National Perspective: Vaccine skeptics might walk a mile in polio sufferers’ shoes

If you want to understand the impact of polio — if you want to comprehend the heartbreak polio victims feel about the return of infantile paralysis — if you want to sense the bewilderment that polio victims feel about vaccine skepticism — then walk a mile in Stacy Smith's shoes.

That mile-long walk is going to take a while. And the shoes? They're Dr. Comfort orthopedic shoes, big enough to accommodate the braces on both his legs that extend from his upper thighs through the bases of his feet. Walk a mile in those shoes and ask Smith, who for more than three dozen years was a beloved anchorman on Pittsburgh's KDKA television station, to tell you how at age 6 months, virtually every inch of his body except his eyes was paralyzed. How he had 13 surgeries, spending months away from his parents and brothers in another city, and only learned to walk at age 4.