Wednesday, Feb. 01 2012 9:38AM
Polio crusader: Local Rotarian was one of five brothers stricken by the disease
By Rob Roberts, rroberts@lsjournal.com
Rob Roberts/The Journal
Carl Chinnery, pictured in the Rotary chair in his office at Chinnery Evans & Nail PC in Lee's Summit, has spent years supporting Rotary International's campaign to eradicate polio worldwide. Chinnery and his four brothers were stricken by the disease as children, and one of them died from polio.
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closeFor most, “Summer of ’42” brings to mind the well-known novel and movie about a young man coming of age during World War II.
For Carl Chinnery, the phrase conjures up the all-too-real-life story of the coming of polio for him and his four brothers – and the coming of death for one of them.
Chinnery, a 70-year-old attorney and member of the Rotary Club of Lee’s Summit, retold the story this week during an interview about recent milestones in Rotary International’s fight to eradicate polio worldwide. “Sometimes you wonder what’s going on in life, if there is some plan,” Chinnery said of his ongoing role in the polio fight and the unexpected road that led to it.
$200 million milestone
The polio fight reached a new milestone on Jan. 17, when Rotary International announced that its clubs around the world had raised more than $200 million for polio eradication in response to a $355 million challenge grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Not only that, Rotary announced, the fact that it met the $200 million goal so far ahead of the challenge grant’s June 30 deadline prompted the Gates Foundation to kick in an additional $50 million for the cause. According to Chinnery, Rotary Clubs have now raised and donated more than $1 billion toward the effort to wipe polio off the planet – a goal that has succeeded in every nation except Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria. And Lee’s Summit’s three clubs – the 130-member Rotary Club of Lee’s Summit, the 55-member Sunrise Rotary Club and the 35-member Downtown Rotary Club – have chipped in a total of more than $82,000 toward the goal.
But here’s the strange thing, said Chinnery, who has made more than 50 trips across the country and globe during the past decade to aid in Rotary’s fight: He joined Rotary in 1977, eight years before the organization decided to make worldwide polio eradication its No. 1 priority.
“It wasn’t even on their radar screen then,” Chinnery said.
Polio goal has KC roots
But two years later, Rotary International was looking for a productive use for some money left over in a fund, he said. And leaders decided to use it to purchase some leftover polio vaccine a pharmacy could no longer use. Polio was rampant in the Philippines at that time, Chinnery said. So Rotary decided to administer the vaccine there according to a method it still uses today: giving it to every child in a region, then moving to the next region. “It worked, and they eradicated polio in the Philippines,” said Chinnery, who will join thousands of fellow Rotarians in India next month in administering drops of oral polio vaccine to more than 10 million children. According to Chinnery, there has not been a case of polio reported in India for a year and it officially will join the roster of more than 120 polio-free countries if that continues to be the case for two more years. But that stunning progress would never have occurred if Rotary International, buoyed by its success in the Philippines, had not decided, “Well, let’s just eradicate it worldwide,” Chinnery said. That decision was made in 1985 during Rotary International’s annual convention, conducted in Kansas City. Forty-three years earlier, in August 1942, the lives of Kansas Citians George and Ardyce Chinnery were thrown into disarray when all five of their sons contracted polio – 12 years before the first vaccine would be made available through the Salk trials.
Carl Chinnery, who was 1 at the time, said the Rotarian who appointed him as a district Polio Plus chairman in 1989 suggested that Chinnery share his personal story of the disease’s terrible potential during his efforts to raise money and awareness for the polio fight.
A mother remembers
Chinnery, however, remembered little from those traumatic days, so he turned to his mother. And Ardyce Chinnery, who has since died, responded with a painfully written letter recounting the ordeal. “It must have been Aug. 7, 1942, when Bill came in and announced he had (poliomyelitis),” the mother wrote. “I didn’t know where he had heard of such, but I said, ‘If you have (poliomyelitis), you go straight up to bed and stay there.’ And he did. ...
“We did the usual things to care (for) a sick person. He stayed in bed at least a couple of days and then George became ill. I called Dr. Eldridge, our pediatrician, and he came several times but didn’t give the illness a name until the night of Aug. 11, (when) George couldn’t swallow his medication. ...
“I called the doctor again and he came right over. (Dad was on the road). I don’t remember who stayed with the others, but Dr. Eldridge took George and me to old General Hospital. They took George, but they wouldn’t even let me stay at all. (No other hospital in Kansas City would accept us).”
According to Ardyce Chinnery’s letter, her husband arrived at the hospital at 4 a.m. the next day, after driving all night, but he wasn’t allowed to see his son either. So the father came home, and at about 7 a.m., the hospital called with the news: 9-year-old George, the eldest son, was dying.
‘George was already gone’
“When we arrived, George was already gone,” the mother wrote. “He was tied to the bed, feet at each corner of the bed, hands over his head and fasted at each corner ... stripped naked. ...” According to the mother, George had bulbar polio, a rare form that occurs when the poliovirus reaches the brain stem, and thus “probably choked on his own juices.” “However, I will always believe the treatment he received at the hospital killed him just as much as the disease,” she wrote. “I believe he was frightened to death and will always think so.” By the time of George Chinnery’s death, his brothers Richard, Larry and Carl also had become sick. And when Richard had to be hospitalized for his polio, his parents marched in and informed hospital officials that they were staying with their child – “no matter what,” the mother wrote.
One night shortly after that, she continued, she returned for her shift with her son and “saw Richard’s skin sink into his chest.” “I ran as fast as I could down the hall, calling to the intern ...” the mother wrote. “We ran back to Richard and this man picked Richard up and plunked him into an iron lung. ... (His lungs had collapsed). Another death avoided
“The radio stations put out a call for anyone who had polio to please go to the hospital and give blood to save this little boy’s life. One man or boy answered and gave his blood. ... He had walked miles to help someone he had never heard of before. I am most grateful to this unknown person.
“Richard was whiter than this paper and failing. The machine was breathing for him, but when they started giving him the boy’s blood, it was like a perfect miracle. His skin gradually started turning the most beautiful pink anyone has ever seen, and he started coming back.”
The letter, which Carl Chinnery reads during frequent speaking appearances, goes on to tell of the ongoing trips for their surviving sons’ treatment – trips that required gifts of wartime gasoline rationing stamps from friends and strangers – and the sons’ lingering health problems.
“Richard has one leg a little shorter than the other ...” the mother wrote. “Carl’s chest didn’t fill out.”
But at least he lived to tell about it, Carl Chinnery said, and that’s what he intends to do until the disease that has killed or paralyzed millions has been reduced to bad memories. On the flip side, he added, Rotary’s fight against polio, which has involved millions of man-hours as well as dollars, has illustrated the bright side of human potential. And it all boils down to Rotary’s motto, “Service Above Self,” Chinnery said.
