05/30/2026
The President's Ball at the Capitola Ballroom - January 29, 1938
On January 3, 1938, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, an adult victim of polio, founded the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, which he later renamed the March of Dimes Foundation. Predominantly a childhood disease, polio is a virus which affects the central nervous system. Polio survivors suffer from debilitating paralysis into their adult lives.
In 1921, at the age of 39, Roosevelt contracted polio and lost the use of his legs. With great determination, over several years, Roosevelt learned how to cope with his disability and returned to politics. His personal experience inspired in him empathy with his fellow suffers and inspired him to found the organization to raise funds for polio research and assistance to polio survivors.
A polio fundraiser, dubbed "The President's Ball" was held at the Capitola Ballroom on January 29, 1938.
Venue for the event, the Capitola Ballroom, was built in 1935 from a short-lived roller-skating rink. The ballroom occupied the beachfront site of the famed Hotel Capitola, which burned in 1929 (today the site of Esplanade Park).
Before a polio vaccine became available, several polio epidemics took place during the first half of the 20th century. During polio's peak in the U.S. in 1952, nearly 60,000 children were infected, thousands paralyzed, and more than 3,000 died. Some survivors spent the rest of their lives within iron lungs. The first polio vaccine, developed by Dr. Salk and colleagues, arrived at the Mayo Clinic on April 13, 1955.
President's Ball advertisement from the Santa Cruz Sentinel, January 28, 1938
