In 1951, Bill Hollingshead, 14, fell down in his living room floor in Woodland. He crawled to the couch with a stiff neck and weakened legs. The family doctor diagnosed polio. Transported to a San Francisco hospital by hearse because there was no ambulance, his first sight was of a long line of iron lungs along the wall.“I can tell you how happy I am to be here!” said Hollingshead, a polio survivor who has raised over $1 million dollars for the Rotary International Foundation’s PolioPlus.
President John Lemmon encouraged our club to increase our donations to PolioPlus with the promise that we can say in our lifetimes that we helped eradicate polio from the planet.
It’s hard to remember how frightened our parents and grandparents were of polio in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. Hollingshead said it was second only to the atom bomb of what families feared most. “I realized no one would come to visit,” he recalled.
After Hollingshead returned home, he invited a girl to a dance and she said yes. Later, she told him she couldn’t go because her parents said he had had polio. Stung, Hollingshead never told anyone for 41 years that he had polio until he joined the Santa Ana Rotary Club in 2000. He didn’t know that eradicating polio was the Foundation’s number one goal, but three months later, he was on a plane to Africa to immunize children.
Let’s backtrack first. After graduation from UC Davis, Hollingshead, a clarinetist, was drafted. He was assigned to the second highest ranking band in the U.S. Army. He went on to have a successful career as a talent agent. He worked at Sea World in San Diego and Knotts Berry Farm. He represented Wolfman Jack, The Righteous Brothers, Fabian, Frankie Avalon, and Ricky Nelson. In 2004, he returned to Davis and married his Woodland High School sweetheart Dianne Fritter.
His service to the foundation’s PolioPlus over the years in Santa Ana and now as a member of the Davis Rotary Club as a speaker and fundraiser has earned him many awards. The International Foundation recognized his work through District 5160. He was named the Capital Region’s “American Red Cross Hero of the Year.” He was a “Founding Funder” of the Polio Virtual Reality Campaign. In 2012, he was named the UC Davis Cal Aggie Alumnus of the Year for Service. He just received the “Lifetime Achievement Award” from his Davis club.
As a Polio Victor, he and his wife have raised more than $1 million for a polio free world.
At present at age 81, Bill suffers from the Post Polio Syndrome. “It gets you going in and will get you going out,” of your lifetime, he said. He works with an expert at UC Davis on his physical therapy. He has lost 70 pounds and can’t touch his toes. But he is among 1.5 million polio survivors that include Joni Mitchell, Alan Alda and Itzhak Perlman.
“It’s a lifetime of challenges,” he said. “With you fellow Rotarians, I will see the end of polio in my lifetime.”
President John noted that, in the last Rotary Year, Club members dramatically stepped up to the challenge and contributed almost $12,000 to support Rotary’s effort to eradicate Polio. That ranked us third in tour District, behind the Folsom and Point West Clubs. President John also asked each Club member to make an effort to contribute something this year to end Polio. If you can, please consider a contribution of $100.00 or more. If you cannot, please make a contribution now of whatever you can afford. To make a contribution, simply contact the Office at (916) 929-2992 or e-mail Barbara at Barbara@rotarysacramento.com. You will also have a chance to sign up at future lunch meetings.