Close your eyes. Imagine your neighborhood in the summer. The sounds of kids playing softball, children splashing in a pool, or teens chasing “Pokemon Go” characters down the street. Now imagine a summer in which all those sounds were muted or gone, with parents waiting in fear to see if their child would contract a terrible disease that is crippling at best, and fatal at its worst.
That was the case in the United States from about 1916 into the 1950s. Parents would wait in fear to see if their child would contract polio, as a polio epidemic struck every summer in the U.S. in some part of our country.
Today, the U.S. is fortunate polio has been eradicated from our shores. The world was down to a handful of cases in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but just in the past few weeks, two new cases have arisen in Nigeria. While this is a setback, the goal of worldwide eradication remains within reach.
So what does this have to do with Wilsonville? Every community member who has attended one the Summer Concerts sponsored by the Rotary Club of Wilsonville and made a donation in a Polio Bucket has paid for the very vaccines that are preventing polio from crippling children across the globe. As we’ve seen with the newly arrived Zika virus in the U.S., disease does not necessarily stop at the border.
Your local Rotary Club members wish to thank the Wilsonville community for your generosity during the four Summer Concerts that attracted a total of about 4,700 of your neighbors this summer. Your generosity helped us raise a total of $7,250, which will be matched two-for-one by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to become $21,750 — an amount that will pay for vaccines for more than 20,000 children.
See you — and you’ll see us in our red End Polio shirts and white collection buckets — at next summer’s concerts!