

But as he talked and pointed to all the new and the historic features, I heard distinctly what Mr. Heubach said without saying it: Elevators or not, ramps or no ramps, we care, and we care deeply. About our students. About our faculty. About the people who work for us. About this school. We always have.

The positive and caring attitude at Harrisonburg High School had the desired effect on Mary Ann Miller. The 1943 Taj designates her as one of the two most intellectual students, and one of her peers wrote that hers was the brightest, most cheerful smile. She belonged to the Hi-Y and Science Clubs. She was the school pianist throughout her four years at H. H. S., and she sang in the mixed chorus. She was on the staff of the Taj and the Spectator. She was even, in 1942, manager of the girls' basketball team. Throughout, she was an A student.

But work not being all there is to life, a special moment of triumph came at the prom, which she attended as a member of the organizing committee. When a classmate asked her to dance, she somehow got on her feet. Somehow, she took a few steps, and somehow she danced. It was Friday, the 13th of May, 1943. "I stood more on his feet than I did on my own," she said, laughing, "but I danced."

Mary Ann graduated salutatorian, separated from the valedictorian designation not by degree of intelligence but by the absence of one course. She went on to Goucher College in Maryland and became a medical technician. Until she married Charles E. Washington, a nuclear engineer, she worked at the Johns Hopkins laboratories at the Army Chemical Center in Maryland. And somehow, in her busy life, she managed a nearly impossible feat: she walked down the aisle at her sister's wedding, alone, using only canes. It had taken weeks upon weeks and many rough falls to accomplish that walk.

She gave birth to two children, and, when there was time while raising them, she designed jewelry for major department stores in New York City. When her husband's work took the family to California, she renewed an early interest in natural fibers. It led to the publication of two books on the history and design of the art of basketry. What had begun with two knitting needles strapped to her hands had become a creative outlet that became her life's work. "The interest," she said, "was in no small measure due to the memory of an intricately woven basket that had belonged to my grandmother and that I used to collect eggs in."

At the time of this writing, Mary Ann Miller Washington, known to her friends as Misti, is suffering from post-polio syndrome for which at present there is no treatment. Still, her spirits are high, and she does what she has always done, she keeps busy and cheerful. The ingenious wheelchair sits beside her bed, and so does her grandmother's basket, as a reminder of her roots. She has faced her future with determination and courage. I can't help but think that her dance on Friday, the 13th, was more than merely the moving of her body to the rhythm of music. Dance is a metaphor for life, and Mary Ann Miller, in spite of her immobility, with a little help from her friends, danced that life to the fullest.

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(All  stories Copyrighted ©  by Ursula Maria Mandel)