Few Americans count the cost of polio anymore.

Fewer than 10 countries in the world still have polio cases, and the number of cases worldwide has decreased by 99 percent since 1985, thanks in large part to the fund-raising work of Rotary clubs around the world.

But one former Holland resident, Dale Cooper, chaplain of Calvin College in Grand Rapids, watched the cost of polio counted day by day, week by week, for 40 years as his mother lived out her life in an iron lung after contracting the disease in 1945.

His mother, Marjorie Cooper, who died in 1985, was the world's longest-surviving iron-lung patient. And yet, he hastens to add, his mother and father lived out their lives in such a way that, as a child, he never thought of the cost.

"When I was 4 years old and she was 26 -- too long ago for me to remember -- my mom got polio," he recalls.

The virus invaded her body innocently enough, initially giving her only a stiff headache and some symptoms of the flu. But 96 hours later the disease had changed her life -- and the lives of everyone in the Cooper family

Mrs. Cooper was totally and permanently paralyzed from the neck down. She spent the rest of her life inside an iron lung, a bulky cylindrical tank that allowed her to breathe.

"Smilingly, she called it her 'green Cadillac,'" said Dale Cooper. "True, except in this sense -- Cadillacs are a luxury. For her the lung was not a luxury. On it she depended for her every breath."

But, he adds, his mom did many things that every mom does.

"She composed shopping lists in her head, had an uncanny sense of where we might have left our shoes and ball gloves, encouraged us in our school work and disciplined us without ever lifting a finger. In so many ways she was a normal mom. So normal, in fact, that for years I really didn't fully comprehend that she was sick.

"Neither she nor my dad ever called attention to it or bemoaned their plight. I can't recall once not a single time that she ever complained. Quite the contrary, she was upbeat, joyous, thoroughly life-affirming, and possessed by a sparkling humor."

But because of stories like these, because the costs of polio are still being counted around the globe, the Holland and Zeeland Rotary clubs are seeking to raise $100,000 by June 30 as part of a global effort to eradicate polio worldwide.

The local fund-raising effort is part of one being led by Rotary Club International to raise $400 million for its campaign, "Fulfilling Our Promise: Eradicate Polio." For more information or to make a donation, contact The Rotary Foundation/Polio, Polio Eradication HZRC, c/o Rotary Club of Holland, P.O. Box 2278, Holland, MI 49422-2278.

"As Rotarians, we're looking at fulfilling our promise to eradicate polio that we made in the mid-1980s," said Ella Weymon, president of the Holland Rotary Noon Club. "At this point, we're 99 percent done, but we can't be 99 percent. We have to eradicate polio 100 percent."

Cooper's story is not only the story of his mother's deep faith, courage and perseverance, but also of those same qualities in his dad. When Mrs. Cooper contracted polio, John Cooper was 32 years old. The couple had been married not quite five years and had 4-year-old and 2-month-old sons. The young man had just purchased 10 acres of land with the hope of becoming a successful farmer someday.

"Then on a cold November day in 1945 everything changed," Dale Cooper says. "No one expected it or could have planned for it, but mom got sick, permanently so. And this turn of events put Dad, in the prime of his life, face to face with a decision. What should I do now? Who will care for the kids? What about the crop, the farm, the dreams?"

John Cooper, who died last Christmas Eve, gave up farming for a time in order to make his wife's care his life work. He stayed with his wife almost full-time during the four years she had to remain in the hospital. During this time, Dale Cooper and his brother often lived with their grandparents in Holland.

Then when Mrs. Cooper came home, "Dad kept on keeping his vows. He held her almost totally in his care, bathing her, brushing her teeth, combing her hair. He was the hands by which she did things. He turned pages in a book or magazine. He fed her, he switched on the TV, he wrote the Christmas and birthday cards, he did their shopping, he cleaned their house."

Once, many years ago, Dale Cooper says a television newscaster from Chicago heard about his parents' story and called his father with the idea of doing a story on their lives.

"The newscaster said, 'You're worth doing a story on, for I can't imagine anyone sticking with his wife when she had so little left to offer.'" Cooper says.

"Then my diminutive and slightly ill-at-ease dad, never one to stand and preach a sermon, declared the gospel in an eloquence that I shall never possess. He said, 'I love my wife. I'm a Christian, and we try to keep our promises.'"