Vaccinated seniors navigate life in mostly unvaccinated rural America

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Marge Loennig, 87, says her hometown of Baker City, Ore. has become divided during the Covid-19 pandemic, a far different time than during the polio crisis when she was younger.





Kirk Siegler/NPR



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Mary Miller of Baker City, Ore. recently got her 1964 polio vaccination card from her 91 year old mother who had saved it.





Kirk Siegler/NPR



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Kirk Siegler/NPR




Mary Miller of Baker City, Ore. recently got her 1964 polio vaccination card from her 91 year old mother who had saved it.


Kirk Siegler/NPR

At 64, Miller is eager to get a booster shot. She recently began to travel again, including a visit back home to see her 91 year-old mother in North Carolina after missing her planned milestone birthday last year.

Fellow regular Randy Tracy and his wife Joanie are also traveling again, some, though they still take the same precautions they did before they were vaccinated. They seek out accommodations with keypad remote entry and have only flown once since being vaccinated.

«I would like to get back to life all together but I think we’re still in a process of waiting this out,» Joanie says.

She’s waiting to return to volunteering at a local nursery until she’s gotten her planned Moderna booster. Her husband Randy, a 72 year old Marine Veteran, sees today as a very different time than polio, when the country had gone through a Depression and World War II. Back then, he says, it felt like there was a greater sense of helping your neighbor.

«It wasn’t necessarily about God and country and patriotism, it was you didn’t want to let the guy standing next to you down,» Tracy says.