CONCORD, North Carolina — Not many children crave connection more than 4-year-old Roman Butzlaff. If you pass by his house in Concord, North Carolina, he will surely greet you with a wave and a “hey.” 

“He wakes up every day excited to say ‘hi’ to somebody, like, that’s the first thing he wants to do,” his mother, Anna Butzlaff, told CBS News.

And yet, she said that for the longest time, Roman’s cheeriness belied an inner loneliness. About a year ago, his parents broke up. His father moved to Florida, and his grandparents lived out of state as well.

But fortunately, all those seeds of kindness he had planted began to bloom. It started with Wade Fulgum, who lives across the street from Roman. 

Fulgum went over to meet the boy who was always waving. They started doing things together. Eventually, other neighbors followed suit. They would stop and chat or even take part in activities such as drag racing down the street.

Anna Butzlaff said it was initially a bit strange because she barely knew any of these people.

“I didn’t really know how to take it,” she said. “I just saw that my son was happy.”

Which is why she went along with it when Roman then began inviting many different neighbors to his soccer games, basketball games and baseball games. Other neighbors came to his swimming lessons and even his preschool open house.

And when it came time for his birthday party, Anna Butzlaff knew the only people she needed to invite were his senior citizen neighbor friends. 

“He loves having us there, and he’ll run up and hug us,” one neighbor said.

“They’ve made such an impact on him,” Anna Butzlaff said. “They are really special people to him.”

Today, the refrigerator is blanketed with pictures of all those people Roman holds so dear. His mother says his inner loneliness is gone.

And his “love thy neighbor” attitude is spreading. Roman has now brought together about a dozen neighbors who say they would have barely known each other if not for that little boy, who lived in a neighborhood but needed a village.

Said one neighbor: “Look at what this little kid has built.”

Added another: “If the world was like this child, what an awesome, awesome place it would be.”

Martha Lillard had just turned 5 when she was diagnosed with polio and depended on an iron lung to live. She died June 26 in Oklahoma, the last U.S. polio patient who used the machine, her sister said. She was 78.

“They told her she wasn’t supposed to live past 20 years old,” Lillard’s younger sister, Cindy McVey, told The Associated Press on Friday. “She had the enthusiasm and the drive to continue living and make the best of her life.”

McVey attributes her sister’s death to the effects of long-haul COVID-19. A death certificate lists causes as chronic pulmonary failure and post-polio syndrome, McVey said.

Lillard slept in the iron lung cylinder that encased her body as the air pressure in the chamber forced air in and out of her lungs. As a child, she went to grade school for two hours a day and was tutored the rest of the time. She attended Shawnee High School by using a phone system that allowed her to interact with her teachers and classmates through an intercom in her classrooms.

Her family went on road trips to Missouri thanks to a custom trailer and her father calling hotels to find out if they had doors wide enough to accommodate the machine Lillard slept in. Lillard was even able to drive for a time.

“To me, it was just normal,” recalled McVey, 75.

Polio was once one of the nation’s most feared diseases, with annual outbreaks causing thousands of cases of paralysis. The disease primarily affects children.

Vaccines became available starting in 1955. According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a national vaccination campaign cut the annual number of U.S. cases to fewer than 100 in the 1960s and fewer than 10 in the 1970s. In 1979, polio was declared eliminated in the U.S., meaning it was no longer routinely spread.

Later the internet would help Lillard stay informed and learn about all sorts of topics, including her disease, which paralyzed her from the neck down.

With therapy she was able to regain partial use of her left arm and use of her legs. But she could only move her left arm side to side at her waist. Even though she couldn’t reach up, she spent many years living alone and preparing her own meals.

The internet also allowed Lillard to meet her future husband. After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Lillard wanted to understand more about what happened. In a chat room, she met a man in Egypt and communicated with him online for more than 20 years, McVey said.

Lillard married Baha Salh in February after he was finally able to obtain a visa to travel to Oklahoma.

“They were really soulmates,” McVey said. “He’s extremely brokenhearted.”

During the coronavirus pandemic, Lillard got COVID-19 twice. Before getting COVID-19, she had less than 25% lung capacity. The last five years of her life, she wasn’t able to leave home as it became harder to breathe. For the past two years, she was in the iron lung nearly 24 hours a day, McVey said.

McVey described her sister as artistic and creative. She wrote poems and composed songs. She wrote her own obituary, which is now posted online by a funeral home. She described being a Humane Society volunteer. “She was an avid Beagle lover and assisted in animal rescue as a cross poster on Facebook,” Lillard wrote.

She later updated her obituary to say she “died of long-haul Covid 19,” but McVey added the date of her death.

In recent years, McVey and Lillard were desperate to find someone who could fix the iron lung, one of several she had over her lifetime.

“But since she’s the last one, we don’t need that anymore,” McVey said through tears.

LEXINGTON, S.C. (WCSC) — South Carolina recorded a significant decline in drug overdose deaths in 2024, marking the second consecutive year fatalities have decreased and the first back-to-back annual decline in more than a decade, according to newly released data from the South Carolina Department of Public Health.

State health officials reported just under 1,500 overdose deaths in 2024, a 31% decrease from 2023. The reduction represents nearly 500 lives saved compared with the previous year and is being credited to expanded access to overdose-reversal medications, increased public awareness and broader prevention efforts across the state.

“Even one is too many,” Dr. Brannon Traxler, acting director of the South Carolina Department of Public Health, said. “Almost 500 — that’s almost 500 people’s loved ones that are alive that might not have been, and so that is a big deal.”

Charleston, Greenville and Horry counties recorded the highest numbers of overdose deaths in 2024, followed by Richland and Lexington counties. Statewide, adults ages 35 to 44 were the age group most affected by fatal overdoses.

Meanwhile, Jasper, Georgetown and Spartanburg counties saw some of the largest declines in overdose deaths compared with the previous year.

Health leaders say expanded availability of naloxone, commonly known by the brand name Narcan, has played a key role in reducing fatalities. The medication can rapidly reverse the effects of an opioid overdose and has become more widely available through public health agencies, community organizations and harm-reduction programs.

Amber Frazier, who works with The Courage Center and has experienced the impact of substance use disorder firsthand, said overdoses continue to affect families across South Carolina.

“At first, when you hear about it, it’s kind of like, ‘Is this real?’ and then reality hits you,” Frazier said, reflecting on the loss of loved ones to addiction.

Officials and recovery advocates say the decline also reflects increased education efforts and a growing willingness among people struggling with addiction to seek treatment.

“Really trying to continue to decrease the stigma around it, truly recognizing it is a disease,” Traxler said. “Just like we want to make treatment available for diabetics, we want to make treatment available for this.”

Marc Burrows, executive director of Challengers Inc. of South Carolina, said continued investment in harm-reduction strategies will be needed to sustain the progress.

“We need to keep pushing, keep distributing naloxone, keep focusing on harm-reduction interventions and continue to get these services to the people that need them,” Burrows said.

Despite the encouraging trend, health officials emphasized that the overdose crisis remains a serious public health challenge and that every overdose death represents a family and community affected by loss.

Frazier urged South Carolinians to remember the humanity of those struggling with addiction.

“Just remember that next time you see someone, that is someone’s mother, daughter, father, brother, sister or cousin,” she said. “That is another human being.”

The Department of Public Health continues to offer free overdose safety kits through local health departments across South Carolina, with no questions asked. Officials encourage anyone struggling with substance use disorder or concerned about a loved one to seek help and learn how to recognize and respond to an overdose.