In celebration of World Polio Day, District 7930 hosted “PolioPLUS and its Impact on Covid & Viral Outbreaks” on October 20th from 7-9 pm via Zoom. The featured speakers were Nancy Barbee, Ina Pinkney, and Michael McGovern. This event also set the stage for the return of our Polar Plunge with details forthcoming by DG Terry Curran.
Nancy Barbee is a member of the Rotary Club of Maysville, NC and a Past District Governor of District 7730. Nancy’s first trip to India to see firsthand the work of The Rotary Foundation was in 2001. She had the opportunity to watch a polio corrective surgery and that is where her dream began. In 2010, she led a team of 35 Rotarians from around the world to India for a National Immunization Day (NID). Since then, hundreds of Rotarians have also experienced the opportunity to provide the polio vaccine in India as part of the nine trips Nancy has led to India. Nancy will speak about her work as an international polio volunteer and how PolioPLUS is helping to stamp out other viruses/diseases including COVID.
Ina Pinkney is a polio survivor and will speak about her reflections in the time of the COVID pandemic. A fear of the unknown, the need to maintain an appropriate distance and an urgent desire to find a cure or vaccine are the hallmarks of the coronavirus pandemic. But they were also the hallmarks of the polio epidemic during the first half of the 20th century. Ina Pinkney was a year old when she contracted the disease in Brooklyn, N.Y. "When my parents would take me out ... you could hear everybody get silent and move away, which is very much what it feels like now," says Pinkney, who is 77 now and lives in Chicago, where she ran a successful restaurant for decades. Ina is a Chicago legend known as the "Breakfast Queen" and she fed Chicagoans for 33 years. Not only is she an outstanding chef she is a community leader, a pioneer, a television personality, a columnist at the Chicago Tribune and the subject of an award winning documentary called BREAKFAST AT INA'S. The description that means the most to her is POLIO SURVIVOR and her advocacy for Rotary’s End Polio Now.