This is me and my mother, Irene Hale Cloud. This is our house. We lived in Stretchneck Holler in Dizney, Ky.

One day I was a normal eleven month old girl learning to walk and the next day I was very ill. I was listless and was running a high fever.

In 1949 there were only a very few people who owned a car. The doctors who worked in the Black Mountain Hospital would see coal company workers at no charge. This was because the coal companies took out money from the miner's pay to go toward health insurance. The hospital was built and owned by the coal company that ran the mines in that portion of Harlan County. The doctors would make house visits.

My mother called the doctor who was working at the coal company's hospital in Black Mountain on a Thursday. The doctor never came. When he did not come the next morning mom packed me up and walked out of the holler carrying me. There was a bus that ran to Dizney at that time and mom rode the local bus to the holler where the hospital was. She was so mad she walked in on the doctor who was taking care of a patient. Mom could not remember exactly what the doctor at the Black Mountain Hospital gave me for what he diagnosed as an ear ache. packed me up again, walked out of the holler carrying me to the main road to catch the local bus. When we got to the hospital clinic there was so many people waiting to see the doctor, it took several hours before we were called into the examining room. The doctor got out his little hammer instrument and tapped my right knee. There was a normal response. He tapped my left knee and there was no response. There was a totally different sound when he tapped my left knee than when he tapped my right knee.

The doctor advised mom that I had Polio. At the time there was an epidemic in the county and the state of Kentucky of Polio cases. He showed mom an exercise to do on my leg. He said to massage my leg from the thigh to the toes. Finally, she could leave the hospital and take me home. Mom had to find the bus pickup spot for the bus that would take us out of Harlan and the fourteen miles to Dizney. Everyone in Stretchneck Holler waited to find out what was wrong with me. Uncle Elmer Presley was on his porch to see me and ask what the doctor had to say.

Mom was exhausted mentally and physically. She carried me up the holler, which was about half a mile in distance and was mostly up hill. Dad's parents lived in a house on the left side of the mountain in the tiny valley at the end of the dirt road. Our house was just below their house on the same side of the mountain. When mom got close to our house, daddy was coming down the road from his parents house to meet her. He took me in his arms and carried me up the steepest part of the road to our home.

The doctor in the Harlan hospital clinic said he would get in touch with the Kosair Hospital in Louisville to advise them of our circumstances. It was a long wait. I was eighteen months old when word came that the hospital would see me.

My mother had lived with a family of the same last name, "Hale" but not related to her, while she was a child of nine years old until she was fifteen. The Hale family moved to Louisville, Ky when mom was fifteen. Mom was like a daughter to them except she had to work for her keep. We were very lucky that mom had friends in Louisville that we were able to stay with. We traveled all day long on a greyhound bus to Louisville. The Hale family, met us at the bus terminal and drove us to their home.

Mr. Hale taught mom how and where to travel on the city buses to get us to the Kosair Hospital. We arrived at the clinic in the hospital on the appointed day. There were a lot of people in the clinic with their children. All of us had cases of Polio some worse than others. The doctors at the clinic examined me and told mom that I could have died. He showed mom ways to rub my leg and exercise it. This advise was the opposite of what the doctor in Harlan had show her. He recommended that she rub my leg from my foot upwards to my hip.

I was measured for a brace to help me be able to eventually stand and walk by myself. It took close to three weeks for the brace to be made. Mom and I stayed with the Hale family until they called mom to bring me to the hospital to try the brace on. She continued to massage my leg while we were waiting for the brace to be made. At some point mom put me down on the floor and I began to crawl. Mom cried , she was so relieved that I was showing signs of getting better.