GREAT STORIES
Brother Can You Spare A Dime?
By: Ruthellen S. Rubin, CFRE

In the 1930s, a headache, sore throat or fever sent Americans of all ages into a tailspin. The dreaded polio virus was on a rampage. Although most who contracted the virus had mild symptoms and quickly recovered, 10% were really sick, 1% became paralyzed and some of those people died. In 1938 President Franklin D. Roosevelt one who fell victim to the paralysis of polio, founded the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis with the hopes of finding a cure for the disease.

With the help of the late-great Eddie Cantor, a popular radio announcer of the times, Americans were urged to send their spare dimes to the White House. (Consider the value of a dime during the Great Depression in 1938.) Millions of dimes poured in and $1.8 million was raised in just the first year for research to find a cure for polio. That’s 18 million dimes! I'm not sure exactly how many dimes were collected in the years that followed, but sixteen years later, Jonas Salk discovered the vaccine that eradicated polio in the United States, funded by the March of Dimes.

What made people believe that dimes could cure that dreaded disease?

I guess everyone knew someone who was affected by polio. And, if President Roosevelt could catch it, then no one was immune. Maybe the dimes alleviated our guilt for having been spared. Or maybe the dimes were protection money so we wouldn't catch it. Perhaps it gave citizens an opportunity to belong to a group of givers.

I recall bringing in dimes during my elementary school days. It was easy to do and everyone could afford to participate. To the best of my recollection, it was a feeling somewhat like throwing a penny into a wishing well; I was not going to get anything in return except the chance that a wish would come true. I do believe that polio was eradicated in the United States in the early 1950's because millions of Americans made a wish that polio would disappear and threw their dimes into the wishing well. Who says wishes don't come true?

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