A Look Back at Ocean City
By Fred Miller
“Resort Lifeguard Is Laid Low by Paralysis” was the front page headline in the June 10, 1941 Ocean City Sentinel-Ledger. The following was printed under Karl Scott’s picture: “Infantile paralysis has laid low a veteran Ocean City lifeguard, Karl Scott, shown here in a picture taken last summer, his fourth on the Beach Patrol.”
The article reported, “Scott, known to hundreds for his work on the 17th Street beach, was stricken with the dread disease about five weeks ago and had been confined at the University of Pennsylvania hospital most of the time since, until he was taken home last week.
“The guard climaxed his local beach career last year by being chosen as one of the 10 members of the uniformed color guard which raised and lowered the flag at the Music Pier.”
The article ended encouraging support for the polio stricken lifeguard: “Captain Jack G. Jernee, head of the Beach Patrol, is urging Scott’s friends to help cheer him up by remembrance cards or personal visits.”
With one of their own contracting polio, the lifeguards joined the March of Dimes, an organization founded by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1938 as a response to an epidemic of polio in the United States.
Lifeguards, led by Fenton Carey and Jack Mintzer, began raising money and giving it to the March of Dimes for polio research and to aid victims of the disease. Water shows at the Flanders were the main fundraising venue. “Donate and Receive a Pin” was on posters at the Flanders.
Thomas A. Williams became captain of the OCBP in 1942 and continued the patrol’s fight against polio.
Polio cases peaked in 1952 with 57,879 cases being reported in the United States.
Finally, in 1954 a vaccine, developed by Dr. Jonas Salk at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, was being tested in a few cities including Ocean City. “71 Children Calmly Take 1st Polio Vaccine Shots” was the front page headline in the April 29, 1954 Ocean City Sentinel-Ledger.
A year later good news about the trial tests was reported on the front page of The New York Times on April 13, 1955: “SALK POLIO VACCINE PROVES SUCCESS; MILLIONS WILL BE IMMUNIZED SOON; CITY SCHOOLS BEGIN SHOTS APRIL 25.” A similar headline was in the April 14, 1955 Ocean City Sentinel-Ledger: “Expect Polio Vaccine to be Given Next Week.”
By 1961, just six years after the vaccine was introduced nationwide, the number of reported polio cases was 1,312—a 98% reduction from 1952. Today the figure is near zero.
Members of the Ocean City Beach Patrol believed they were being thanked when a commemorative stamp was released in 1957 honoring those who helped fight polio.
