The 15th Recital with a Cause, a benefit for Rotary International’s Polio Plus campaign, is scheduled Thursday, May 1, at 7 p.m. in First Lutheran Church’s Celebration Center, 619 N. Broadway in Fargo. (Photo/Nancy Hanson.)
Markus Krueger | Program Director HCSCC
On Thursday, May 1st at 7pm, the five Rotary Clubs in Moorhead and Fargo will host Recital with a Cause. This is an annual event where local college and high school aged string musicians perform as a fundraiser to eradicate polio worldwide. And this year, there will also be a pre-concert social at the Fargo Sons of Norway Lodge starting at 4:30. That social features a dinner and speaker that will wrap up in time to catch the concert at First Lutheran Church at 7pm.
This is a cause very close to my heart. My grandfather, Walter Krueger, got polio in the last great epidemic in 1952-53. He thankfully survived, but polio forever changed him. This virus attacks and paralyses muscles. Growing up in Fargo, Walt Krueger was an athletic hunter and skier. After he contracted the virus in his mid-20s, he had to relearn how to walk, how to talk, how to swallow, and how to breathe with a quarter of a lung. It could’ve been worse. Many lost the muscles they used for breathing, and they had to survive inside “iron lung” machines that breathed for them.
The virus paralyzed the muscles my grandfather used for talking, so he trained different muscles to do the job. His voice sounded like an old fast food drive thru speaker. Strangers had trouble understanding him.
The virus paralyzed my grandfather’s leg muscles, so he walked by propelling his legs forward with his ankle muscles, aided by his ever-present crutches. Grandpa was a woodworker, so he made his crutches himself. My father keeps a handle from one of his dad’s crutches on his desk. “On a bad day I might hold it in my fist and remember that he saw worse than ever I shall” he told me. Years ago, I put one of grandpa’s old crutch handles on my teapot. Maybe it’s a strange way to treat a relic, but I use that teapot a lot and it is on a prominent shelf in our kitchen, so I am reminded of him often.
Fifteen years ago, Moorhead Rotarian John Andreasen got involved with the global polio fight by participating in the Rotary Recital with a Cause concerts that were held all around the world. Since then, he has studied the history of polio and has compiled a presentation, which he was kind enough to share with me. Much of the information in this article comes from Mr. Andreasen’s research.
Mr. Andreasen told me that when he was a kid, his mother was terrified that he might catch the polio virus. Children were especially at risk (polio was often called Infantile Paralysis). But the most famous and influential victim of this disease was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was diagnosed at age 39 in 1921. From then on, FDR used his political power as New York Governor and President of the USA to help people affected by polio.
When Roosevelt was elected president, he hired Basil O’Connor to organize the fight against polio. O’Connor organized “Birthday Balls” on January 30th as a fundraiser on the president’s birthday. These balls were simultaneous parties in thousands of communities across the USA where people “dance so that others may walk.” In 1938, O’Connor started a campaign that asked all Americans to donate a dime to fight polio. “The March of Dimes” collected 2,680,000 dimes that year. In 1946, a year after the president’s death, his face was put on our dime for this reason.
In spite of these efforts, polio cases were on the rise in the 1940-50s. But as my grandfather was struggling to survive, two doctors – Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin – were each perfecting their own vaccines against the disease. 1953 was the last epidemic because these vaccines worked. By 1979, polio was completely eradicated in the USA. The Americas were declared polio-free in 1994, and Europe in 2002.
Today, this horrific disease only survives in two countries: Pakistan and Afghanistan. In 2024, there were 99 confirmed cases. What concerns me is that there were only 12 cases in 2023. We are so close. If we can just end polio in these two countries, and if we can keep it gone for three years, polio will be eradicated.
That’s what the Rotarians are doing. Since the first Concert with a Cause in 2010, Fargo-Moorhead’s five Rotary clubs have raised $295,959 for the global polio fight. That sum has been multiplied by the Gates Foundation to a total of $849,927. That’s a lot of good work done! You can help finish off polio for good, and listen to some great music, by buying your tickets at FMRotaryFoundation.org.
