Martha Lillard, the Oklahoma woman who became known as the last American still dependent on an iron lung, has died at the age of 78.
Lillard’s extraordinary life began with a devastating diagnosis. At just five years old, she contracted polio — a disease that once terrified families across the United States and left thousands of children paralyzed before vaccines changed the course of history.
For most of her life, Martha relied on the large metal breathing machine that had become a symbol of an earlier medical era. Her sister, Cindy McVey, confirmed that Lillard passed away on June 26 in Shawnee, Oklahoma.
Doctors once told her family she likely would not survive beyond the age of 20. But Martha defied those expectations for nearly six decades.
“She had the enthusiasm and the determination to keep living and make the most of every moment,” her sister said.
According to her family, long COVID played a role in her decline. Her death certificate listed chronic respiratory failure and post-polio syndrome as contributing causes.
Just days before her passing, Lillard described the frightening moment when her health suddenly worsened.
She woke up one morning feeling pain in her neck and quickly lost the ability to lift her head. Within days, she became unable to breathe or move her arms and legs, eventually losing consciousness.
As a child, Martha spent six months in the hospital, much of that time inside an iron lung — a full-body ventilator that uses air pressure changes to help a person breathe.
Unlike many children who struggled with the machine, Martha said she accepted it because it gave her the gift of breathing.
“I liked it. It felt good to breathe,” she once recalled.
Although polio changed her life forever, it never took away her independence. She eventually learned to walk again, though her right arm remained paralyzed, and she lived with severely reduced lung capacity.
For years, she used the iron lung mainly while sleeping. But after developing post-polio syndrome and battling COVID twice, she became dependent on the machine almost constantly during the final years of her life.
Despite her challenges, Martha refused to let her condition define her. She went to school, lived independently for many years, prepared her own meals, drove a car, painted, wrote poetry, composed music using her left hand, and volunteered with the Humane Society to help rescue abandoned animals.
Her family even traveled with her using a specially designed trailer large enough to transport the massive iron lung.
In February, Martha experienced a love story many never expected. She married Baha Salh, an Egyptian man she met online more than 20 years earlier. Their relationship began after the September 11 attacks, when Martha joined an online chat room to understand world events better. After years of conversations, they finally married when he received permission to travel to Oklahoma.
Her sister described them as true soulmates, saying Baha was devastated by her passing.
Martha’s strength was tested until the very end. When a tornado knocked out power to her iron lung, her husband kept her alive by performing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation until emergency help arrived.
In recent years, Martha and her family searched for someone capable of repairing the aging machine, which contained parts dating back to the 1940s.
But now, as her sister sadly explained, there is no longer anyone left who needs it.
Martha Lillard’s story is more than a story about illness — it is a story about courage, love, resilience, and a woman who spent a lifetime proving that even the greatest challenges could not break her spirit.
