Memories of a Shortenened Season

by Jason M. Rubin

Avoda's septuagenarian existence has run alongside the landmarks of American history for most of this century. While campers and counselors have gathered each summer since 1927, the world outside has encroached, and events in time such as the Great Depression, World War II, the Summer of Love, and America's bicentennial each left a distinct and more or less subtle imprint on the camp. One of the most enduring memories of my own first summer at Avoda in 1973 was the exhibit of photos of the murdered Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. I was mildly aware of them in 1972. After that summer at Avoda, their faces were sewn into my brain.

Another enduring memory of my first summer at Avoda was the Polio Shack. It was a plain little shack inside which were unused mattresses. The mattresses, it was said (by whom no one knew), belonged to the kids who had gotten polio at camp long ago. They couldn't be used again so they were stacked in this shack. We were afraid to open the door of the structure for fear that we would catch this disease we knew nothing about.

As a 10-year-old, I took this explanation at face value but in later years I realized the object of my fear was really just an old shed that stored old mattresses. And just recently, I had the opportunity to speak with someone who, as a 10-year-old (and, like me, in his first summer at Avoda), came face-to-face with polio at Avoda.

His name is Jason Rosenberg. He lives and practices commercial real estate law in Newton. But in 1955, while Jonas Salk was perfecting his vaccine for poliomyelitis, he was a 10-year-old boy from Mattapan looking forward to his first experience of overnight camp. "In those days, there was a fear that kids in crowded cities had a better chance of contracting polio, so parents would plead with camps to take their kids," Jason remembers.

The virus that causes polio was identified in 1908 but it reached epidemic proportions in industrialized countries in the 1940s and 1950s. Jonas Salk tested his vaccine in 1953 and 1954 with impressive initial results, but after a number of subjects in one test area got the disease, testing was halted and Salk went back to the lab. Jason and millions of other American children couldn't get inoculated until 1956. For many, it would by then be too late.

The summer of 1955 proceeded normally and Jason loved it. "I had a great time," he says. "The counselors were great and I really enjoyed being there. I remember that everyone had to get into the boxing ring, which is something I had never thought of doing." Then, in the first week of August, Jason and seven other kids got sick.

"They put us all in the infirmary and they must have known it was serious because the next thing we knew we were all getting shots of gamma globulin." Within a couple of days, the eight were taken to Children's Hospital in Boston where the diagnosis was confirmed. Jason remembers that the hospital was full of kids suffering the same symptoms. It was later learned that during this summer when the disease peaked in the US, no other summer camp had as many kids come down with polio as did Avoda.

"They shipped our stuff home," Jason recalls, "and I never found out what happened to most of the others. I had partial paralytic polio and was fitted with two long-leg braces and crutches. I was fortunate that I still had upper-body movement and strength."

Concern from parents forced the camp to bulldoze several buildings. At home, Jason found that some parents wouldn't let their kids play with him out of fear. "I really understand the stigma and isolation that people with AIDS and HIV experience," he says. He never went back to camp and though he planned to visit a couple of years ago, he still has not been to Avoda in the 44 summers since.