Still, back then, officials could not quiet the fear that gripped Far Rockaway and nearby communities, even though they reminded people that the disease was not spread casually. Carol Schwartz, Eddie’s sister, recalls going to a friend’s house to bake brownies. “I was completely healthy,” she said recently, “but her mother screamed at me to get out.
Thankfully, some aspects of health care have changed since 1952. At Meadowbrook Hospital on Long Island, where doctors established a makeshift quarantine ward for the Hi-Li campers, Eddie was allowed no direct contact with his family. His parents could only wave to him from a nearby window.
But good memories have persisted, too.
He returned for several summers afterward, and by age 12 he had decided on his own career. Today, at 63, he is the rabbi at Temple Beth Shalom in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y
“After that summer,” he said, “my mother would always tell me I had been saved for a purpose.”

It's sort of amazing how diseases they claim don't exist anymore outside of a lab or are extremely rare in the world seem to be popping out here and there.