Hugh Gregory Gallagher diary entry on March 3, 1954. Hugh Gallagher Papers, MSS-185.

In this diary, recorded the year after Gallagher contracted polio, he expresses his thoughts on the crippling disease. His insights are both highly personal and universal. He speaks on the pain of losing his independence, and how people now look at him with pity. He also talks about his impending departure for Warm Springs, Georgia, and how he hopes this rehabilitation will reduce the burden he has placed on his family. “My going down to Warm Springs will give my family—especially my mother—a much needed but un-admitted rest. They have been really attentive and loyal. I must gain independence, for their sake as well as mine,” Gallagher wrote in April, 1953. This entry is a relfection on Tolstoy's classic work War and Peace