After polio immunization stalled in the 1950s, Phoenix launched an innovative campaign using a new vaccine that became a worldwide model for eradicating the disease.
When Barbara Boettcher buys shoes, she always gets two pairs of the same style – one in size 5, the other in size 7. It’s been a fact of life for the 83-year-old Valley resident since she contracted polio as a 3-year-old in Minnesota, living with mismatched feet.
Still, footwear nuisances are hardly the steepest challenges Boettcher has overcome. “When I was contagious, I was placed in the Sister Kenny clinic [in Minneapolis] for six months in a polio ward filled with metal cribs housing other similarly afflicted toddlers,” says the retired Motorola executive assistant. “I could only see my parents through a window, which just upset me more.”
Her family moved to Phoenix in 1946, where she had two operations at Good Samaritan Hospital and underwent physical therapy at the Crippled Children’s Hospital near Garfield and 19th streets. Despite all this medical treatment, Boettcher still walks with crutches. “People ask, ‘What happened to you?’” the Tempe resident says. “I tell them I had polio as a child, and they respond, ‘What’s polio?’ They have no clue how bad the disease once was.”
Indeed, polio was a bigger existential threat to American families than subsequent generations likely realize. Another thing they might not realize: Arizona played a major role in finally defeating the disease.
And what a persistent foe it was – well past its evident demise during the Eisenhower years. “Popular memory tends to mark the 1950s as the era in which polio was defeated,” says Johanne Harrigan, a Ph.D. candidate in the University of Arizona’s Department of History. “But that memory is flawed.”
The infectious disease caused by the poliovirus first appeared in the U.S. in 1894, likely carried from Europe. It soon became a nationwide health crisis, causing muscle weakness, paralysis and, occasionally, death. Outbreaks disproportionately affected children, prompting the closure of swimming pools, movie theaters and schools.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who became paralyzed by polio at age 39, launched vaccine research in 1938 by establishing the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, which later became the March of Dimes. In its first year, Americans mailed more than 2.5 million dimes to the White House to help find a cure.
“The legacy of polio was largely one of children hobbling in leg braces, restricted to wheelchairs or confined for life in respirators known as the ‘iron lung,’” Harrigan says. “In a 1948 poll, Americans reported that they feared only nuclear war more than polio.”
In 1952, Dr. Jonas Salk developed an inactivated polio vaccine, but three doses were required for 99 percent immunity. “The nature of the Salk vaccine and its delivery by injection hindered its acceptance and impact, particularly in segments of society with less access to medical care,” Harrigan wrote in The Journal of Arizona History in spring 2025. “These challenges were exacerbated early on by the harm caused by a bad batch of vaccines, which undermined public confidence. As a result, vaccination rates in the U.S. stalled, and polio epidemics persisted into the 1960s.”
In 1962, the Maricopa County Medical Society addressed the low polio immunization rate by administering a new oral vaccine based on a live, attenuated virus developed by Dr. Albert Sabin of the University of Cincinnati. At the time, along with other similar programs around Arizona, it became the nation’s largest voluntary mass immunization campaign against polio. The inexpensive, easy-to-administer vaccine conferred secondary immunity because those vaccinated shed the weakened live virus. It was a sweet deal for everyone involved. “People were far more likely to line up for a sugar cube dosed with the vaccine than for an injection,”
Harrigan says.
The medical society provided the vaccine free of charge but requested a voluntary donation of 25 cents. Schools served as vaccination sites on Sundays starting in January, and the campaign was called SOS for Sabin Oral Sundays. From dusk until 10 p.m. on the evenings before the initial two clinic days, an airplane flew over Phoenix with a flashing neon sign attached promoting the immunization event.
The first SOS turnout was overwhelming, with 250,000 vaccinated as four National Guard helicopters guided by ham radio operators helped distribute the supplies. But an estimated 100,000 people were turned away from the 59 clinics because vaccine supplies ran out. “The only yardstick we had was the Salk vaccine program of one and a half years ago. The SOS program had five times that response within four hours,” the county medical society director told The Arizona Republic.
Among those vaccinated was Charmaine Brock Schlick at Tempe’s Ritter Elementary School. “Everyone was excited about getting the sugar cubes in a small white disposable cup,” says the retired American Express manager. “It was such a relief for me because those old vaccine guns had terrified me, and I was a pretty tough little kid.”
Rusty Foley’s family went to Arcadia High School after church to receive the vaccine. “My brother and I had already had the Salk vaccine, but my parents believed adding Sabin’s was important,” says the retired public affairs consultant.
Representatives from other cities were astonished by the turnout at vaccine clinics run almost entirely by volunteers. “The results were much greater than anyone could have anticipated,” Sabin told the Republic on an April visit. Similar efforts around Arizona made it the first state in the nation to have the majority of its residents, and more than 90 percent of elementary schoolchildren, vaccinated against polio. The effort received worldwide attention and was later emulated as far away as Mumbai, India.
But both vaccines, unfortunately, came too late for Boettcher. “People have no idea how lucky we are to have finally developed the polio vaccine,” she says. “Polio doesn’t happen much anymore, but at the time, it was so prevalent that there were dedicated hospitals specializing in treating the disease. We can’t forget how important vaccinations are and what they prevent.”
Pestilence Prevention
Vaccines that thwarted a trio of diseases in the U.S.
Diphtheria
This communicable disease causes a leathery membrane to form in the throat, producing a barking cough and potentially leading to death by asphyxiation. Once a major threat to infants, with more than 200,000 cases in the early 1920s, diphtheria has been greatly reduced by widespread immunization. The few recent cases in the U.S. have been linked to international travel to regions with low vaccination rates.
Smallpox
The deadly infectious disease reached North America in the 16th century, reducing the Native American population by an estimated 90 percent. The smallpox vaccine, the first developed for a contagious virus, was introduced in the early 1800s, leading to a decline in cases. Smallpox was eliminated in the U.S. by 1952 and worldwide in 1980, making it the first disease eradicated through vaccination.
Yellow Fever
The mosquito-borne virus arrived in the U.S. on slave ships from Africa in the 17th century. The tropical disease killed 10 percent of Philadelphia’s population in 1793, and major domestic outbreaks continued, with the last in New Orleans in 1905. Vaccines developed in the 1930s have eliminated the disease in the U.S., though Americans still contract yellow fever in Africa and South America.
