When Kellie Washburn, Chief Marketing & Community Engagement Officer at the Warm Springs Foundation, first began her work with the organization, she felt called to preserve and share the legacy of compassionate care that has touched so many lives through the rehabilitation hospitals. The history of Warm Springs is filled with stories of courage, resilience, and grace. To bring this to life, she began interviewing former patients and families, listening to their testimony firsthand, and sharing the ways healing took root in their lives.
It was her mother who gently reminded her of a family friend from their church when she was a child, someone who had received treatment at Warm Springs’ very first hospital in Ottine, Texas, during the early days of the polio epidemic. The child’s name was Joan Hague. Now going by Joan Perry, the thought of reconnecting with her felt like a gift, and seemed like a truly wonderful idea.
Reaching out to Joan, she asked if she would share her memories of receiving care at the Warm Springs Rehabilitation Hospital for Crippled Children, which had opened its doors in 1941. At the time, polio was devastating communities across Texas and beyond. The disease disrupted childhood in an instant, weakening muscles, paralyzing limbs, and in many heartbreaking cases, threatening a child’s ability to breathe or swallow. The need for a place like Warm Springs was not just urgent; it was lifesaving.
In 1946, Joan was only a child when her uncle, Jack Blackwell, rushed her to the Ottine hospital. Joan remembered waking in pain, unable to use her right leg. Jack was not only Joan’s guardian that night but also the Foundation’s Board Secretary, as well as a pilot and photographer.
Joan’s family circumstances were already overwhelming; her mother was caring for two other children while pregnant, and her father had just been admitted to the new hospital in Corpus Christi, where he was treated in an iron lung. His condition worsened quickly, and with great sorrow, Joan shared how he passed away soon after. That left 3 ½-year-old Joan in the care of Warm Springs’ doctors and nurses.
Joan was angry and confused, missing her mother and siblings, grieving the loss of her father, and struggling with the hardship of therapy.
For many children, rehabilitation meant long stays, sometimes nearly a year or more, and often involved braces, corrective procedures, and hours of therapy to restore strength stolen by polio. Joan, too, was fitted with a brace to steady her leg. After nine months of treatment, Joan left Warm Springs walking only with a limp.
And yet, woven through her difficult memories, what shines most brightly in Joan’s recollections is the compassion of her caregivers. She remembered the warmth of their touch and the gentle kindness of nurses who not only treated her body but also thought of her family, writing letters to her grandmother with updates on her recovery. “They truly cared for me,” she said, a quiet strength in her voice.
Joan’s memories are also filled with striking details: the soft, heavy blankets laid across patients’ legs as part of their therapy, and the small indoor hospital pools filled with mineral spring water, which had been known for centuries for their natural healing properties. For children battling the effects of polio, the springs’ soothing waters were a source of hope and comfort. Her uncle, ever the photographer, captured countless images of this tender care, moments that spoke louder than words of the dedication and love shown at Warm Springs.
As Joan turned through the old photographs, one image stopped Kellie cold. It was of a little girl sitting next to Santa, who had come to the hospital to bring joy to the children at Christmas. Kellie’s eyes widened with recognition: this was the exact image she had used for the Foundation’s Christmas card. For months, she had quietly worried whether families might object to the use of such a photo, not knowing who the little girl was. With tears welling, she confessed this fear to Joan. Joan paused, and then her own eyes filled with tears. The little girl was her.
In that shared moment, gratitude washed over them both. What were the odds? Out of all the children who had once filled those hospital rooms, and out of all the photographs, Joan and Kellie would be brought back together through this image, through this story, through the enduring thread of Warm Springs’ compassion. It did not feel like a coincidence. It felt like divine intervention.
Before they parted, Joan offered words that will stay with Kellie forever. She encouraged the Foundation, as it moves forward in establishing new, specialized clinics to care for those facing post-neurotrauma challenges, whether from brain injuries, spinal cord injuries, or amputation, to keep mental health and emotional healing at the forefront of its mission. Life-altering events leave imprints that extend far beyond the body, and as Joan reminded her, recovery must always honor the whole person.
Through Joan’s eyes, Kellie could see more clearly than ever that Warm Springs is not just a name in history. It is a promise. A promise that even in the hardest of life’s chapters, compassion makes the impossible begin to feel possible.