Everyone's life has a story. In "Lives," we tell some of those stories about North Shore people who have died recently. "Lives" runs Mondays in The Salem News.
BEVERLY — It was the same routine each time Barbara Liacos would head downtown and go shopping at the former First National grocery store on Cabot Street.
She'd get in the car with one or two of her five sons and leave an hour to 90 minutes before the store opened to make sure she could get a parking spot close to the door. Sitting in the car, they'd talk about what they needed to get and any other topics as they waited patiently.
"Back in the '50s, '60s and '70s, the world wasn't politically correct and there were physical barriers everywhere. There were no handicap parking spots, no ramps in lieu of stairs," said Liacos' youngest son, Jeff, of Beverly. "There were all the physical barriers you could think of."
Liacos, 80, who died Dec. 4 at Ledgewood Nursing Home in Beverly, had polio as a child, a disease that ravaged the country in the first half of the 20th century.
She was diagnosed with the viral disease when she was 8 years old. She spent five months at Shriners Hospital for Crippled Children in Springfield. While the name today is considered uncouth, the hospital in western Massachusetts treated Liacos and hundreds of other patients who contracted the contagious disease.
"It was rampant," Jeff Liacos said. "From what my grandmother told me, one out of every five kids had polio. It was that bad."
Liacos endured numerous surgeries during her stay there — and more as the years progressed. She looked forward to family visits on Sundays and wrote letters home. The letters, which the family recently uncovered and now treasures, were upbeat, but also honest: "'The kids can be insensitive. The kids say I can't walk, but I can walk and I will walk,'" her son paraphrases one letter. "That's a lot of courage coming from a little kid."
It was. Liacos made good on her promise and did walk, though she needed the help of crutches, which she used until she moved into a nursing home.
"One of my mother's feet was smaller than the other because it stopped growing. One leg was thinner than the other leg. She had a really severe, defined limp. She had to bend one way to the side and back and one way to the side and back," Jeff said.
When she was in her 30s and 40s, she needed more surgeries.
Despite her physical disability, she managed to hold down not one but three jobs for much of the time. As a single mother raising five boys, she had to put food on the table.
She worked at United Shoe Machinery Corp. for more than 25 years, as a nurse's aide at Blueberry Hill Nursing Home, and as a private nurse in local homes.
"We never went without," Jeff said. "We weren't rich by any stretch of the imagination, but we never went without."
When she couldn't work anymore, Liacos found time to volunteer. When she couldn't volunteer, she gave blood — a total of 15 gallons throughout her life.
Donating her time and blood was her way of giving back. Having spent so much time in a hospital — both as a patient and volunteering more than 500 hours at Beverly Hospital — she knew people are in need.
"What can you do? Physically, she could do so much. What can you do beyond that? She provided support," Jeff said. "That's the kind of woman she was."
Liacos also had a way of supporting her sons with the "silent lessons" that came from watching her work and volunteer and donate, Jeff said. She led by example.
One silent lesson came during those shopping trips to First National. Neighborhood children would run up and offer to load bags of groceries into the family's car for pocket change.
"She said, 'No thanks. I have my sons here,' and she'd give them the money anyway. I never asked why," Jeff said. "I realized, the kid was less fortunate than we were. It was a way to give back."
There were times years later when Liacos would come home from work at night looking weary. Jeff takes comfort in the belief that his mother is finally free of her struggles.
"There's no braces, no crutches, she moves uninhibited," he said. "Just finally a freedom of movement."
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