10/25/2026
Sharing from Rotary Awareness
WORLD POLIO DAY — REMEMBERING BOBBY
An excerpt adapted from my forthcoming memoir, Boy in a Box... finished today.
I was a little boy when polio entered my life. I remember being rolled in a wheelchair through two enormous double doors of the hospital. My mother had taken me there with no explanation. They pulled me from the car, and I reached for her calling "Mommy!" She rolled up her car window and sped away, leaving me in a frightening world of white uniforms, steel beds, strange smells, and children crying in the night.
That was where I met Bobby. He had wispy blond hair, bright blue eyes, and only one arm he could use. He called across the room to me, "Hey you, boy! You're my new roommate. My name's Bobby. What's yours? Boy, don't worry I'm afraid too." And just like that, we became friends.
At night, lying in our separate hospital beds, we whispered about all the things little boys dream of...places we would go, what we would become. We giggled about all the wonderful things, we knew were waiting for us outside those hospital walls.
Bobby's parents always brought him presents. His dad gave him a baseball, Bobby cherished." When I get better I'm going to be a baseball player!" he would laugh. One afternoon his parents appeared with a chess set. We weren't really interested in chess, but we loved the horses. We invented a game, racing those little wooden horses across our beds, imagining they could carry us anywhere In the world. Late at night, Bobby dropped his horse on the floor. He couldn't reach it, and no nurse answered our calls. He began to cry. Somehow, despite the terrible pain in my legs, I pulled myself out of bed and crawled across the floor to retrieve it. I handed Bobby his horse, then crawled back. I was too weak to climb into bed and fell asleep on the floor. We were just two little boys trying to take care of each other.
As I grew stronger, I was given a little red tricycle, and began riding my bike exploring the hospital corridors. One day I returned to our room and found Bobby's bed empty. The nurse told me he had gone home. He hadn't.
Weeks later, exploring on my tricycle, I slipped into the elevator and pushed a red button, discovering another floor. I was in a vast room, filled with a hundred enormous silver cylinders. I saw rows of children, with only their heads visible. They were in iron lungs.
There, at the end of the last row, was Bobby. I visited him secretly whenever I could. Most of the time his eyes were closed. On my last visit, I reached out and touched his face. He opened his eyes, looked at me, and a tear rolled down his cheek. Even as a child, I knew what hopelessness looked like.
Not long afterward, Bobby's parents came to visit me. His mother looks like she had been crying. She told me Bobby was home, with his Saviour now. I was too young to understand what she meant. Then his father placed Bobby's baseball in my hands.
"He wanted you to have it." Bobby never got to play baseball with his father. He never got to grow up and discover the wonderful world we whispered about in the darkness. I did. I survived polio. I still remember the little blond boy and the wooden horses that could take us anywhere.
On World Polio Day, I remember Bobby and all the children whose lives were stolen by disease.
We have the power to end polio. Let us finish the job, so that no parent ever has to lose a Bobby again. The Rotary Club created World Polio Day in honor of Jonas Salk, and to celebrate the global efforts made in the eradication of polio. Rotary International has successfully inoculated billions of children through it's Polio Plus campaign. I am honored to join them in this quest.
Sean Kahlil
Polio survivor | Rotary IMPACT Orlando Ambassador
:http://polio.Now
