Polio Wars by Rogers Naomi

Author:Rogers, Naomi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 2014-03-24T16:00:00+00:00

FIGURE 5.2 “Sock Polio” fundraising container for the Kenny Foundation’s first national campaign, 1945, featuring Bing Crosby, the campaign’s spokesman; author’s possession.

The “Sock Polio” campaign attracted former NFIP volunteers who brought with them civic influence. In Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, the campaign was supported by a local mayor.229 In Montana the editor of a local paper who had been “a [NFIP] friend of many years” agreed to direct the KF drive.230 Hubert Humphrey, mayor of Minneapolis, agreed to act as one of 3 co-chairs of the Minnesota KF mayors committee, and urged other mayors to declare December 8 Kenny Day.231 Even more influential was Chester LaRoche, a wealthy advertising executive married to Rosalind Russell’s sister Clara. Head of the board of directors of Young and Rubicam, an influential advertising agency in New York, LaRoche was an enthusiastic KF organizer. He identified men who had “allowed their name to be used [by the NFIP] because of President Roosevelt’s personal interest” but were now turning to the Kenny campaign. Some, such as aviation entrepreneur Harold Talbott, were quiet allies, unable to join the KF’s New York committee formally as the result of their business connections with physicians. But, LaRoche assured Marvin Kline, “we have some of the best people on our committee for … no drive of this sort in New York seems very important unless it is promoted by people who are well known socially.”232

At first the NFIP urged its chapter officials to turn a blind eye. In Arizona, for example, after the Kenny people announced that there was only one nurse in the state capable of treating patients with the Kenny method, the NFIP’s director of organization told the Arizona chairman to keep quiet and not “start any newspaper arguments.”233 But in most cases following this advice proved impossible. In fact, some NFIP officers actively tried to contain the 1945 campaign. “I am in hopes that I can stop the drive entirely in Oakland” as “it has been stopped in several other counties,” one California organizer announced.234 Local NFIP organizers said frequently that that the Kenny method was already used to treat every acute patient with polio in their community. Nonetheless, they complained, they had to field many questions from “certain quarters where we have some very good friends.”235 One sticky point was explaining why the Institute’s $840,000 grant proposal had been rejected. Another was the “duplication” of polio fundraising campaigns.236 Dallas was now “pretty well covered with colorful [pro-Kenny] placards” put up by the Texas KF state chairman, a wealthy oil man who had sent his daughter to the Institute 2 years before. Working in such a pro-Kenny environment was not easy, a local NFIP official reflected. “They have a perfect right to put it on. Kenny has done a wonderful work. We have no feud on with her drive.” But, she commented to the New York headquarters, even if the KF “get[s] a little money … we aren’t worried—we’re a little powerful ourselves—now ain’t we?”237

NFIP officials tried to convince

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