Bell grew up in Buffalo, New York and had one sister and a step-sister. In 1931, her sister contracted polio and in 1949, her stepsister contracted the disease as well. After working as a model, she married and had three children, Cathie and twins Douglas and Lori. In 1954, she contracted polio, seven months prior to the availability of the polio vaccine. She was admitted to the Goldwater Memorial Hospital and confined to an iron lung. After experiencing anger and depression, and offering to allow her husband a divorce, Bell determined to take control of her life. Her husband refused to accept a divorce and though they lived separately, the couple parented their children together. As her health improved, she gained mobility with use of a wheelchair and was able to attend family functions, though her need for mechanical respiratory assistance made it necessary for her to live at the hospital facility for twenty-five years. During her tenure in residence, she was president of the hospital board for four terms, participating in drafting the Patient’s Bill of Rights.
Career
Wishing to further her education, Bell tried to enroll in numerous universities in the New York City area but was rejected because of her disabilities. In 1977, she was accepted at Empire State College through an extension program that allowed distance education and graduated in 1979. Soon after her graduation, she moved out of the hospital, taking a nearby apartment. Bell and Florence Weiner co-founded the Polio Information Center, an international data base on the disease. Bell became editor and publisher of the newsletter for the center, which she operated from her residence. She was nominated and won the Wonder Woman Foundation Award of Warner Communications Inc. in 1982, for her ability to create a new reality from her circumstance. In 1984, she completed her PhD studies at Columbia Pacific University with a dissertation, Polio Survivors: Their Quality of Life. Despite being a quadriplegic, Bell developed skill as a painter and a typist, using assistive technology.
Death and legacy
Bell died on September 10, 1995 at her home on Roosevelt Island. The information provided by the center she co-founded was an early resource for post-polio syndrome, little known at that time, and became an internationally recognized reference base.
