When David Wasser first found the rare images of President Franklin Roosevelt crippled by polio and the old March of Dimes public service announcements featuring Lucille Ball and other famous actors, he knew he had uncovered some visual gems.

Some of the black and white film hadn't been seen in decades, he said.

Shortly thereafter, the Catonsville resident decided use the material to lengthen the piece on polio he was creating for Retirement Living TV's "Healthline" cable program into a longer documentary.

The extra material was "just too good to pass up," said Wasser, the program's executive producer.

That documentary, "Healthline Presents: Polio Revisited," won Wasser and co-producer Alissa Collins Latenser a local Emmy Award in the historical documentary category June 6.

It was the first Emmy for Wasser, who had been nominated for the award twice before, he said.

"It is nice to have that level of validation," he said.

"I waited a long time, so I'm thrilled," said Wasser, who worked as a photographer, videographer and producer for television stations across the country before moving to Washington as a independent producer in 1997.

A 1986 mass communications graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Wasser joined Retirement Living TV in 2006.

He was vice president of production for Medstar Television in Allentown from 1999 to 2004 then spent a few years as an independent producer.

He now lives on Clifden Road with his wife, Ann, and 4-year-old son, Evan.

The documentary he worked on with Latenser, a Washington resident, also received an award from the Association of Health Care Journalists in March.

Among the its highlights is an interview with the last surviving person in the United States using an "iron lung" -- a chamber-like respirator that encloses a person's body up to the neck that was often used for polio patients who had lost the ability to breathe on their own.

"We were able to show stuff that just hadn't been seen before, even by people with polio," Wasser said.

There is also an interview with the last surviving member of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine team that developed the first effective polio vaccine in 1955 under Dr. Jonas Salk.

The documentary also featured "key interviews" with other people who had the condition, Wasser said.

While polio has been virtually eradicated in the Western world, the disease still exists in endemic form in a few developing countries.

Increases in the number of American children who are not vaccinated against the disease has brought renewed attention to it in this country.

Part of the purpose of the documentary was a "call to action," Wasser said.

"In order to share the importance of the vaccination message, you just have to revisit how bad (polio) looks," he said.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, more than a million children in the United States today are not vaccinated against the disease.

That is sometimes due to a lack of understanding among their parents for how devastating the disease was, and could still be, Wasser said.

"We thought that maybe mom and dad don't know to get their kids vaccinated, but certainly grandma and grandpa know, and maybe they can be the clarion call," Wasser said.

He said he and Latenser came to the idea of creating a show on polio for that reason, and for another reason much more relevant to Retirement Living TV's viewers.

Some members of the program's senior constituency who had the disease years ago are now facing what is increasingly being understood as "postpolio syndrome" -- which arises as new muscle pain and exacerbation of existing weakness in people who had battled polio decades prior, according to the CDC.

Polio is a highly-contagious viral disease that, in its worst, paralytic form causes muscle paralysis and death.

It swept through the country in the first half of the 20th century before the creation of two vaccines in 1955 and 1961 virtually eradicated it in the Western world.

The disease mainly affects children under age 5. Although fewer than one percent of all polio infections are paralytic, there were more than 21,000 paralytic cases reported at the disease's peak in the United States in 1952, according to the CDC.

The last naturally occurring, or "wild," case of polio in the United States was in 1979.

Global eradication of the disease could come within the next decade, according to the CDC.

The documentary still airs on Retirement Living TV from time to time, Wasser said.

Its next scheduled showing is July 17 at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. (Comcast Cable Channel 175 and Verizon FiOS Channel 245).

The senior-geared channel, whose offices are based at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County's Research and Technology Park, also won four other local Emmy Awards, including one for the documentary's host, Dr. Kevin Soden.

The channel's founder and executive chairman is John Erickson, who founded Erickson Retirement Communities in Catonsville in 1983 with the opening of Charlestown on Maiden Choice Lane.

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user comments (3)

user martles says...

This is really important topic because we should never forget what this disease is capable of even though we no longer see it directly in front of us. Hopefully one day we will have as good a story to tell about cancer. Very interesting. L

Posted 5:18 PM, 06.29.09

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user says...

I've got my TiVo set for July 17th. I wish I could see the show sooner - and more often on RLTV. Thank you for letting me know about this important documentary created by my Catonsville neighbor!

Posted 5:35 PM, 06.29.09

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user joanne1942 says...

I was 13 years old in 1955, when Dr. Sulk's vaccine was first introduced. Wisconsin had more than 2500 cases of polio that year. Our parents wouldn't allow us to attend the county fair and other crowded activities. We were terrified, as our young minds imagined life in an iron lung. I hope Retirement Living TV will find a broader distribution for Polio Revisited. Young parents need to know how to avoid the terror of this disease.

Posted 8:18 PM, 06.29.09

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