World Book of Records will honour posthumously to Longest Polio Survivor of Iron Lung Paul Richard Alexander
Alexander spent more than eight years writing the book, using a plastic stick and a pen to tap out on a keyboard.
London: World Book of Records announced that longest Polio Survivor Paul Richard Alexander will be honoured posthumously, who was born in January 30, 1946 and died in March 11, 2024, was an American paralytic polio survivor, lawyer and author. He contracted polio in 1952 at the age of six and spent the vast majority of his life in an iron lung for more than 70 years. Alexander earned a bachelor’s degree and Juris Doctor at the University of Texas at Austin, and was admitted to the bar in 1986.
He self-published a memoir in 2020. Alexander self-published his memoir, Three Minutes for a Dog: My Life in an Iron Lung, in April 2020. With the assistance of friend and former nurse Norman D. Brown, Alexander spent more than eight years writing the book, using a plastic stick and a pen to tap out on a keyboard or by dictating the words to his friend. While Alexander spent much of his time in the mechanical respirator – which used pressure to artificially pump air into his lungs – he was not completely confined to it.
He taught himself to breathe by gulping air and forcing it down his throat, allowing him to represent clients in court, travel on a plane and attend disability rights protests. He was born in Dallas to Gus Nicholas Alexander, the child of Greek immigrants, and Doris Marie Emmett, of Lebanese descent. He contracted polio at the age of six and was paralyzed for life, only able to move his head, neck, and mouth. During a major U.S. outbreak of polio in the early 1950s, hundreds of children around Dallas, Texas, including Alexander, were taken to Parkland Hospital.
There, children were treated in a ward of iron lungs. He almost died in the hospital before a doctor noticed he was not breathing and rushed him into an iron lung. He spent eighteen months in the hospital. At discharge, his parents rented a portable generator and a truck to bring him and his iron lung home. Beginning in 1954, with help from the March of Dimes and a physical therapist named Mrs. Sullivan, Alexander taught himself glossopharyngeal breathing, which allowed him to leave the iron lung for gradually increasing periods of time.
Alexander was one of the Dallas Independent School District’s first home schooled students. He learned to memorize instead of taking notes. At the age of twenty-one, he graduated second in his class from W. W. Samuell High School in 1967, becoming the first person to graduate from a Dallas high school without physically attending a class.
