SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL:
It's bound to have had a huge impact.
I mean, my mother was confronted with the following situation. Her husband was in Europe fighting the Germans. She was — moved to be with her sister in a rural community in Alabama. And there was a big polio epidemic, I subsequently found out, in 1944. And I was one of them.
And it hits you like the flu, and then, when the flu went away, you could have all different kinds of outcomes, from dying to complete recovery. Happily enough, we were one hour's drive from Warm Springs, where President Roosevelt had set up the polio treatment center.
My mother took me over there. They trained her how to do a physical therapy regimen and said, do it four times a day. The hard part was, don't let him start trying to walk.
And can you imagine dealing with a 2-year-old and subsequently a 3-year-old, keeping him off his feet? My first memory in life was the last visit to Warm Springs, where they told my mother I was going to be OK, I wouldn't have to wear a brace, and I would have a normal childhood.
So, I think it was a — it had to have been an early lesson that tenacity and hard work and sticking to it that I learned from my mother, and I have tried — applied that over and over again throughout my life.
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