When I was a child growing up in Nebraska in the 1940s in a town of 20,000 (third largest town in the state at that time), there was no Fine Arts Council, Community Foundation, or other charitable organizations. For reasons my mother could never understand, both my brother and I had artistic abilities. I gave art lessons to children when I was in high school and majored in Fine Arts at Randolph Macon’s Women’s College in Lynchburg Virginia. After graduation I worked at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, until I got married and moved to Charlottesville.  

~ Mary Henderson

I grew up in Norton Virginia. (Wise County) About 10 to 15 miles from Kentucky down near the tip of southwest Virginia. My interest in supporting nonprofits started when I was in the 4th grade in 1946 or 47, when we had a contest to raise money for the March of Dimes to find a cure or prevention for polio. 

During the summers there were terrible outbreaks of polio myelitis, especially severe in the summer of 1952. Those pictures of dozens of young children in iron lung machines were hard to forget. Our school asked us to solicit donations of at least a dime from friends, neighbors, and other town people. About twice a week we would bring the money to our class, and our name and amount raised were put on the blackboard. I could see that I was near the top of most money raised and made a strong effort to come in first. I contacted more neighbors and those who had not initially given, and collected a total of $14 and some cents. Although this does not seem like a lot of money, it was a lot of effort when you were just getting nickels and dimes. This gave me a sense of a job well done. 

In 6th-8th grades we asked the movie theater manager for brief intermission before the main 7 pm movie. They agreed to do this, announcing that school children were passing containers to benefit the March Of Dimes. Later, between halves in high school basketball games, we used a large blanket held at the corners by four students, with spectators throwing coins onto the blanket to support the cause. 

On April 22, 1955, it was announced that Dr. Jonas Salk and his group of researchers at the University of Pittsburgh had developed an effective polio vaccine that had been tested on more than two million school-aged children over four years. By 1979, polio had been eliminated from the United States. 

Although my friends and I had a minor part in this miracle, we put in a strong effort and thought we had done something worthwhile for the state of Virginia, United States, and the world. 

NOTE: I apologize for any errors, but it has been 70 years since this occurred. I still remember those COLD days going door to door asking for donations! 

~ Charles Henry Henderson, MD