McManus, Mary

Mary McManus is an endurance runner, writer and inspirational speaker. She grew up in Westchester, NY and contracted paralytic polio in 1959 at the age of 5, during one of the last polio epidemics in the United States. Despite growing up in a chaotic, violent household, rife with substance abuse she was valedictorian of her high school class and went on to have an award winning career as a social worker at the VA. She was at the height of her career when diagnosed with post polio syndrome, a progressive neuromuscular disease. She did not take the diagnosis of post polio syndrome sitting down.