Amelia's Memoir of the Pandemic of 1918

Amelia, at age 101, is chronologically the oldest person who has ever attended one of my memoir-writing workshops. She was born in 1909 and following is her memory of the devastating flu epidemic of 1918:

Amelia was nine years old in 1918. She was the middle sister of the three girls in her family. They lived in a rambling Victorian house on a quiet street in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Her mother was a fairly well-known vocalist and was in demand as an entertainer for local parties and church functions. Amelia and her sisters sang in a trio and appeared at such events also. Her father, Alfred, was the vice president of a local bank.

The American people were celebrating the end of the Great War that year, but there was another pending disaster that few recognized when it first appeared--the influenza pandemic of 1918. Doctors were baffled by the increasing number of patients being affected by this mysterious illness. In the end, roughly 25 percent of the American population became ill. Doctors thought it might be cholera or typhus at first. The exact number of deaths, both worldwide and in America, are unknown, because so many victims were misdiagnosed and there was no definitive test to prove the patient had this exact flu virus. Estimates of worldwide deaths range from 20 million to more than 100 million.

In peaceful Cedar Rapids, many of the townsfolk were stricken. The only member of Amelia's family to contract the illness was Alfred, her father. Although meetings and other social gatherings were canceled to avoid spreading of the illness, his position as an employee of the bank brought him into daily contact with many people. Since so many of the bank employees had taken ill, Alfred went into work, although he was feeling unwell, in order to serve the bank's customers.

Amelia remembers she and her sisters having giggling fits because their dad came home and was saying "strange and funny things." He was actually hallucinating from a high fever, but, of course, the little girls just thought his behavior was for their amusement. Their mother insisted on putting him to bed and, thankfully, was able to nurse him back to health.

Amelia only has a childhood vision of this trying moment of history. It is not in any history books and, until the H1N1 flue scare last year, was rarely mentioned. At the time, Amelia's family had no idea how close they had come to becoming one of the pandamic's sad statistics.