My fever stayed high through the night and I could hear my parents in the kitchen whispering, from time to time, about the possibility of my having polio. It was summer and we were at our summer bungalow on Long Island, the place where I spent my childhood summers. My father built our small house himself and always had a project or two he was working on – that’s how he spent the little vacation time he had, working on the house. That hot summer day he had decided to pour a concrete floor in the basement, and had delivered a truck load of cement. However, the shoot on the truck couldn’t reach into the basement and so the man running the truck dumped it all on the front lawn. My Dad had to shovel the cement by himself into the basement before it set on the front lawn. It was a grueling task on that hot summer night.

Without a telephone and with cement drying on the front lawn -- we'd have to wait until morning to find a doctor. The plan was, if I got worse, they would bundle me up and drive back to the Bronx, where we lived. That night I lay in my bed tossing -- turning -- sleeping restlessly -- wondering if I was going to die or worse -- be paralyzed for life. From time to time, I'd peek through the window watching my father as he shoveled the cement -- hour after hour -- into the basement. My mother went back and forth between watching over me, rubbing my legs, putting cool compresses on my forehead and helping my father. The night passed, the fever broke, and my dear father got most of the cement into the basement and trellised into a rather rough, but acceptable floor. The year was 1952.

Polio was feared more than any other disease and it seemed a distinct possibility I lay sick with it. That summer more and more children were coming down with the dreaded disease than during any other summer. The newspapers reported new cases -- children were on respirators, children were paralyzed, children were dying. Everyone was talking about it -- it was all that was on people's minds. Despite all the discussion and the public health warnings that were circulated, we didn't know what we should or shouldn't do to avoid infection. No one knew how polio spread or was contracted. Maybe some person, somewhere knew -- but my mother and father didn't know. We did know, however, that medical scientists were working on a vaccine.

As it turned out, I was not one of the thousands of kids who contracted polio that summer – who either became paralyzed or died. I recovered, but life did not quite return to normal that summer. My mother didn't let me go to the beach as often; maybe polio was contracted through swimming. My mother stopped me from playing with the kids in the neighborhood; maybe you caught it from other kids. Maybe you got polio if you weren't really clean -- she washed everything -- our clothes, our bodies, our dishes, all more thoroughly than usual. But the truth was -- she didn't know what she should do -- no one knew. We felt quite helpless.

Two years later, in 1954, the long awaited announcement came – the one thing people hoped for – the polio vaccine was ready and the name of it’s discoverer, Dr. Jonas Salk, became a household word. Given anthrax and the fear of other bio-terror, it is as if we are living back in the 40's --without vaccines, without antibiotics, without information, without the knowledge of what to do to protect ourselves. Maybe someone knows what to do-- but we don't. Daily, we try to go on with our lives. Some of us may be telling ourselves -- don't fly, don't go to large public places, wash your hands, wear gloves to open the mail.

The truth is that no one really knows what to do, but the reality is -- we will survive. We've done it before -- we'll do it again, even if this time it feels different.

My memory of the fear of polio comes from a kaleidoscope of images from one terrible night -- my mother -- my father -- the cement-- and me. Hopefully, one day we'll say the same about anthrax and whatever terrorists may be planning for us -- someday it will be just a memory -- each of us with their own personal kaleidoscope of images, surviving somehow to tell the story.