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Martha Lillard, Last Known U.S. Iron Lung User, Dies at 78
Martha Lillard died June 26 in Oklahoma. She was the final known American polio survivor dependent on an iron lung for breathing after contracting the disease in 1953.
Jul 11, 11:33 AM·2m read6 sources
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Martha Lillard, the last known U.S. polio patient who relied on an iron lung to breathe, died June 26 in Oklahoma at age 78. Lillard contracted polio on her fifth birthday in 1953, two years before vaccines became available.
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She spent six months in the hospital, much of it inside the machine, and her right arm remained paralyzed. She later regained partial use of her left arm and legs through therapy but lived with less than 25 percent lung capacity. She attended grade school for two hours a day and received tutoring the rest of the time.
Lillard completed high school remotely through a phone system and intercom at Shawnee High School. Her family used a custom trailer for road trips and her father called ahead to hotels to ensure doors could accommodate the iron lung. Lillard drove for a period and lived alone for many years, preparing her own meals.
Lillard met Baha Salh in an online chat room after the September 11, 2001 attacks. They communicated for more than 20 years before marrying in February 2026 after he obtained a visa to travel to Oklahoma. She wrote poems and songs, volunteered with the Humane Society, and assisted in animal rescue as a cross-poster on Facebook.
Lillard contracted COVID-19 twice. In her final five years she could not leave home due to breathing difficulty. For the last two years she depended on the iron lung nearly 24 hours a day. Her death certificate lists chronic pulmonary failure and post-polio syndrome as causes.
Her sister, Cindy McVey, attributes the death to long-haul COVID-19. Lillard wrote her own obituary and later updated it to state she died of long-haul COVID-19. In recent years she and her family searched for someone to repair the aging machine, whose parts dated to the 1940s.
"But since she’s the last one, we don’t need that anymore," McVey said. Polio vaccines became available in the United States in 1955. A national campaign reduced cases to fewer than 100 annually in the 1960s and fewer than 10 in the 1970s.
