Hutchinson ? A Hutchinson man is working on a documentary about area survivors of polio, a crippling childhood disease that swept the nation in the 1940s and 1950s.

Nathan Guy said he got the idea for the film a year ago when he went to a meeting of the Central Kansas Polio Survivors Group in Hutchinson. Guy said he was moved to make the film because the polio survivors he met “have such a gung-ho attitude about overcoming obstacles.”

Jean Graber, of Pretty Prairie, will be featured in the movie, as will fellow survivor Lois Wooten, of Hutchinson, and Eleanor Hageman, of Kingman, who lost a son to the disease and had three other children who survived it.

“(The friend) said I have to come to one of these meetings and hear their stories,” Guy said. “One survivor spent six weeks in an iron lung.”

Guy studied film at Kansas University and graduated from the University of Vancouver. He has been showing a nine-minute trailer of the film to raise $30,000 to complete the documentary.

“I have enough to start, but not enough to finish it,” Guy said.

If Guy can finish the film, it will be shown at the Post-Polio Health International Conference April 23-25 at Warm Springs, Ga.

“There’ll be hundreds of people from all over the world,” Guy said. “It’s a great opportunity for the community (of Hutchinson) to portray itself.”