A Solid Foundation

Lee Seitz, neatly dressed in a blue outfit, sits physically fragile and mostly paralyzed in her wheelchair at a luncheon of the Polio Survivors Foundation.

A man sitting next to her must help the 70-year-old woman lift a spoon to her mouth--the sort of assistance she has needed since she was 24--as the other polio survivors at the gathering speak admiringly about all Seitz has done for them, such as raising funds to buy the wheelchairs they use.

“She started this organization and she’s still going strong,” says Dave Mitchell, 68, a Granada Hills resident.

About three dozen people--polio survivors and others--gathered Thursday at the foundation’s inconspicuous Sherman Way office to celebrate its 20th anniversary.

The foundation was established by Seitz and four other polio survivors--now dead--to provide wheelchairs, crutches and other assistance to local victims of post-polio syndrome, which strikes years after the initial attack. It surfaced in large numbers around the country in the 1970s.

Seitz, who for decades has cruised the streets of Reseda in her motorized wheelchair, still runs the simple office, answering the phone using a special breath-operated mechanism.

“This is my office on wheels,” she says with a giggle, as she maneuvers the wheelchair around the room, using her left toe. A basket in front of her is full of notes and other paperwork.

The worldwide polio epidemic hit the United States hardest in the 1940s and 1950s. At first scientists were unaware of how the virus spread, migrating through the body looking for its target, the central nervous system.

Each summer, terrified American parents pulled children out of public swimming pools and school playgrounds for fear they would catch the disease, which killed some victims and deprived many others of the use of their limbs or the ability to breathe unaided.

For Seitz, the day in 1951 when life changed was at first ordinary. At work at a Reseda restaurant, a terrible headache struck the young wife and mother of a 3-year-old named Diana.

Hours later she was quarantined with other Los Angeles-area victims at General Hospital. All were placed in iron lungs to help them breathe.

Seitz, whose case was severe, spent two years in the hospital.

A vaccine was discovered in 1955, curtailing further outbreaks, and many victims began to recover. Seitz, however, was left paralyzed.

The disease began to take an emotional toll on her family. She had to hire help to raise her daughter, and in 1958, she was divorced from her husband, a gas station manager.

But the union of mother and daughter remained strong.

“When she got to be 11,” Seitz remembers, “we had such bad luck with [hired help] she said, ‘Mom, I can put you to bed at night. Let’s live alone.’ ”

Two decades after the vaccine was discovered, post-polio syndrome began weakening or paralyzing many victims who had lived active lives for years and believed they had been cured. The burden to aid them fell on individual families and rare private organizations because government and other agencies had scaled back on time and money to fight the disease, which was widely regarded as a scourge of the past.

Seitz had met four other polio survivors--Delores Seay, Josiphine Winkler, Nathlee Nelson and Floyd Chonfelder--at meetings at Rancho Los Amigos Hospital. They founded the Reseda foundation in 1978.

They worked mostly out of their homes until they rented the office. The other founders, debilitated by lingering effects of polio, died years ago, Seitz said.

Today, the foundation runs on a $70,000 budget that comes from donations by community groups, hospitals and other organizations.

The volunteers who do the paperwork for Seitz often are other polio survivors who are beneficiaries of the foundation. Seitz chases donors on the telephone, requesting spare wheelchairs or hospital beds.

Over the years the foundation has also provided specially equipped motor vehicles to some survivors.

“I consider myself very lucky,” said Mitchell, who worked for AT&T; for 30 years until chronic pain forced him to retire. “My wheelchair came from this organization. If something goes wrong, I call Lee.”

The foundation, which holds meetings on a regular basis, also functions as a support group and assists with many activities, such as trips to museums or the beach. Members discuss the initial diagnosis and symptoms that reemerged after decades.

“I recall waking up to go to the first grade and I couldn’t stand up,” said Joanne Corter, 50, who was stricken at age 6 in Maryland. Children called her “one-arm” because she was paralyzed. She recovered, married and worked as a graphic artist until she developed severe pain again in her shoulder around 1980.

As a Milwaukee teenager, Shirlee Pershitz had to wear a leg brace. She was able to leave it behind and lived a healthy life until she developed extreme fatigue a decade ago.

“I never thought it was polio,” said the 70-year-old from Burbank.

Seitz said her organization often gets calls from post-polio syndrome victims from other states, and, now, many immigrants who have recently arrived.

The disease was officially declared eradicated from Western industrialized countries in 1992, but Seitz figures post-polio victims will be around for years to come.

“As long as polio survivors call us, we’re going to keep providing,” she said. “We have never turned anyone away.”

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Polio

How the disease affects the body

1. Polio viruses, present in the feces of infected people, are spread indirectly, or directly via fingers, to food that infects others, or through the air. The virus enters through the nose or mouth and is carried to the intestines.

2. Either by traveling along the nerve fibers or through the blood, virus reaches the central nervous system.

3. Virus enters a nerve cell and rapidly multiples, damaging or killing the cell.

4. Paralysis occurs when multiple cells are destroyed.

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Spinal poliomyelitis: most common form of polio. Virus attacks nerve cells that control muscles in the legs, arms, trunk, diaphragm, abdomen and pelvis.

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Bulbar paralysis: most serious form of polio. Brain stem nerve cells that control the muscles for swallowing and facial movement are damaged. Nerves that control body fluids and breathing may be affected.

Sources: World Book, American Medical Assn., Encyclopedia of Medicine.