Writer Jerry Apps Kept a Secret from Everyone But His Editor

Author Jerry Apps recently released his most personal book, “Limping Through Life: A Farm Boy’s Polio Memoir.”

Jerry Apps has been telling stories of Wisconsin history and rural life for more than four decades, and his books often carry a bit of personal history, but there was one piece of his own history that he wanted to keep a secret.

“I really didn’t want anyone to know about it,” Apps said. “My wife didn’t even know about it.”

But Kate Thompson, Apps’ editor at the Wisconsin Historical Society Press, did know his secret, that Apps was a polio survivor, and urged him to write about it, which resulted in his latest and most personal book, Limping through Life: A Farm Boy’s Polio Memoir.

“Families throughout the United States lived in fear of polio throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s, and now the disease had come to our farm. I can still remember that short winter day and the chilly night when I first showed symptoms. My life would never be the same,” begins the book.

Apps, who grew up on a farm in Wild Rose, Wis., was twelve years old when he was diagnosed with polio. A sympathetic teacher/coach suggested the once active youth take up typing, which at the time was generally considered a class for female students. Soon, Apps was working on the school newspaper and a writer was born.

Digging into his own past to write the book brought a lot of unpleasant memories to the surface, “both real and imagined,” Apps said.

But once he brought the memories out and got them down on paper and out into the world, he began hearing from other polio survivors who thanked him for telling his story, and he found a common thread to their stories.

“They all overachieved because of the polio,” said Apps, an emeritus professor at the University of Wisconsin’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences. He retired in 1994 but continues to work just as hard as ever with writing and workshops and public events, much to the consternation of his wife, Ruth.

Just as Limping Through Life hit the streets in April from the Wisconsin Historical Society Press, Apps’ also had a piece of historical fiction intended for younger readers published. Letters from Hillside Farm tells the story of a family moving from Ohio to a Wisconsin farm during the Great Depression. The entire story is told through a series of letters exchanged between a 12-year-old and his grandmother.

“There is a lot of information out there about the Depression and its effects on urban life, but very little about rural life,” Apps said. “The idea was to let kids know what it was like to grow up on a farm with no electricity and where you milked cows by hand.”

He mentions that he often is asked to speak to fourth-grade classes because that is the year when they study state history. He was telling the kids about growing up on a farm without electricity when a boy asked, “Mr. Apps, if you didn’t have electricity, how did you watch TV?”

For the past 22 years, Apps has been conducting writing workshops at The Clearing in Ellison Bay, a place he praises for its get-away-from-it-all atmosphere. He returns on June 22 for a daylong writing workshop called Writing from Your Life.

“I tell people that not only is it interesting and fun to write their own life story, but they have an obligation to pass on something of their generation’s history to their children and grandchildren,” he said. “It’s not so much about publication as it is about telling personal histories. When we forget our histories, we forget who we are.”

The workshop will be followed by a free and open to the public book signing that runs from 4 to 6 pm.

Also be on the lookout for the national PBS airing of A Farm Story with Jerry Apps, a documentary that was first produced by Wisconsin Public Television.

For more information about Apps’ daylong class and book signing, visit http://www.theclearing.org, http://www.jerryapps.com or call 920.854.4088. The Clearing is located at 12171 Garrett Bay Road in Ellison Bay.