Born in Shawnee, Okla., Lillard’s family celebrated her birthday at the Joyland amusement park in Kansas. It was June 17, 1953, and the next day she woke up with a sore throat and neck pain. She spent the next 6 months in a hospital: she had contracted polio, which mostly hit children. There was about a 1 in 200 chance that she would suffer from paralyzed muscles; most affected were legs and diaphragm, the latter meaning it would be difficult or impossible to breathe unaided. Martha had great difficulty breathing, and received the best treatment available at the time: she was placed in a negative pressure ventilator, popularly called the “iron lung.”
What about a vaccine? They didn’t exist at the time, and parents were terrified that their children would get the disease before the vaccine was available. “If my mother would have had the opportunity to give me the vaccine, she would have done that,” Lillard said. The “Salk vaccine” was declared safe and effective on April 12, 1955 — nearly two years after Lillard’s infection; her paralysis was permanent. A second vaccine became available in 1961 (“Sabin”) — it took awhile for vaccination, but the polio infection rate plummeted by the end of the 1950s.
She was grateful for the machine. “It feels wonderful, actually, if you’re not breathing well,” she said as an adult. “When I was first put into it, it was such a relief. It makes all the difference when you’re not breathing.” Grade school for her was a combination of an hour in class and occasional home tutoring; in high school, she “attended” class by telephone. She was apparently pretty intelligent: she was a member of the National Honor Society. As she got older, she was able to regain significant use of her legs and walk some, and was able to be out of her lung during the daytime, like many who used iron lungs long term. But she slept in it every night as she couldn’t adapt to other kinds of respirators. As time went on, her main problem became the difficulty in getting parts for her machine, like many who used iron lungs long term.
The motor’s belt needed to be replaced around once a month; she found one that worked from a car parts shop. The motor needed replacement around every 12 years. The most difficult part: the neck collar, which creates the airtight seal so the mechanical lung can work. She bought all she could find. “When they start deteriorating, it gets harder and harder to breathe as they leak more,” she said in a 2013 interview. It’s unclear what she did when her stock ran out. When Covid-19 came along, she isolated as much as possible: those who already have breathing problems are at extreme risk from infections. She did get Covid, but it is unclear when, and how bad it was for her.
Polio is again or still a problem in parts of the world, such as Syria and Afghanistan. There was even a case in the U.S. in 2022, and with unfounded fears of vaccines, the polio vaccination rate among U.S children has fallen below the 95 percent target — about 92.5 percent for the 2024-2025 school year. “I think the word is to get your child vaccinated,” Lillard said. “Why would we let somebody have to go back through that again?” But here we are.
Lillard did some volunteer work, and shared her house with a man so they could “take care of each other.” She finally married Baha Salh after 22 years — in February 2026. With the death of Paul Alexander on March 11, 2024, Lillard became the last known person in the United States to still rely on an iron lung. She apparently never lived in any other house than the one she was born into in Shawnee. Martha Ann Lillard died on June 26, from long Covid. She was 78, and the iron lungs of the U.S. are now, finally, silent.