Losing 30 of 40 cattle to tuberculosis would have been a major financial blow, and may be one reason why it was another 6 years before at age 37 he would be able to marry my grandmother. 
"I believe one of our secrets to thriving with polio is that we, first and foremost, quietly dismissed all those who gawked at us with pity, volunteered to Biblically heal us, needlessly tried to fix us, or gazed at our bent feet rather than into our eyes. As we have matured, we have learned to reject the shame and stigma of disability. What a freedom! We found out that such negativity gets old and is not useful. Out of necessity, we have had to become introspective from time to time, which inescapably fostered our personal character development. We have learned to be assertive when needed, to surround ourselves with loved ones, to think positively, get educated, find good resources and enjoy life along the way.-- a couple paragraphs from a much longer, refreshingly upbeat, essay by Sunny Roller, MA (Ann Arbor, Michigan) - the lead article in the most recent issue of Post-Polio Health.
Perhaps most importantly, we have learned to accept ourselves as we are. Many of us have evolved in our thinking to appreciate and lovingly embrace what used to be our primary nemesis - polio. In order to find peace and contentment, we have had to make friends with our disability. Not overcome it. Not hide it. And not fight it... Polio has made us who we are today.
Our physical differences don't matter much anymore because we are all beginning to look like everyone else our age anyway. We, however, know a bit more about aging gracefully, because we started sooner than all of our friends. We are aging with a disability. Many of our friends are aging into disability. If they'll let us, we can actually help them with their new adjustments."
1858 – Giacomo Puccini
1862 – Connie Mack
1901 – Andre Kostelanetz
1912 – Lady Bird Johnson
1937 – Charlotte Lamb
1945 – Diane Sawyer
1949 – Maurice and Robin Gibb
1962 – Ralph Fiennes
2007 – TYWKIWDBI (12,717 posts, 41,803 comments, 16,714,310 pageviews, 1,617 followers.)
...some locals wonder if they could have taken better care of one of the world's best-known monuments. Less than a quarter of the Wall is under historical protection and you can find more pieces of it overseas than in Germany…Historians date the onset of this process of wall disappearance to November 9, 1989, when East Berliners surged through the wall, and locals on both sides of the wall began chipping off souvenirs. "These people were nicknamed "Mauerspechte" (wall woodpeckers)."
Yet somehow, up until very recently, most Germans did not seem to regret the disappearance of the Wall. Nor have they been inclined to make a big deal out of what's left.
For example, even Berlin locals might be surprised to know that there are actually over 1,000 sites in and around Berlin where remnants of the Wall can be found. Yet less than a quarter of them are protected by any sort of conservation edict…
"It was a border, it was a reminder of an uncomfortable past and everyone actually just wanted to be rid of it," Roland says, "which I think can be hard for outsiders to understand."
