Tuesday, May 02, 2000
Mrs. Sabin helps us find a way
By LAURA PULFER
The Cincinnati Enquirer
WLW's Jim Scott tried to hand over the microphone. No, thanks.
“Mrs. Sabin is a little shy, but she wants everyone to know how appreciative she is,” he told the crowd on the windy little plaza across from Children's Hospital Medical Center. The occasion was Friday's dedication of Albert Sabin Way, formerly Bethesda Avenue.
She really didn't need the microphone. Dr. Sabin's widow already had talked to nearly everybody there. Politicians. Media. Business executives. Doctors. In letters, personal conversations, meetings, Heloisa Sabin had said everything that needed saying. With charm, intelligence and unflinching purpose.
She is the steward of his memory, a tireless archivist and, when she needs to be, a formidable politician.
Maybe we'd have come up with a fitting way to honor the man who developed the oral polio vaccine, the man who saved millions of lives and limbs. Maybe we'd have found a way to notify the world that this miracle came from Cincinnati, Ohio.
Maybe we'd have done the right thing without Mrs. Sabin's assistance and insistance. Maybe. But, given our recent history, it seems unlikely.
There have been other dedications, other ceremonies.
A dusty little park named for him disappeared into the gaping maw of a new Fort Washington Way. Shortly after that, an awkward announcement was made that the naming rights to the Albert B. Sabin Convention Center had been sold to Delta Air Lines. Somebody suggested the “Sabin Convention Center sponsored by Delta Air Lines.”
This was an outrage. The man who did not take out a patent on his most famous discovery, who made not a penny on it, who steadfastly refused to have his name commercialized in any way would not have approved.
Heloisa Sabin knew it.
Something better
I suspect Mrs. Sabin had just about had it with us, with our fumbling civic disregard for her husband's memory. She started working with public officials and Delta Air Lines and, finally, with Children's Hospital to come up with something else.
Something better. Something more suitable. Besides the street, Dr. Sabin's name will be on an education center at Children's Hospital, a tangible symbol of his impact on the institution, of what can happen when research and clinical care and education come together in one place. In one man.
“Excuse me for saying this,” she said at ceremonies last week celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Sabin Polio Vaccine, “but he was a genius. Brilliant.”
The model genius
He was, in fact, the model genius. Headstrong, difficult, impatient, audacious.
U.S. authorities were slow to approve the Sabin vaccine. While they were debating the matter, Dr. Sabin tested his discovery on his two daughters. He provided his vaccine to the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War.
Impolitic. He wanted to save all the world's children,” Mrs. Sabin says. “Albert had a very strong personality.”
Well, yes he did. But the good doctor couldn't always convince people to do his bidding. Not even when he was right. Yet — and perhaps this is simply more evidence of his genius — he left behind a softer voice, one that was brilliantly persuasive.
E-mail Laura Pulfer at lpulfer@enquirer.com or call 768-8393.
PULFER ARCHIVE
