Roger Reece shared an event that changed his life even before he was born. His mother was stricken with polio as a child while she was playing in a farmyard with neighbors. She was paralyzed from the waist down and never walked again without the aid of braces and crutches. “What struck me was her willingness to press on in difficult times,” he said. She worked at the Children’s Home for 45 years. He recalled strapping her onto his motorcycle when he was a teenager and taking her for a ride, an event she remembered as one of the most fun of her life. Roger said her example made a multigenerational impact on his family.

 

He noted that Rotary International’s campaign to eradicate polio from the face of the earth will take a multigenerational approach. Younger generations of Rotarians have never seen a person with polio because the campaign was so effective in the U.S. He noted that the virus is active in just two remaining countries, Pakistan and Afghanistan, and urged Rotarians to donate to the Polio Plus campaign.

 

Rotary International is a partner in the Global Polio Eradication Initiative alongside the World Health Organization (WHO), the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Its goal is to eradicate polio worldwide.

 

 

 

On this date in History in 1781, British forces under General Cornwallis signed terms of surrender to General George Washington at Yorktown at 2:00 p.m. leading to the end of the Revolutionary War