Emerging out of ancient Alexandria’s cauldron of brilliant minds was the luminescent teacher, mathematician, and astronomer Hypatia (355-415 CE). Like many of her Alexandrian predecessors, Hypatia was also a philosopher, a Greek word meaning, “lover of wisdom.” Her brutal death at the hands of the Archbishop of Alexandria is legendary, but it is the breadth and depth of her inquiring mind that endures and inspires through time.
Ancestor Olive
My maternal aunt Olive was a Polio survivor. Born in 1912 in Nebraska, she was stricken young, at age four.
It wasn’t until 34 years later in 1950 that Jonas Salk developed a Polio vaccine. Before that time there was little available to halt the progression. The majority of people who got the disease remained asymptomatic or recovered within a few weeks. In about 1% of those afflicted, the virus entered the central nervous system and an even smaller percentage of those ended up with paralysis.