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Appearently I should not edit the page as I am related to Mary Lou. It has a number of factual errors that should be corrected. 1) DOB was 12/24/1928 2) She was 26 when she contracted polio (shortly before she was 27). 3) She was living in San Luis Obispo California when she contracted polio and teaching in Oceano, CA. 4) She never really used a peumobelt but rather a portable resperator for the rest of her life while not in the iron lung. 5) To sew (anr other things) she used an adapative device ("sling") that allowed her to raise her arm by moving her leg. She used the sewing machine foot pedel like anyone else. Mspiess53 (talk) 19:03, 12 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, @Mspiess53! First off, you are allowed to edit the page directly- it's just strongly discouraged. While you're learning the ropes, let's stick to the talk page for now.
As for your information about her birthday and the way she sewed- it's really interesting. To enter it into the Wikipedia article, we are going to need a 3rd party source to confirm it. Something like a newspaper article, an interview she did, or maybe even an interview you have done? It doesn't need to be published online, though it would be helpful if it was.
The part in the article about when and where she contracted polio doesn't seem to be confirmed by the source. I'm going to ping the article's author. @Mabalu to see if they meant to cite a different source, but I'm not seeing how the current one supports that she was living in Sebastopol when she contracted polio. Her age is a little more problematic. In the first source of the article, [1], she's quoted as saying she contracted polio at the age of 24, which would place her birthdate at around 1931. However, that would also imply that she graduated highschool at the age of fifteen or sixteen, so this could have been a mistake on the reporter's part, or maybe Ms. Spiess mispoke. Due to our strict sourcing requirements, this could take a while to figure out.GreenLipstickLesbian (talk) 13:15, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Some references you may wish to review:
Sebastopol Times May 10, 1956
The Press Democrat June 28, 1992
The Sacramento Bee September 20, 1977 (specifically about clothing)
