Grant Wilkins (BA ’47)

Polio Invades His Life; Gratitude Fuels His Passion for Eradicating the Disease Worldwide

Grant Wilkins (BA ’47) has dedicated his life to eradicating polio. For more than two decades he has traveled the globe, sharing his story in an effort to raise money for PolioPlus, a Rotary International program aimed at eliminating the disease. He also distributes vaccines in the countries he visits.

It’s an important, personal mission: At 25, Wilkins contracted bulbar polio, a fatal form of the disease that paralyzes the throat. “I wasn’t supposed to survive, but I had a tracheotomy that prevented me from getting pneumonia and dying from that,” explains Wilkins, who is working on a book about his experiences with polio. His first wife, Diane, also contracted the disease and was totally paralyzed, and remained in an iron lung/respirator for the next 13 years until her death in 1964.

Those experiences helped give Grant the motivation to wipe out the disease around the world, and his efforts have paid off: In 1986, shortly after he retired from a career in advertising and dedicated himself full time to Rotary International service, there were 350,000 cases of polio worldwide. Last year, that number was just 30.

Wilkins’ experience with polio was not only the catalyst for his humanitarian work fighting the disease, but also for giving back and helping students at DU’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies. He hopes some of those students will dedicate their lives to other vital international causes.

“I was really pleased to find out that DU had 1,500 foreign students from 92 different countries, because Rotary’s goal worldwide is world peace and understanding,” says Wilkins, who in 2015 was awarded the Korbel School’s Humanitarian Award. “Everything we do, whether it’s health or hunger or educating people, everything is zeroed in on world peace. And as long as there is hunger, ignorance, disease or poverty, we are not going to have world peace.

“I know that everyone in the Korbel School has those same goals—to see a peaceful world,” he adds.

Wilkins and his second wife, Marlene, created the Grant and Marlene Wilkins Endowed Scholarship Fund at the Korbel School. In April 2016, they funded a charitable gift annuity at DU and designated their scholarship as the beneficiary of that annuity. The charitable gift annuity benefits the Wilkinses by paying the couple an income for their lifetimes as well as providing a significant tax deduction. Additionally, their gift was matched with institutional funding, providing scholarship funds for immediate use.

“Grant is very proud of the University of Denver, and he feels they contributed to some of his success,” Marlene Wilkins says. “I’ve been right beside him, and I enjoy watching what’s happening there, and we thought this would be an opportunity to help some of these students.”

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