Remembering celebrated journalist, vaccine advocate Pam Henry

Along with getting your children's books, supplies and clothes for the upcoming school year, getting a COVID vaccine might even be more important.

Although not required under Oklahoma's state immunization law, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics recommend COVID vaccines for infants and children 6 months and older. But I don't sense parents are rushing to sign up, as many adults are still reluctant to get the original shots and boosters for themselves.

But in the absence of any contraindications, vaccinating one's child against COVID is a smart move for one's personal health, classmates and the community.

My affinity for vaccines started from having roomed my freshman year at the University of Oklahoma with Pam Henry, the last poster child for the 1959 March of Dimes campaign against polio. In Oklahoma, many still remember Pam as one of the early pioneers for women in broadcast news.

Born in 1950 in Ardmore, Pam contracted polio when she was only 14 months old. Four years later in 1955 — too late to benefit Pam — the "dead virus" polio vaccine formulated by Dr. Jonas Salk was approved for use. As a result, thousands were spared from death, paralysis and life in an iron lung.

With her mother, Ruth, Pam traveled the country meeting the president and celebrities as both mother and child pushed support for the vaccine and encouraged Americans to "send in their dimes" to further medical research.

I first met Pam in the late 1960s when both of us were seniors in high school; she hailed from John Marshall in Oklahoma City and I came from Midwest City High School.

We were both members of a teen fashion board (a big deal back then) for Kathryn Lipe's, a beautiful, upscale clothing store for children and teens on NE 23 in Oklahoma City. There was an actual runway for us "models," and I will always remember Pam's participation. Clunky metal braces on both legs, she dragged herself slowly down the runway, crutches banging every step of the way.

As with every other aspect of her life, her struggle that day was accompanied by a smile and confidence. This was at a time when many disabled people were made to feel like they had to hide themselves from view. As an adult later in life, television viewers at home could not appreciate Pam's severely compromised mobility as she sat concealed behind the news desk.

Pam was the bravest, most optimistic person I'd ever met. I asked her if she wanted to be roommates for our freshman year of college, and she said yes.

There at OU, sitting on our twin beds in Walker Tower, we plotted our future as journalists.

Pam enjoyed a 30-plus year career in news, which began in 1971 while she was still an OU student. In Oklahoma City, she was the first woman hired as a news reporter and anchor for KTOK radio, and later moved over to the NBC television affiliate, WKY, now known as KFOR, also becoming that station's first female journalist.

Pam served as news manager for the Oklahoma Educational Television Authority (PBS) for many years, until deteriorating health forced an early retirement in 2002. In her later years, Pam served as chair of the OKC Mayor's Committee on Disability Concerns and was selected for the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame in 2004.

In her early life, with youth on her side, it seemed that she could surmount any obstacle. But as the years passed, it wasn't so, and she later required a motorized wheelchair to get around.

I observed the enormous physical and emotional energy it took for daily living, and on a campus that wasn't as accessible as it is today for those with disabilities. She never asked for any special accommodations.

(I'm sure she regretted this when the elevator would frequently break down and she would have to walk up flights of stairs to get to our dorm room.)

The only thing Pam ever regretted was not being taller, she once told me.

Not surprisingly, polio was an occasional topic of conversation with us through our 50 years of friendship. At one time during the 1970s in Oklahoma, children whose vaccination records were not up to date as required by state law were not allowed to start public school. Hundreds were affected, and it made the national news. Pam and I both — working for local TV news at that time — covered the story.

She couldn't believe so many parents let their children go unvaccinated when it was so readily available.

After my first daughter was born in 1987, I took time off from my D.C. job as a CNN congressional correspondent to personally take her to get her first immunization for polio. Because of Pam, my maternal radar was on high alert. A momentous occasion for us both, getting a baby vaccinated against polio was too important an assignment to be left to my husband or baby-sitter.

The protection against such a horrific disease was conferred to my child, and so tragically unavailable to generations of children before her.

After getting my daughter's vaccine, I called Pam and told her what we had accomplished. I was filled with gratitude for the many scientists who created this miracle.

People occasionally ask me who was the most important or impressive person I interviewed as a journalist. It was Dr. Albert Sabin, a Polish immigrant who attended public schools, and whose research at the University of Cincinnati created the attenuated or reduced, "live" oral polio virus vaccine as an alternative to Salk's injection.

I interviewed him twice in the early '80s while working for CNN in Washington.

(He had been hospitalized for paralysis while researching a nasal spray for measles.)

Because his vaccine was easy to preserve and administer — it didn't require refrigeration — it is generally credited for nearly eradicating polio throughout the world. Reminiscent of COVID-19 issues today, Sabin recognized early on the need for herd immunity and pushed for voluntary, mass immunizations.

Families across the country heeded his call, and Sabin — who believed scientists should work in tandem with public officials — often showed up himself to personally help administer the precious elixir.

No new polio cases were reported in the U.S. for decades, until July when health officials began investigating a case in an unvaccinated man in Rockland County, New York. The virus has since been found in several wastewater locations in that state, and in London. Earlier this year, a 4-year-old unvaccinated child in Jerusalem was diagnosed with the disease.

Pam died in 2018 at age 68, following complications after a surgery. Divorced, she never had children. She once said that maybe her contribution was helping other people's children have healthier lives.

I have no doubt that if she were alive today, she would be leading the charge to urge parents to vaccinate their children against COVID, and to make sure they're up to date on all those other vaccinations — especially, polio — required by the state.

Pam Olson, a Midwest City native, was the first woman to anchor a prime-time television newscast in Oklahoma City.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Remembering celebrated journalist, vaccine advocate Pam Henry