Jay Wilson (Junior) introduced the keynote speaker for International Women’s Day of Rotary, Ina Pinkney. Ina, a polio survivor, and well-known Chicago “Breakfast Queen,” started out in Chicago with a small bakery which developed into a breakfast restaurant in the West Loop. Ina’s restaurant served Chicagoans breakfast until she closed it in December 2013. As a businesswoman, community leader, television personality, and columnist at the Chicago Tribune, Ina told the poignant story of being stricken with polio when only eighteen months old. As Jay noted, Ina encountered speed bumps rather than roadblocks on her journey toward survival.

It was Labor Day, 1944, and Ina was eighteen months old. She had started to walk only a few months before. That day, inexplicably, she could not stand up and fell down from her crib. Her parents knew that the polio epidemic which had been sweeping the nation had seeped into Brooklyn. Her parents took Ina to her doctor’s office, where they performed a spinal tap, and returned with the grim verdict of polio. Her parents wrapped her up and took her to the hospital where she saw other children, some in iron lungs. The hospital informed her parents that families could visit their children only once a week and only for one hour. Ina’s doctor said, “We can’t leave her here.” Her parents took her home to watch over her until the fever broke. Ina’s father called the March of Dimes and they suggested that the fever run its course and then evaluate the damage. The answer, at this time, was to use braces then a cast. But her father wasn’t convinced it was the best solution. He had read about an Australian nurse, Sister [Elizabeth] Kenny [1880-1952] and her controversial approach to treating polio which involved hot compresses and massage to keep the muscle elongated. Ina’s father begged Kenny to see his daughter, but when he admitted that Ina was at a private home and not in a hospital, Kenny would not see her. Ina’s father did not give up. Frantically, he borrowed a car and picked up a large woman with a big hat: then Ina’s doctor arrived and escorted the nurse into their apartment. Ina was sitting against the wall with a cast on her foot from the March of Dimes. The nurse cut off the cast and hurled it across the kitchen. Kenny declared: “We’re treating polio not a broken leg.” They then cut up a war time-wool blanket and immersed the strips in boiling water. With rubber gloves they squeezed out the water from the wool and wound the hot wet wool around Ina’s leg and covered it with an old oilcloth table cloth to keep in the wet heat. What followed was coco butter and massage and more hot packs. Ina admitted that she cannot bear the smell of a wet wool coat to this day.

Polio made life challenging. She could not do a lot but sat with adults and became a committed listener. At that time, having a disability was a fate worse than death and it was general knowledge that you went to a hospital to die. When she was six, she went to the hospital for foot surgery and thought she was dying. She bade goodbye to family and friends and gave her brother her toys. She remembered masked people and the muffled sounds of voices. She woke up from the ether with a wet cast on her leg and immediately thought they had made a mistake. She

wasn’t dead. She was getting a second chance. She retrieved her toys from her brother. Childhood was difficult because in the classroom she was smart, but on the playground, she was prey. In a letter to her marginalized and ostracized young self, Ina had important advice. Get up one more time than you fall. Don’t be a victim. Be fearless but never reckless. Ina noted that she had twenty-one jobs and had been fired from nineteen of them. At age forty-eight, she opened her restaurant in Chicago and observed that there is great power in being underestimated. Ina’s Kitchen changed Chicago. Ina became known as a successful entrepreneur and a well-respected member of the business community. Alas, like many other polio survivors, the late effects of polio have taken their toll, but indefatigable Ina takes the time to share her experiences and words of wisdom to others. She advocates and teaches others to advocate and she thanks Rotary for the hours and dollars they have given to eradicate polio from the world.

In the Q& A time, Ina related that she had danced with Fred Astaire in the early 1970s. During a Lincoln Center film festival in Astaire’s honor, she sat behind Ginger Rogers. At an event with Count Basie’s orchestra, Ina noticed Astaire standing alone with people around him. She thought, “This is my moment.” Unstoppable Ina went right up to Astaire, who responded: “I see you have a little trouble walking so we’ll sway together.”

Could you imagine life without polio? Ina answered that there is no right answer because polio led her to a life she could not imagine otherwise and lead her to being here today.

Ina mentioned that her restaurant had strict rules. Cell phones not allowed. They must be fully turned off. If a phone vibrated on a table, the offender had to go to the front door. She was in the business of creating a nurturing environment with nourishing food. There was no music in the restaurant. People needed to be able to comfortably be able talk to each other without ear-blasting music.

She closed the restaurant eleven years ago. Since she never got a hot meal at the restaurant (she was always interrupted) every day for thirty days thereafter she made the same hot breakfast that she could not have had while running her restaurant.

Ina noted that she fully understands why Rotarians do what they do to eradicate polio. There is great power in being underestimated.