For the 'polio kids'

An encounter with a boy on the playground has been in Dave Eubanks’ mind for nearly 70 years.

The boy, Paulie, suffered from polio. Eubanks recalled seeing him coming across the playground, "spider-walking on his canes. It was terrifying."

"He came within about 20 feet of me and he fell," Eubanks said. "The canes went flying and he was lying on the ground and couldn't get up. I ran over and said, 'Hey, do you need some help?’”

Paulie advised him how to help, then Eubanks noticed his shoe.

“The sole was 4 inches thick, the heel was 4 inches thick, and he dragged it behind him,” Eubanks said. “I blurted out, ‘What’s wrong with your shoe?’ and he said, ‘Well, I got something called polio.

“I said, 'It just looks awful.’ I almost started crying. He said, ‘But I’m way better than I used to be. At least I’m alive and I can breathe.’ He was 10 years old. I never forgot that.”

A then-7-year-old Eubanks departed with tears in his eyes.

"I still remember that interaction on the playground," said Eubanks, who just turned 76.

Paulie, and all the "polio kids" like Paulie, are why Eubanks in July 2022 released his first book — "The Coonskin Kids: Davy Crockett, Rock 'n' Roll and the Devil's Disease."

“If you were the parent of a child with polio, you felt utterly, completely devastatingly helpless,” said Eubanks, a retired longtime school teacher who now lives in Rathdrum. "For the longest time, there was no vaccine. The treatments were only modestly effective."

Polio (poliomyelitis) is a crippling and deadly disease caused by the poliovirus. According to the Centers for Disease Control, most people who are infected with poliovirus won't have visible symptoms, and only one out of four will feel fluish. The most severe symptom is paralysis, which can lead to death because it affects muscles necessary for breathing. Polio has been eliminated from the U.S. thanks to the polio vaccine, and no wild polio cases have originated in the country since 1979.

"In May 1955, a month after the polio vaccine became available, I stood in line with all the other third graders and got our first polio shots," Eubanks said. "The news media called it the 'Shot Heard 'Round the World.'"

"Coonskin Kids," while fictional, is interwoven with Eubanks' childhood memories as well as "true stories of many thousands of children in a long-ago time when the reality of paralytic poliomyelitis terrified much of America," Eubanks included in a disclaimer at the beginning of the book.

Eubanks in the book discusses Dr. Jonas Salk, who developed one of the first polio vaccines.

"He should be considered one of the greatest Americans who ever lived," Eubanks said. "As brilliant as he was, even as a young man, we found out later he created this vaccine that saved millions, he couldn't get into the finer universities back east because he was Jewish. This was in the 1930s."

"Coonskin Kids" is a polio story that highlights Salk's work and the successful first mass vaccination of American kids starting in 1955.

"Other mass vaccinations followed: measles, mumps, rubella and the rest — making the Baby Boomer generation, and their kids and grandkids, probably the healthiest generations of Americans ever," Eubanks said.

At the heart of the story are the kids — the ones who loved Davy Crockett, built forts in suburban California orange groves and tangled with neighborhood bullies. During this picture-postcard past, those same kids also practiced "drop and cover" drills as nuclear war with Russia loomed and they faced the reality of a paralyzing disease that forced many to spend part of their youth in an iron lung, an apparatus that helped polio victims breathe.

Eubanks authored "Coonskin Kids" after his own life-changing medical experience.

"I was dying in 2007," he said. "When they told me I was dying, I was flabbergasted."

With only half his heart working following a massive heart attack five years prior, Eubanks was given a dim prognosis. He had 24 hours to live, unless he had a heart transplant, which was tricky with his B- blood type.

"It was 17 days later I got a perfect transplant," Eubanks said. "I was 60 and my donor was only 23."

While isolating during COVID shutdowns, he realized he'd been given extra time on Earth, so he started writing his childhood memories for his grandchildren. A good friend recommended he dive into the polio aspect as a tribute to the survivors to remind everybody what they'd been through.

"This book is a tear-jerker in places, but it is also something that will warm your soul," Eubanks said. "As much as anything, it will leave you laughing out loud."

Eubanks will appear from 6-7 p.m. April 5 for an author event at the Well-Read Moose, 2048 N. Main St., Coeur d'Alene.

The book is available through Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other stores.