It wasn’t so very long ago when I was in the 5th grade and it was “shot time.” The teacher told us that the County Health Nurse, Happy Eden would be in our class, giving each every one of us a health check up and bring us up to date on our shots. All of us.

When the appointed day arrived I was always happy about it. It meant disruption in school. Not once did I think that “this shot is some sort of cruel trick, a hoax by the government, or a means promoted by the vaccine makers to sell more vaccines.” No, we lined up and took our shots. Our confidence in our health care folk over the years had (and has) wiped out dangerous and painful childhood diseases. The MMR shots put a quick halt to Measles, Mumps and Rubella. Whooping cough? You have to be as old as me to know what that was. A historian to remember Smallpox.

Allow me to relate a story here. When I was 4, one of my neighborhood playmates caught whooping cough. You didn’t have to be a doctor from the Mayo Clinic to know this cough when you heard it. It was summertime, our windows were up (no/ AC in 1939) all summer. and the last thing I heard going to sleep each night was the pitiful “whoop” that identifi ed her painful cough. At least until one morning when I awoke to silence. My little buddy had died that night. There were no shots for that then. No cures were known. She just died.

People died from the flu too and measles killed adults as well as kids. Mumps could be deadly and could cause little boys to grow up sterile. All sorts of those things were part of our health worries not so very long ago. Luckily, we eventually developed shots even for smallpox and Cholera, but if it had not been for the faith and confi dence of most of the parents to see that their kids were protected we never would have eradicated these deadly but common diseases that ravaged our kids. I wonder how many of my peers would be rotting in local cemeteries had they been denied these lifesaving shots by their parents.

Maxie cemetery, just off HW-270 in Lefl ore County Oklahoma contains a long row of headstones marking the resting places of several of my kin. These people all died in the spring of 1918. I never got to know any of them, but I feel like I did. I go down there at least once a year. One time Pat and I bought small new gravestones, and we took a shovel, some water,a little bag of cement and replaced those stones which are no longer legible.

There were no flu shots in 1918. If there had been and if my Grandpa, grandma, Aunts and Uncles could have, they would have for sure taken their shots and had a chance for life after 1918. They knew nothing about how these vaccines were made. No guarantees were given that they even would work, but they would have for sure taken their shots. You can be sure that when the Polio shot appeared my generation hurriedly lined up to get our inoculations. When I served in the Navy for those 4 years, I never questioned Uncle Sam about my many shots. Who can expect to go to war with an army or navy of sick personnel? Never a question. I’m fully vaccinated now and have the knowledge that I have done what I can for myself and family that I can to protect my health. Be ready for school and fall. Be sure and get all your shots! Be sure and be in church next Sunday. Wayne Bullard, DPh

cwaynebullard@gmail.com