Inside the Indiana Medical History Museum, Danielle Thomas created an exhibit about her grandfather.
“Polio has fallen out of common memory,” said Thomas, 31. “I wanted to show people what this looked like in a child at that time.”
In one black-and-white photo, a group of boys sat in wheelchairs on the steps of Riley Children’s Hospital. The one on the left was Robert Ailor, Thomas’s grandfather. In the summer of 1945, when he was 5 years old, Ailor contracted polio.
The infectious disease, which attacks the nervous system, killed and disabled hundreds of thousands of people across the country until a vaccine was invented in 1955. But for Ailor, it was too late; there is no cure for the condition, which left him forever paralyzed from the waist down.
As our city and country mark America’s 250th birthday, Mirror Indy visited the museum on the near west side of Indianapolis to see the history of the disease firsthand.
If you go
Indiana Medical History Museum
🗓️ Open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday
📍 3270 Kirkbride Way
🎟️ $10 for adults; $9 for seniors; $7 for college students; $5 for kids under 18 years old
Ailor’s photos were displayed next to a leg brace and polio vaccine vial from Eli Lilly and Co. Throughout the building, which is on the grounds of the former Central State Hospital, exhibits showcased past eras of epidemics that swept through Indianapolis.
“It’s strange how we live through these things and then there’s this collective forgetting,” said Sarah Halter, the medical history museum’s executive director. “Until the next one comes up.”
One room contained several jars with brains inside. They belonged to local patients with syphilis, who experienced severe psychosis from the late stages of the sexually transmitted infection. Another lab was used to study bacteria. Here, doctors tried to understand the origin of diseases and how to fight them. And in the autopsy room, an iron lung sat in the corner.
Alior, who died in 2021, never had to use the device. But other children with polio did. The disease could make it difficult to breathe; the machine created a vacuum by removing the air inside and forcing a patient’s chest to expand and open their lungs.
Child vaccination rates fall in Marion County
Today, iron lungs are artifacts, not a common treatment option. Polio was declared to be eliminated in the United States in 1979. But the disease reared its head again in 2022, when an unvaccinated man in New York contracted it.
Similarly, measles, which has long been eliminated nationwide, has caused outbreaks in 46 states and the District of Columbia this year. Indiana reported two cases in Parke County in western Indiana in August. Health authorities are worried about ongoing transmission, especially when the area will host the state’s largest festival in October.
The return of these diseases, health experts say, is the result of falling vaccination rates — especially among children. In Marion County, state data shows only 82% of kindergarteners met immunization requirements for the 2025-2026 academic year.
To prevent the spread of disease, a community generally needs a 95% vaccination rate. In Indianapolis, the most recent classes of kindergarteners, first graders, seventh graders and high school seniors were below that rate for the shot that protects against measles, mumps and rubella.
“In a way, vaccines are a victim of their own success,” said Sara Dillard, the communications director for the Indiana Immunization Coalition, a nonprofit working to increase vaccination rates across the state. “Now you have people who have never seen what polio does. You have young doctors who have to learn about measles.”
The lower vaccination rates in Indiana, Dillard said, are often due to two things: a lack of access to healthcare and vaccine hesitancy driven by misinformation. The COVID-19 pandemic, which killed at least 22,000 Hoosiers, also contributed to growing anti-vaccine sentiment.
“We can have vaccines but unless we’re actually getting shots in arms, they’re not doing anything,” Dillard said. “When the guidance families have relied on for decades changes, it creates uncertainty.”
Under the second Trump administration, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has scaled back federal vaccine recommendations. As the leader of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Kennedy has used his platform to push false claims about immunizations, including that they cause autism.
Many doctors in Indianapolis recommend that families continue the previous vaccine schedule, which includes getting shots for hepatitis A, hepatitis B, rotavirus, flu, meningitis, COVID-19 and respiratory syncytial virus.
Halter, the executive director at the Indiana Medical History Museum, said people have been against vaccines long before today. She noted that when vaccines were first invented, doctors couldn’t explain exactly how they worked. The new technology made people afraid.
“Now, it’s not just that they don’t understand it,” Halter said. “It’s become politicized.”
‘Unless you want your kid to end up like me’
Thomas remembers her family’s history with polio every time she heads to work. She’s a manager at the state medical history museum.
But before that, she was a granddaughter who loved to bake for her grandfather. Ailor would often request fruits as the main ingredient — he loved apple crisps and banana pudding. Sometimes, when he was well enough, the two would go fishing.
Thomas remembers her grandfather wearing the same thing every day: a white T-shirt, blue jeans and black cowboy boots. As he got older, Ailor only needed one brace for his left leg. He had one of his cowboy boots modified with hooks so the brace could latch on easily.
Thomas knows what her grandfather would tell families who choose to be unvaccinated today: “Unless you want your kid to end up like me, take another look at it.”
Mirror Indy, a nonprofit newsroom, is funded through grants and donations from individuals, foundations and organizations. Sign up for our free newsletters.
Mirror Indy reporter Mary Claire Molloy covers health. Reach her at 317-721-7648 or email maryclaire.molloy@mirrorindy.org. Follow her on X @mcmolloy7.
This story, and ArcFest 2026 — a festival centered around democracy, justice and freedom of expression — are presented as part of a national effort by local newsrooms to reflect on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
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