October Was the Cruelest Month

        One hundred years have passed since the grim reaper variously called Spanish flu, Spanish Lady, French flu, or “La Grippe,” sickened one-third of the world’s inhabitants (roughly 500 million people). At its height the epidemic killed 759 Philadelphians during a single day in October. Worldwide casualty estimates vary, some being as high as 100 million people sickened by the disease, but there is widespread agreement that the 1918 flu caused more deaths than all military personnel killed by cannon, gunfire, bayonets, or poison gas during World War I.

        My paternal grandfather was one of the fatalities. He was living in Naturita, Colorado when in October of 1918 he, his pregnant wife and three young children came down with the deadly flu. Although my grandfather died his family survived, and two months later my grandmother gave birth to my father. That untimely sequence of events held a morbid fascination for me as a child, so much so I devoted part of my novel Never Done to the impact of Spanish flu on my family and the people of Colorado.

        While researching the 1918 flu, I was shocked by how easily it spread. Just touching a flu patient, even being in the same room was enough to catch it, making it a strain of flu more virulent than Europe’s bubonic plague which killed more people, but over a longer period of time.

        The plague that devastated Europe during the Middle Ages was spread by rodents and lice; whereas the Spanish flu was a virus. In 1918/19 an estimated 25 percent of the US population was infected with the baffling illness, and as many as 650,000 people died from it. The mountainous regions of Colorado were particularly hard hit due to the Western Slope’s large concentration of miners, men whose lungs were already compromised by the dust and bad air they breathed underground. Crowded conditions in city tenements also increased the likelihood of catching the disease.

        Symptoms of Spanish flu began much like today’s less virulent strains with headache, runny nose, or sore throat. Following in quick succession were fever, nausea, aching joints, and cough. The person infected became so fatigued he or she could barely stand. Dark, reddish spots or an overall redness appeared on some faces, and within hours the virus attacked the patient’s lungs in a brutal pneumonia. In the worst cases the patient’s lungs filled with a bloody froth and they bled from their nose, ears, or eyes. Some died less than a day after the first symptoms appeared. Others victims, like my grandfather, suffered for days or weeks.

        Worldwide, the death toll peaked during the fourth quarter of 1918. October, the same month my grandfather died, was particularly deadly in the United States. Philadelphia reported over 4,500 deaths during one week that month. When flu deaths mounted in October and doctors hadn’t found a cure, many Americans believed the disease signaled the end of mankind. Bend, though experiencing far fewer flu deaths than other parts of the country, shared in the panic when in mid-October city officials closed the schools and banned gatherings of more than 10 people. It was a ban that lasted until early December.

        Sporadic flu-related obituaries continued to appear in American newspapers during 1919, but by summer the disease had run its course. Since then, the world’s population has mushroomed; so has the number of people traveling across borders. If new viruses evolve, and they will, the chance of another global pandemic remains a threat to public health. In 1918 October may have been the cruelest month, but now it’s a good month to get your flu shot every year.