Peggy's Polio Story

Polio still exists, but less so. Rotary International helps it go away.

Peggy Peter agreed to remind some 300 of Rotary's leaders of the need recently in Evansville. But what would she say?

Peter found out in her mother's basement, in her mother's handwriting. Mary Jane Payton had described her polio on scratch paper late in her life. She left a vivid, emotional story with no assurance it would be discovered, much less inspire. Peter used her mom's words to hit the mark and then some.

“It just took a tremendous amount of courage,” said Joe Hagedorn, of New Albany, who was in the Rotary district audience. “Hers were probably the only dry eyes in the room.”

Peter was a pig-tailed 4-year-old when her mother was swept into America's polio epidemic in the early 1950s. Only when a hospital in Louisville had space did Mary Jane Payton leave the family farm in Mitchell, Ind., to receive treatment. Her then-only child could only wave to her from the hospital lawn for safety's sake. Theirs was a strained reunion, occurring once.

Mom ordered her child not to return. “ ‘If I can't hold her, I can't see her,' ” Mary Jane Payton said she told her husband, George.

Peter, of New Albany, is now 63.

A customer of her former Hallmark card shop invited Peter to Rotary in 1990. A decade later, Peter had served as the New Albany club's first female president and the district's first female governor.

“She's the most dedicated, genuinely enthusiastic person about Rotary, and specifically about the mission of eradicating polio, that I know,” said Bill Ryall, of New Albany, another club leader. “I can't think of enough superlatives.”

Peter's mother died six years ago, still on the family farm, after having fought off the brunt of polio's damage.

Peter took part in those battles. She and her mother made a game of Mom getting in and out of a balky leg brace, which Peter now uses as a prop for her speeches.

“She never allowed it to be part of her persona,” Peter said of the ordeal.

What Peter had not realized was why her mother was so determined to survive. Payton had a bunch more mothering to do.

“‘There was no one to raise my daughter but me,' ” Peter said, paraphrasing her mom's conclusion.

“That's the best part of it.”

Peter cannot explain why she chose to root through boxes in her mother's basement, other than maybe it was ordained. Neither can Peter be certain how she uncovered the polio story amid everything her mother had written and stashed.

“My mother loved to write,” Peter said. “She'd do programs for church, programs for her sorority, program for this, that and the other.”

Yet there it was, fodder ideal to warm a daughter's heart and to help keep Rotarians focused on their longtime goal.

Polio is found now in only four countries. But the organization worries that the rest of the world will let down its guard about immunization.

“It can strike right back again,” Hagedorn said. “It's important to get the message out.”

He urges Peter to keep speaking and he would like to offer videos of Peter relating her mother's story.

A mother and grandmother herself, Peter is game until polio is gone. She also is curious about what else awaits in her mom's things.

Dale Moss' column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at (812) 949-4026 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Comment on this column, and read his blog and previous columns, at www.courier-journal.com/moss.