Mayo Clinic Film of Special Interest
Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN
This week, Mayo Clinic celebrates Heritage Days. This year, one of the key activities is of special interest as it involves David Hugh Jones. (Yes, he’s of Welsh descent!)
David’s mother, Mary, was a first cousin of Adell Jones, plus of my father, Red Bill, Henry Hughes, etc. David and I are, therefore, second cousins. We’re very close to the same age so spent a fair amount of time together at Westminster Presbyterian Church as well as discussing the latest cars (his dad bought a new 1949 Ford, as I recall), discussing the Iowa/Minnesota football game, and zooming along the Bristol Center road on his Harley. The Joneses lived a couple of miles south of the Bristol Store.
Each year, Mayo Clinic prepares a special film, either a documentary or dramatization, of some aspect of their history. This year, it’s a film dramatization of the life of a young Rochester-area man who had polio in 1948 and lived 16 years in an iron lung.
David worked for and with this man and is portrayed in the film.
Polio in Lime Springs
I’d be surprised if every reader of this doesn’t remember the polio epidemic of the late forties. It was especially cruel to one Lime Springs family, the Don and Irlene Bowers family. It took the lives of their two young daughters and crippled Sharron, a daughter my age.
Sharron—whose father was a hero of mine because he was a pilot—went to school and married. Sadly, she passed away at a relatively early age due to her bout with polio.
Clarence “Butch” Austin, my cousin, had polio. Although it affected his body, he has been able to lead a near-normal life in spite of the horrible disease.
Those of us who did not get it were deathly afraid that we would. As I recall, swimming pools were closed and people tried not to be in groups or out in public more than necessary. I suspect the cause and means of transmission were not clearly understood or even known at that time, so everyone just withdrew, trying to escape.
David’s Story
David Hugh (we always called him “David Hugh,” no doubt to differentiate him from all the other David Joneses, although I personally never knew any of them) also contracted polio and spent time in Rochester, both as an inpatient and as an outpatient, as I recall.
Spending time there as a patient made him familiar with the medical system and he went to work there. I’m not sure exactly who his employer was but he worked with or for Dave Madden, a polio patient in an iron lung. He master-minded a business of renting TV sets to patients. As I recall, David was the “delivery boy” for the rented TV sets.
The David Hugh Jones Family
David progressed and became employed by Mayo Clinic. For them, he operated the heart/lung bypass machine for decades and retired about ten years ago.
Mayo Clinic became a family affair for David: his wife, Elaine, worked in records; son Rick is a orthopedic surgical technician (my words, not necessarily what he’d say he did); daughter Tami is an imagining technician.
Mayo Clinic Heritage Days: This Year’s Film
Main entrance to Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN.
The headliner for this year’s Heritage Days is a film of the dramatization of Dave Madden, called “A Cheerful Heart: The Dave Madden Story.” David Hugh is portrayed in the film.
This week there are many Heritage Day activities in Rochester, including several showings of the film in the Gonda Building. Other Mayo Clinic facilities in the area may also be showing it. If you work at one or are near one, check with the office for times.