Polio survivors: ‘You just adapt’

PHOTO BY KATE DeANGELIS | BARBERTON COMMUNITY FOUNDATION
From left, Judi Cherok Jacobs, Rotary Club President Dave Stephens and Bob Boyce at a Barberton Rotary Club meeting this summer recognizing the club’s 100th anniversary.

By CHRISTINA McCUNE
BGNN managing editor

Tell Judi Cherok Jacobs that she can’t do something.

And she will not only do it, but she will excel at it.

She’s been that way ever since she was a young kid.

“My mom was one that said, ‘If you want to sit around and not do anything at all – fine, but the best thing you can do is get up and start doing things’,” Jacobs said. “She was very religious. … God will be with you … So I went to camp, I learned to drive a car, I did all this other stuff. I rode a bike. I was a hellion. I wanted to do the stuff my brothers did.”

The 77-year-old Barberton resident recalls with a laugh how her determined and stubborn nature and unwavering support of family and friends has helped her through the decades. She and fellow polio survivor Bob Boyce, of Copley, were guests at a Barberton Rotary Club meeting over the summer to commemorate the local club’s centennial anniversary and 100th installation of officers. Bob Snyder, president of the Barberton Historical Society, was asked to give a presentation on the history of the club and he invited the pair.

The Rotary Club of Akron marks 110 years and one of its big projects, Rotary Camp, which Jacobs has fond memories of attending as a child, also celebrates 100 years.
The Barberton Rotary Club continues to celebrate its 100 years at this weekend’s Mum Festival, said president Dave Stephens. The club will have a concession vehicle with freshly made French fries and potato chips, as well as beverages. A banner will declare 100 years of Barberton Rotary. Proceeds will help Rotary to continue to fight against polio and benefit other child-related causes, Stephens wrote in an email.

The anniversaries of these local clubs and services have brought polio back into conversations, and Boyce and Jacobs are among those who have been sharing their stories and helping to educate the general community about the history of polio, post-polio syndrome, and support and resources for polio survivors in particular, but also people with disabilities in general.

“People forget,” Boyce said, “because polio has been eradicated from the world by and large. It’s just in northern Pakistan and Afghanistan a little bit. It would be eradicated if they weren’t so resistant to vaccination it would be eradicated there as well.”

Rotary International, one of the largest service organizations in the world, is a founding partner of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, and has been working to eradicate the paralyzing and life-threatening disease for more than 35 years. According to www.rotary.org, polio cases have been reduced by 99.9 percent since the first project to vaccinate children in the Philippines in 1979. Rotary members have contributed more than $2.1 billion and countless volunteer hours to protect nearly 3 billion children in 122 countries from the highly infectious disease. Eradication efforts must continue, according to Rotary International, otherwise if efforts stopped now, within the next 10 years polio could paralyze as many as 200,000 children each year.

Read the complete story in the Sept. 26 Barberton Gazette & Norton News. Subscribe at www.thebarbertongazette.com for access to all past editions online.