{"id":1881,"date":"2019-10-12T06:22:15","date_gmt":"2019-10-12T06:22:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.morgan-nj.org\/blog\/?page_id=1881"},"modified":"2020-07-02T06:13:25","modified_gmt":"2020-07-02T06:13:25","slug":"morgan-memorial-tragedy-in-kindergarten","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.morgan-nj.org\/blog\/sample-page\/morgans-people-places\/people\/morgan-memorial-tragedy-in-kindergarten\/","title":{"rendered":"Morgan Memorial \u2013 Tragedy in Kindergarten"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Concerns in the US in the early 21st<\/sup> century\nregarding the health and safety of elementary school children seem mostly to be\nabout the possibility of someone entering a school with an automatic weapon rather\nthan potentially lethal childhood diseases. \nVaccinations, which some portion of parents seem to not believe in, have\nwiped out a great number of diseases since World War II.  So much progress has been made in this area that\nthe terror and fear parents used to live with about the possibility of losing\ntheir child to one of these major diseases has essentially been forgotten.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just a few weeks after Jesse Selover School, the only school\nin Morgan, opened in September 1954, a tragedy occurred to a five-year-old girl\nwho was a student in the afternoon kindergarten class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the 1960s in Morgan, I recall a great number of public service\nannouncements on TV about Rubella (aka, German Measles) and how it was critical\nthat a pregnant woman not be exposed to it. \nMrs. Jessen across the street was pregnant during this time and I was\nconcerned for her (child turned out fine) but I don\u2019t ever recall hearing anything\nabout polio.  President Roosevelt came\ndown with polio in the summer of 1921 at the age of 39 and lost his ability to\nwalk without very painful aids.  This condition\ndidn\u2019t stop him from being the only US president elected to four terms but in\nthose days, his condition was hidden from the pubic even while it was in full\nview.  Until the early 1950\u2019s, there were\nabsolutely no treatments for or protections against anyone, especially a child,\nacquiring polio in any of its forms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I once worked with a man who was born in the late 1940s who had to walk using two canes.\u00a0 Eventually he indicated that he had had polio while as a child.\u00a0 Up to about the mid-1950s, many children around the world acquired another form of polio which would impact their ability to breathe. Images of young children, in what were called iron lung machines, were often presented in the media.\u00a0 An iron lung is a cylindrical container a person lies down in which, via the process of lowering and raising the atmospheric pressure inside the cylinder, would automatically perform breathing for the often-young child who had to be inside it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fortunately for all of us, treatments to prevent polio were developed in the early 1950s.  According to the Center for Disease Control<\/a>, before these miraculous vaccines were developed, there were about 15,000 polio outbreaks each year in the US.  Sadly, for a little girl in Morgan who lived on South Pine Avenue and whose first and middle names were Kathleen Enid, she was one of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the New Brunswick Daily Home News newspaper, Kathleen\nhad gone to her afternoon kindergarten class at Jesse Selover School on Monday,\n11 October 1954.  The next day, Columbus Day,\nwas a school holiday and was the day Kathleen became ill. She was taken to\nPerth Amboy Hospital (now Raritan Bay Medical Center) for examination.  Because of the polio diagnosis, the\nSayreville Emergency Squad transported her to Monmouth Memorial Hospital, Long\nBranch, NJ (now Monmouth Medical Center) where she was placed in a\nrespirator.  Moving hospitals at that\ntime was necessary according to the spokesperson for the county chapter of the\nFoundation for Infantile Paralysis as county hospitals no longer had the facilities\nto accommodate polio patients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometime during the evening of Wednesday, 13 October \u2013 one day after becoming ill, Kathleen died of Bulbar Polio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Bulbar Polio form of the poliovirus invades and destroys nerves within the bulbar region of the brain stem which is the area controlling the body\u2019s involuntary functions such as, most importantly, breathing and heart beating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The School Reacts<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Jesse
Early photo of Jesse Selover School in Morgan, NJ. The kindergarten classroom is on the far right.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

On Friday, 15 October, private funeral services were held at\nnearby Mason Funeral Home on Bordentown Avenue in South Amboy. Kathleen was then\ninterned at Christ Church Cemetery in Morgan, a quarter of a mile away from her\nhouse on South Pine Avenue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On that Wednesday, Selover School principal Mr. Vincent\nAbbatiello learned of Kathleen\u2019s illness, which was confirmed by the school physician\nDr. R. H. Barnhardt. In response to this medical emergency, Sayreville\u2019s\nSuperintendent of Schools, Dr. Richard S. Pollack, was rushed to New York City at\n3:30 that afternoon by Sayreville Police Department patrolman Chester O\u2019Such to\nobtain a sufficient supply of gamma globulin serum for inoculations.  At this time, gamma globulin serum was the only\npreventative measure available against polio as the more well-known polio virus\nvaccine developed by Dr. Jonas Salk would not be announced to the world until six\nmonths to the day after Kathleen became ill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The afternoon kindergarten class was kept at school until\narrangements could be made to acquire the serum.  They were given notices to give to their\nparents announcing that the serum would be ready by that evening. They were\ntold, in those days before TV and the internet was everywhere, that the Sayreville\nEmergency Squad would drive their disaster truck around Morgan announcing the\narrival of the serum via the truck\u2019s loudspeaker.  These were also the days before cell\nphones.  While driving back to Morgan\nwith the serum, Patrolman O\u2019Such radioed to the Emergency Squad who were standing\nready at the school, that they were near the borough.  They arrived by 6:10 pm.  Within an hour of their arrival, 42 people composed\nof children, parents, and school adults received the innoculations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are some stories still in circulation in the Morgan area,\nwhich cannot be confirmed unless someone who was there confirms them, that the\nschool also tore down and burned walls and disposed of any soft materials such\nas books, paper and the mats used for naps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was not indicated, and perhaps was never known, how Kathleen had contracted the polio virus. According to the CDC web site<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Poliovirus only infects humans. It is very contagious\nand spreads through person-to-person contact. The virus lives in an infected\nperson\u2019s throat and intestines. It enters the body through the mouth and\nspreads through contact with the feces (poop) of an infected person and, though\nless common, through droplets from a sneeze or cough. You can get infected with\npoliovirus if you have feces on your hands and you touch your mouth. Also, you\ncan get infected if you put in your mouth objects like toys that are contaminated\nwith feces (poop).<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

An infected person may spread the virus to others\nimmediately before and about 1 to 2 weeks after symptoms appear. The virus can\nlive in an infected person\u2019s feces for many weeks. It can contaminate food and\nwater in unsanitary conditions.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

People who don\u2019t have symptoms can still pass the\nvirus to others and make them sick.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kathleen was the first person in Sayreville to contract polio that season and the second person in Middlesex County to die from polio that year.  She got sick 65 years prior to the day this was posted.  I\u2019m sure the family never got over their grieving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanks to Dorothy Scuorzo and Joyce Elyea for providing\nnewspaper clippings of this tragedy. \nDorothy\u2019s mother, Hazel, was the first president of the Selover School\nParent Teacher Organization and had copies of some articles about Kathleen.  She also had a lot of other information about\nthe early days and opening of Selover School which will be posted on this web\nsite. Joyce is, of course, the indefatigable researcher for all things Morgan\nand South Amboy and a major contributor to this web site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Originally posted on October\n12, 2019.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Concerns in the US in the early 21st century regarding the health and safety of elementary school children seem mostly to be about the possibility of someone entering a school with an automatic weapon rather than potentially lethal childhood diseases.  Vaccinations, which some portion of parents seem to not believe in, have wiped out a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":975,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"page-templates\/full-width.php","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1881","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.morgan-nj.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.morgan-nj.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.morgan-nj.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.morgan-nj.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.morgan-nj.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1881"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.morgan-nj.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1881\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1891,"href":"https:\/\/www.morgan-nj.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1881\/revisions\/1891"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.morgan-nj.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.morgan-nj.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}