Getting There
Growing Up With Polio in the 30's
by
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In the fall of 1944, three months after D-Day in Europe, I started the final leg of my high school years. Jack was in the Army by then and he wrote to me regularly, first from North Africa, then from Italy as General Mark Clark’s Fifth Army moved up the Italian boot toward Rome. Some of the war’s casualties were beginning to surface in this country, and it was no longer such a rarity to see a young man on crutches. Often when I was out I would be mistaken for a disabled veteran and declined many invitations for free drinks and other courtesies. I felt constrained to explain at tedious length to any of those well-wishers that I was not a veteran and had never been in the service. This inevitably led to looks of confused disappointment, both of us ending up with a feeling of somehow having been cheated. Although it would have been easier in some of the more casual encounters to just let it ride, I never could bring myself to do it. Except once. It was the custom during the war years when all America stood as one before the enemy, to play the National Anthem at the beginning of every public performance. I was seated in the old Merrimack Square Theater in Lowell...now a parking lot...when Old Glory flashed on the screen and the familiar strains filled the darkened theater. It was...and is...difficult for me to fold myself into the narrow confines of a theater seat and more so, to get out of one. And for this reason I usually excuse myself from the ritual rising and re-seating that accompanies these and other solemn occasions. During the course of the anthem I became aware of some hostile mutterings emanating from the seats directly in back of me. I tuned out the "bombs bursting in air" and heard a woman’s voice saying-- "boys dying, how can anyone just sit there?" "Probably a lousy draft dodger," a gruff male voice said. The sweeping crescendo, "O say does that Stars-Spangled Banner"-- drowned out most of what was said but the odd word such as ‘Nazi’ came in with "the land of the free"...‘entious objector,’ "and the home of the brave." Everyone sat down and in the hush that followed an elderly lady seated next to me turned in fury to the couple in back, "Can’t you see this young man is horribly maimed?" She grabbed one of my crutches and shook it in their faces. "You have little to do to make remarks about a boy like this who has done so much for us all." She slammed down the crutch on my watch and burst into tears. I sank down as low as I could in my seat as the apologies and recriminations flowed like sticky syrup around my reddened ears. That one I did let pass.
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About the Book
His legs were paralyzed; he could barely walk with the aid of hip length braces and crutches. He hadn't learned to climb stairs, yet, and hard times prevented them from having a family car. But against all the odds, Robert and his mother worked it out. Growing up between two World Wars in the midst of a depression, Robert Huse fought a very private, little war of his own against the great crippler known in those days as Infantile Paralysis. At the age of eight, Robert entered the third grade. His mother pushed him to school in his wheelchair. Mr. Hunt, the school janitor, carried him into the building, and up to the second floor. It's all done with such loving fun, the reader is allowed to share in Robert's little secret of how his admiring schoolmates even paid for the privilege of carrying his crutches up the stairs. As told by the author, this is a book about Getting There, and how a devoted mother and a caring, sharing family and a good friend helped Robert "get" to school, "get" to his first date, "get" to his first job – in other words, get a life. The stories in this book will fill you with anger and joy, tears and laughter, and it will change forever the way you feel about the word handicapped.
About the Author
In the spring of 1945 at age twenty, Bob Huse began his first day in radio. "It was an exciting, busy day," Bob recalls. "I hit the ground running, metaphorically speaking, of course, and I didn't have time to worry about being nervous, or wonder how I was doing." For almost three decades he would cover many assignments in broadcasting: news, public service, talk shows and interviews. But his first love would always be music. Wherever he worked, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York or New Jersey, his schedule usually included a record show. "I saw a lot of changes in music, and I played it all from, classical to rock n' roll." But whatever he played, his roots were always firmly planted in the fertile ground of "The Big Band Era." "I started out when most of the greats still walked among us, Tommy Dorsey, Duke Ellington, Count Basie. I interviewed and got to know most of them. The last was Gene Krupa in 1969." Bob's retired now and lives in Chestnut Hill near Boston where he collects and occasionally writes about records from the 20s, 30s and 40s. "It's great music from a golden age, always fresh and innovative. I never tire of hearing it, and remembering the men and women who made it."