ST. JOSEPH, III (WAND) - Esther Maron is a 96 year-old who, not only lived through the Polio Epidemic, but was a nurse on the frontlines of the 1949 epidemic. 

Maron received her COVID 19 Vaccine in Champaign County. She was one of the first who signed up. Manor says she has been ready for this vaccine since December. The vaccination flowed smoothly, according to Maron. 

“They were so organized they were just perfect. I said, I never saw such organization, my life. There, I went one step one step one step and I was out the door." Maron tells WAND News. 

She says her experience was special, because it felt like déjà vu. Just 72 years ago, she was on the frontlines of the Polio Pandemic. Right before she was set to move to Colorado with her husband, she visited a local Champaign doctor to say goodbye. He had a different plan for Mrs. Esther Maron.

"He said, You've got to help me we have an epidemic. You can't go to Colorado You have to help me open the hospitals, and we opened the hospital, just behind the poor farm that they had built during the war."

She worked as a nurse in a local Champaign hospital.  "It was just as scary then as it is now, because no one knew her polio came from, they didn't know what what caused it," Maron says. "They didn't know how people call it, they knew nothing about how to take care of it. They knew nothing.”

Maron says the similarities between the 1949 epidemic and the 2020 pandemic are uncanny. "They closed everything. Can you imagine, closing the everything and Champaign County and Champaign, and Urbana. We had to wash and clean everything that we use, because now you can throw everything away.”

When the Polio vaccine was released in 1955, Maron and her young daughter were first in line.  "I was the first one in line, but that time when they brought out the vaccine. I had my little daughter, and I was so afraid of it, because I didn't know anything about it.” 

Now, Maron is one of the first Champaign County residents to get the COVID-19 vaccine. She says she felt the same happiness as when she got the Polio vaccine back in 1955. 

Maron says her story is nothing special, but many may beg to differ. "I just feel like a special person but really I'm not. I'm just a citizen that went through a lot of things."