First lady Jill Biden plans to visit Franklin Sherman Elementary School in McLean Va., on Monday as children there get vaccinated against covid. In 1954, Franklin Sherman second-graders were the first in the country to get polio shots.
Yet perhaps surprisingly in a community about equally split between Republicans and Democrats, Franklin Sherman’s handling of the pandemic and the attitude among parents toward vaccinating children appear to run counter to the popular narrative.A spirit of unity about making the health of Franklin Sherman’s 300 or so students a priority pervades the school much as it did in the 1950s, according to parents across the political spectrum.
In 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had lost the use of his legs after a polio diagnosis as an adult, co-founded the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, later renamed the March of Dimes, to combat the disease. Fifteen years later, in 1953, American virologist Jonas Salk, whose research the foundation had funded, announced a breakthrough — the creation of a safe polio vaccine that he had successfully tested on his own children.
Lonergan’s family doctor, Richard Mulvaney, a no-nonsense former Army doctor who had won a Bronze Star during the Korean War, was heralded as a campaign hero.The photo of the physician vaccinating Lonergan, who recalls barely flinching, later became a March of Dimes poster, among those featuring the newly minted “Polio Pioneers.”
Since September, only one student at Franklin Sherman has become infected with the virus, according to Principal Kathleen Quigley.