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Famous People who had and have Polio

Explanation of the disease Polio and resource list of famous people living and deceased who had polio in their lives.

Poliomyelitis, often called polio or infantile paralysis, is an acute viral infectious disease spread from person to person, primarily via the fecal-oral route.

In fewer than 1% of cases the virus enters the central nervous system, preferentially infecting and destroying motor neurons, leading to muscle weakness and acute flaccid paralysis.

Spinal polio - The most common form of paralytic poliomyelitis; it results from viral invasion of the motor neurons of the anterior horn cells, or the ventral (front) gray matter section in the spinal column, which are responsible for movement of the muscles, including those of the trunk, limbs and the intercostal muscles.

Bulbar polio - Occurs when poliovirus invades and destroys nerves within the bulbar region of the brain stem. The bulbar region is a white matter pathway that connects the cerebral cortex to the brain stem. The destruction of these nerves weakens the muscles supplied by the cranial nerves, producing symptoms of encephalitis, and causes difficulty breathing, speaking and swallowing.

Bulbospinal polio - This subtype is also called respiratory polio. Here the virus affects the upper part of the cervical spinal cord (C3 through C5), and paralysis of the diaphragm occurs. The critical nerves affected are the phrenic nerve, which drives the diaphragm to inflate the lungs, and those that drive the muscles needed for swallowing.

Post-polio syndrome - Mainly characterized by new weakening in muscles that were previously affected by the polio infection and in muscles that seemingly were unaffected.  Symptoms include slowly progressive muscle weakness, unaccustomed fatigue (both generalized and muscular), and, at times, muscle atrophy.

There is no cure for polio. The focus of modern treatment has been on providing relief of symptoms, speeding recovery and preventing complications. The polio vaccines developed by Jonas Salk in 1952 and Albert Sabin in 1962 are credited with reducing the annual number of polio cases from many hundreds of thousands to around a thousand.

Famous People who Had and Have Polio

Dinah Shore - (1916-1994): singer Dinah Shore (born Frances Rose Shore February 29, 1916 - February 24, 1994) was an American singer, actress and television personality. She was most popular during the Big Band era of the 1940s and 1950s. When she was two years old, she was stricken with polio (infantile paralysis), a disease that was not preventable at the time, and for which treatment was limited to bedrest. Her parents provided intensive care for her and she recovered and overcame the disease. However, she continued to have a slightly deformed foot and limp, which did not physically impede her.

Joni Mitchell - (born Roberta Joan Anderson - November 7, 1943) is a Canadian musician, songwriter, and painter. At the age of nine, Mitchell contracted polio during a Canadian epidemic, but recovered after a stay in the hospital. It was during this time that she first became interested in singing. As a teenager, she taught herself ukulele and, later, guitar and began performing at parties, which eventually led to busking and gigs playing in coffeehouses and other venues in Saskatoon. Mitchell achieved fame in the late 1960s and was considered a key part of the Southern California folk rock scene.

Ann Adams - (1937-1992) artist (by mouth) Adams had not breathed on her own for over forty years, and though she could not use her hands, her mind was far from being handicapped. Paralyzed from the neck down, she was able to move only a few facial and neck muscles. At the age of nineteen, Ann married an Annapolis Naval Officer. At twenty-one, she gave birth to her son, Kenny, and two years later, in 1950, she was struck with polio. After polio struck, Ann spent a year-and-a-half in Jacksonville, and the following year-and-a-half in a rehab center in North Carolina. The next five years of her life were spent in the strict cloister of an iron lung. There was no way or means of leaving even her bedroom because of the respiratory problem. The National Foundation For Infantile Paralysis provided equipment and nursing services which kept her alive.

Tony Gould - An award-winning English journalist, Gould contracted polio when he was twenty in 1959. Tony Gould was for many years a BBC radio producer and literary editor of New Society magazine. He is a writer and reviewer, two of his books are, A Summer Plague: Polio and Its Survivors and Don’t Fence Me In. Gould acknowledges that most of the world's population has not yet received anti-polio vaccine and that much remains to be learned about post-polio syndrome. In the 1970's and into the 1980's there was an increasing medical ignorance about polio; "people troubled by its after-effects were dismissed by doctors either as hypochondriacs or, worse, neurotics in need of psychiatric treatment."

Sir Walter Scott - (15 August 1771 – 21 September 1832) was a prolific Scottish historical novelist and poet popular throughout Europe during his time. In some ways Scott was the first English-language author to have a truly international career in his lifetime, with many contemporary readers all over Europe, Australia, and North America. His novels and poetry are still read, and many of his works remain classics of both English-language literature and of Scottish literature. Famous titles include Ivanhoe, Rob Roy, The Lady of The Lake , Waverley and The Heart of Midlothian.

Georgia Coleman - (January 23, 1912 – September 14, 1940) was an American diver who competed in the 1928 Summer Olympics and in the 1932 Summer Olympics. In 1928 she won the silver medal in the 10 metre platform event as well as the bronze medal in the 3 metre springboard competition. Four years later she won the gold medal in the 3 metre springboard event as well as the silver medal in the 10 metre platform competition. She was born in St. Maries, Idaho. Georgia Suffered of polio throughout her life.

Sir John Cotesworth Slessor - (3 June 1897 – 12 July 1979) was a senior commander in the Royal Air Force. A pilot in the Royal Flying Corps during World War I, he held operational commands during World War II and served as Chief of the Air Staff from 1950 to 1952. After leaving the RAF in 1919, Slessor was offered a short-service commission the following year as a Flight Lieutenant. He served as Officer Commanding No. 4 Squadron from 1925 to 1928, and attended Staff College, Camberley in 1931. Slessor published two books after his retirement from the RAF in 1953, his autobiography The Central Blue (1956) and The Great Deterrent (1957).

Renata Ersilia Clotilde Tebaldi - (February 1, 1922 – December 19, 2004) Renata was an Italian lirico-spinto soprano, popular in the post-war period. Tebaldi is famous for her large, voluminous soprano that was widely admired for its tonal beauty and evenness of vocal line. She primarily focused on the verismo roles of the lyric and dramatic repertoires. Stricken with polio at the age of three, Tebaldi was unable to take part in strenuous activities and instead became interested in music. She was a member of the church choir in Langhirano and her mother sent her to piano lessons with Signorina Passani in Parma at the age of thirteen. She worked with boundless diligence, practising four or five hours a day and dreaming of a career as a concert pianist. She also sang everything she heard.

Ray Peterson - (April 23, 1935 – January 25, 2005) Peterson was an American pop music singer. As a boy he had to overcome polio. Blessed with a 4.5-octave singing voice, he embedded his voice to become the Golden Voice of Rock and Roll. Peterson moved to Los Angeles, California where he was signed by RCA Victor Records in 1957. He recorded several songs that were minor hits until "The Wonder of You" made it into the Billboard Top Thirty list (June 15, 1959). The song would later be recorded by Elvis Presley with whom he became close friends. Ray Peterson died of cancer in 2005 in Smyrna, Tennessee and was interred in the Roselawn Memorial Gardens cemetery in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

Arthur Guyton - (September 8, 1919 - April 3, 2003) was an American physiologist. Guyton is most famous for his experiments in the 1950s which studied the physiology of cardiac output and its relationship with the peripheral circulation. It was this work which overturned the conventional wisdom that it was the heart itself that controlled cardiac output. Guyton instead demonstrated that it was the need of the body tissues for oxygen which was the real regulator of cardiac output. Arthur Guyton’s research contributions, which include more than 600 papers and 40 books, are legendary and place him among the greatest figures in the history of cardiovascular physiology. His research covered virtually all areas of cardiovascular regulation and led to many seminal concepts that are now an integral part of our understanding of cardiovascular disorders such as hypertension, heart failure, and edema.

Annette Kellerman - (6 July 1887 – 5 November 1975) Annette was an Australian professional swimmer, vaudeville and film star, writer, and advocate for the change of women's swimwear. She is often credited for inventing the sport of synchronised swimming after her 1907 performance of the first water ballet in a glass tank at the New York Hippodrome. In 1905 Kellerman swam from Dover to Ramsgate, England, a distance of 20 miles (32 km), in 4 hours and 28 minutes. She also introduced the one-piece bathing suit.

William Alexander Gadsby - (born August 9, 1926 in Calgary, Alberta) was a Canadian professional ice hockey defenceman who played for the Chicago Black Hawks, New York Rangers, and Detroit Red Wings in the National Hockey League. He was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1970. In 1998, he was ranked number 99 on The Hockey News' list of the 100 Greatest Hockey Players. Gadsby is currently an "Honored Member" of the Detroit Red Wings Alumni Association and is active in its efforts to raise money for children's charities in Metro Detroit.

William Orville Douglas - (October 16, 1898 – January 19, 1980) was a United States Supreme Court Associate Justice. With a term lasting 36 years and 209 days, he is the longest-serving justice in the history of the Supreme Court. In general, legal scholars have noted that Douglas's judicial style was unusual in that he did not attempt elaborate justifications for his judicial positions on the basis of text, history, or precedent. Instead, Douglas was known for writing short, pithy opinions which relied on philosophical insights, observations about current politics, and literature, as much as more conventional "judicial" sources.

Wilma Rudolph - (June 23, 1940 – November 12, 1994) was an American athlete, and in the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, Italy, she became the first American woman to win three gold medals in track and field during a single Olympic Games, despite running on a sprained ankle. The powerful sprinter emerged from the 1960 Rome Olympics as "The Tennessee Tornado," the fastest woman on earth. The Italians nicknamed her "La Gazzella Nera" (the Black Gazelle). To the French she was "La Perle Noire" (The Black Pearl).

Ben Bradlee - is the vice president of The Washington Post. As executive editor of the Post from 1965 to 1991, he challenged the federal government over the right to publish the Pentagon papers. He became famous for overseeing the publication of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's stories documenting the Watergate scandal. For decades, Bradlee was one of only four publicly known people who knew the true identity of Deep Throat, the other three being Woodward, Bernstein, and Deep Throat himself. Bradlee presently resides at Grey Gardens, the former East Hampton estate of the Bouvier family.

Brooks Stevens - (June 7, 1911-January 4, 1995) was an industrial designer, as well as automotive designer, graphic designer, and stylist. Though he is often cited with inventing the concept of planned obsolescence (the practice of artificially shortening product lifecycles in order to influence the buying patterns of consumers in favor of manufacturers), he did not invent it but rather coined the term and defined it. Stevens defined it as, "Instilling in the buyer the desire to own something a little newer, a little better, a little sooner than is necessary." His view was to always make the consumer want something new, rather than create poor products that would need replacing. There is some debate over his role in this controversial business practice.

Dennis Washington - (born 1934) Dennis is a Montana-based industrialist and philanthropist who owns, or owns controlling interest in, a large consortium of privately held companies collectively known as the Washington Companies. With an estimated current net worth of around $3.4 billion, he is ranked by Forbes as the 102nd-richest person in America. In the 1970s he moved into mining and dam construction. In 1986 he acquired a copper and molybdenum mine at Butte, Montana. He successfully reopened the mine and it became a very profitable operation. This success helped him diversify into railroads, marine services, coastal shipping, aviation and real estate. In 1996 Washington Construction acquired global construction and engineering company Morrison-Knudsen Corporation of Boise, Idaho, creating Washington Group International.

Frida Kahlo - (July 6, 1907 – July 13, 1954) was a Mexican painter, who has achieved great international popularity. She painted using vibrant colors in a style that was influenced by indigenous cultures of Mexico as well as by European influences that include Realism, Symbolism, and Surrealism. Many of her works are self-portraits that express her own pain symbolically and her sexuality. They shared political views, and he encouraged her artistic endeavors. Although she has long been recognized as an important painter, public awareness of her work has become more widespread since the 1970s. Her "Blue" house in Coyoacán, Mexico City is a popular museum, donated by Diego Rivera upon his death in 1957. Frida developed polio when she was six. Polio made her right leg weaker and smaller than the left.

Judith E. Heumann - (born 1947) is an American disability rights activist. Heumann's commitment to disability rights stems from her personal experiences, she had polio at the age of 18 months, and has spent most of her life in a wheelchair. She co-founded Disabled in Action in 1970. She co-founded the World Institute on Disability in 1983 with Ed Roberts and Joan Leon in 1983, serving as co-director until 1993. She served in the Clinton Administration as Assistant Secretary of the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services at the US Department of Education from 1993 to 2001. She also served as the World Bank Group's Advisor on Disability and Development, leading the World Bank's work on disability and its integration into their programmes and projects. She currently is the Director of the Department of Disability Services in Washington, DC.

Lis Hartel - (born March 14, 1921) Lis Hartel was a Danish equestrian athlete. Hartel became the first woman in equestrianism to win an Olympic medal when she won silver medals at the 1952 and 1956 Summer Olympics in dressage. She accomplished this feat despite being paralysed below the knees as a result of polio and required assistance on and off her horse. After three years of rehabilitation, she was able to compete in the Scandinavian riding championships and finished second in women's dressage.

Marion Davies - (January 3, 1897 – September 22, 1961) was an American film actress. Davies is best remembered for her relationship with newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst. Even during her career, her high-profile social life often obscured her professional career. In her posthumously published memoirs, Davies claimed she wasn't an actress, knew nothing about politics, and described herself as a "silly, giggly idiot." Hearst and Davies lived as a couple for decades but were never married, as Hearst's wife refused to get a divorce. At one point, he reportedly came close to marrying Davies, but decided his wife's settlement demands were too high.

Steve Harley - (27 February 1951) As a child he suffered from polio, spending four years in hospital up to his sixteenth birthday. It was in hospital he first heard Bob Dylan, inspiring him to a career of words and music. At ten he received the gift of a guitar from his parents, and he played violin with the school orchestra. He left the Haberdashers' Aske's Hatcham College with no A levels. He first started out playing in bars and clubs in the early seventies, mainly at folk venues on open-mike nights where he joined the band Odin. He also busked around London on the Underground and Portobello Road. Performing with Odin he met Jean-Paul Crocker, with whom he formed Cockney Rebel in late 1972.

Wah Ming Chang - (August 2, 1917–December 22, 2003) was a Chinese American designer, sculptor, and artist. He is known primarily for his sculpture and the props he designed for Star Trek (the original series), including the tricorder, and communicator. Chang's communicator design has been credited as an inspiration for modern flip-type cell phones. His Balok effigy—repeated after each episode as part of Star Trek's closing credits—with its small chin, almond-shaped eyes and large cranium, did much to establish and popularize the archetype of humanoid extraterrestrial life.

Paul Winchell - (December 21, 1922 – June 24, 2005) Paul Winchell was an American ventriloquist and voice actor from New York City whose career flourished in the 1950s and 1960s. He was also an amateur inventor who was the first person to build and patent a mechanical, artificial heart, implantable in the chest cavity. He was very interested in medicine and studied pre-med at Columbia University. He graduated from The Acupuncture Research College of Los Angeles in 1974, and became an acupuncturist. He also worked as a medical hypnotist at the Gibbs Institute in Hollywood.

Claudius - (August 1, 10 BC – October 13, AD) Claudius was the fourth Roman Emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, ruling from January 24, AD 41 to his death in AD 54. Born in Lugdunum in Gaul (modern-day Lyon, France), to Drusus and Antonia Minor, he was the first Roman Emperor to be born outside Italia. Claudius was considered a rather unlikely man to become emperor. He was reportedly afflicted with some type of disability, and his family had virtually excluded him from public office until his consulship with his nephew Caligula in AD 37. This infirmity may have saved him from the fate of many other Roman nobles during the purges of Tiberius' and Caligula's reigns. His very survival led to his being declared emperor after Caligula's assassination, at which point he was the last adult male of his family.

Frank Mars - (September 24, 1883 – April 8, 1934) Frank Mars was the founder of the American company Mars, Incorporated, which makes mostly chocolate candy. Mars and his son Forrest Edward Mars developed M&M's. Frank Mars learned how to produce candy from his mother. In 1902, he began making candy, but all his endeavors failed until 1923 when he made the Milky Way candy bar, the chocolate coating for which came from Hershey's brand chocolate. In 1930, Mars had developed the Snickers Bar. After his birth, in 1930, his son Forrest Mars, Sr., with the help of Hershey's president William Murries, began producing M&M Candies.

Joni Mitchell - (born November 7, 1943) Joni Mitchell is a Canadian musician, songwriter, and painter. Mitchell's singing began in small nightclubs and busking on the streets of Toronto and in her native Western Canada. She subsequently became associated with the burgeoning folk music scene of the mid-1960s in New York City. Mitchell achieved fame in the late 1960s and was considered a key part of the Southern California folk rock scene. Throughout the 1970s, she explored and combined the pop and jazz genres. Mitchell is also an accomplished visual artist. She has, through photography or painting, created the artwork for each of her albums and, in 2000, in an interview with the Toronto Globe and Mail, described herself as a "painter derailed by circumstance". A blunt critic of the music industry, Mitchell had stopped recording over the last several years, focusing mainly on her visual art, but in 2007 released Shine, her first album of new songs in nine years.

Shelley Mann -  (born October 15, 1937) Shelley Mann is a former butterfly swimmer from the United States. At the 1956 Summer Olympics she won the gold medal in the 100 m butterfly competition and was a member of the relay team that won the silver medal for the 100 m freestyle. Mann caught polio at the age of six and took up swimming to aid her recovery. She was a student at the American University in Washington, D.C. Shelley suffers from polio but still swims despite it's paralyzing affects.

Siptah - Akhenre Setepenre Siptah or Merneptah Siptah was the penultimate ruler of the 19th Dynasty and the son of an obscure Queen named Sutailja, of Asiatic origin. His father's identity is currently unknown. Both Seti II and Amenmesse have been suggested. He was not the crown prince, but succeeded to the throne as a child after the death of Seti II. His accession date occurred on II Peret day 2 around the month of December. Siptah ruled Egypt for almost 6 years as a young man. His stepmother and Seti II's Chief Queen, Twosret, became the Queen Regent at the Royal Court because of his relative youth. Siptah was only a child of ten or eleven years when he assumed power since a medical examination of his mummy reveals the king to have been a teenager of about 16 years old at death.

Bhagwat Subramanya Chandrasekhar - Cricket Champion from India

Bill Cullen - (1920-1990) game show host

Buddy Daley - Baseball All-Star (1959 and 1960)

Cathy Rigby's -

CeDell Davis - Jazz Guitarist

Charles E. Bennett - (1911-2003) longtime US Congressman, Florida

Dick Cabela - outdoorsman and founder of "Cabela's"

Dorothea Lange - (1895-1965): photographer

Dr. Albert Sabin - (1906-1993

Dr. Jonas Salk - (1914-1995),

Ed Roberts - (1939-1995) Father of the Independent Living Movement

Edna Marie Moore - (1930-1989) Texas artist

Egbert Hamilton Walker - (1899-1991) Smithsonian Institute Botanist

Eleanor Abbott - designed the game CandyLand

Elizabeth Twistington Higgins - (1923-1990): MBE, English ballet dancer and artist

Elmer L. Andersen - (1910-2005): former Minnesota Governor, businessman

Ethelda Blaibtrey - (1902-1978): olympic gold medalist for swimming

Francis Ford Coppola - director

Harold Brooks-Baker - (1933-2005): publisher

Henrietta Wyeth Hurd - (1907-1997): artist

Henry Holden - actor, comedian, athlete, activist

Hildegard Knef - (1925-2002): German actress, singer, writer

Horace Parlan - pianist

Hugh Gregory Gallagher - author and historian

Ida Louise Anderson - (1900-1941): broadcast radio pioneer

Ida Lupino - (1917-1995): London-born actress, director, screenwriter

Itzhak Perlman - internationally acclaimed violinist

J. Robert Oppenheimer - (1904-1967): physicist and teacher

James DePriest - musician, composer, arranger and conductor

James Drury - actor, "The Virginian"

Jean Chrétien - former Prime Minister of Canada

Jerome Solon Felder - (1925-1991): songwriter, Doc Pomus

John East - (1931-1986): US Senator

John Hager - Lieutenant Governor, Virginia

John Prestwich - MBE, longest respirator user (Guinness Book of World Records)

Joseph (Joey) Velez - (1925-2002): Golden Gloves Boxer

Julius (Julie) Bort - (1922-1996) boxer

Julius Robert Oppenheimer -

Justin Dart - activist

Katie Eastman -

Lauro Halstead - doctor.

Lionel Barrymore - (1878-1954): actor

Lois Catherine Marshall - (1924-1997): Canadian singer in the 50s and 60s

Lord Snowden - photographer, UK (Princess Margaret's former husband)

Margaret "Peg" Phillips - (1918-2002): actress (Ruth-Anne on "Northern Exposure")

Margarete Steiff - (1847-1909): German seamstress who founded Steiff Teddy Bears

Marjorie Lawrence - world famous dramatic opera singer:

Martin Milner - actor

Mary Francis - (1924-2000)

Mel Ferrar - actor

Nyla Thompson - mouth artist

Oscar G. Heirlihy - Radio and TV Pioneer, Newfoundland

Owen Roizman - cinematographer, 5 Oscar nominations and Lifetime Achievement Award

Peter Preston - British writer and Guardian editor, 1975 through 1995

Ray Ewry - (1873-1937) Track & Field Olympic Champion

Ruma - ancient Syrian

Sir Julian Critchley - (1930-2000): journalist, author and member of the House of Commons

Tanaquil Le Clercq - (1929-2000): ballet dancer

Tenley Albright - doctor and olympic gold medalist for figure skating

Victor Woodrow Wertz - (1925-1983): Baseball All-Star

Walter "Buddy" Davis - Broad Jump Olympic Champion, Basketball

Walter Jackson - (1938-1983) lead singer of the "Velvetones"

View other well known and Famous People with Disabilities of different types.

NOTE: Disabled World has assembled this list from both online and offline resources. If you know of a discrepancy in this article please contact us so we can ammend the entry.

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