WASHINGTON – Mitch McConnell’s earliest childhood memory is the day he left the polio treatment center at Warm Springs, Ga., for the last time.
He was just a toddler in 1944, when his father was deployed to World War II, his mother relocated the family to her sister’s home in rural Alabama and he came down with flu-like symptoms.
While he eventually recovered, his left leg did not. It was paralyzed. Two long years later, after shuttling young McConnell to and from the center where then-President Franklin Roosevelt received polio care, his mother was told that day that her young son would be able walk into his life without a leg brace.