“My mother lost both parents to the pandemic…“

Plainfield, NJ

She was only seven, the oldest of seven cousins who lost a parent in under three weeks to the Spanish Flu. Her mother was the first to die. She was four months pregnant at the time. Her father got sick first and recovered enough to bury his wife or his brother and a sister-in-law between Oct.21 and Nov. 11, 1918. He later contracted the flu again in the second wave and died, leaving his three children complete orphans.

I spent some time researching the period in newspapers of the time and compiling the family story into a vignette. I am enclosing that story here to see if you have any use for it or suggestions as to what I could do with it in addition sharing it with relatives who are descended from the deceased siblings and spouses. It seems that we are going through a similar period of pandemic and have not applied all the lessons from the past.

Bertha was just about finished hanging the last of the sheets on the long line that stretched across the back yard to the pole near the train tracks when she heard the door of the grocery store below squeal and the screen door slam shut behind Bill. She was really feeling very tired today. She recognized that heavy tiredness that accompanied her other pregnancies and this one was no different.

She heard Bill’s foot steps as he climbed up the outside back stairs to the porch where she was standing with her hands on her back as she tried to ease the strain of lifting heavy, wet sheets. It was early for him to be coming back to the third floor apartment for lunch.

Then she remembered that he had seemed under the weather this morning as he had gone down to help his brother Miles with the opening chores of the grocery store. The store, Wilson’s Market, occupied the first floor of the building she lived in with her husband Bill and their three young children. Bill’s brother Miles and his young family lived in the apartment below them on the second floor. Bertha’s newly married sister, Ursula, had recently moved into an apartment on the other side of the building with her new husband and young baby.

Her husband Bill had known that Al, the fellow who helped out with the early morning tasks in the market was still sick so he had gone downstairs earlier than usual to give his brother a hand. This was the third day that Al had sent word that he was still very sick with the nasty flu that was going around and could not come to work. By now Bill had reached the top step and his pale face frightened her. He leaned his athletic body against the wall and started coughing as he looked away from her. There were drops of sweat on his forehead. The sight of him took her back to the fevered visage of the young man she had helped nurse last week. Molly Coffey, one of the older women in their church group, the Daughters of Isabelle, was overcome with exhaustion from nursing her son Frank who had just returned from Fort Dix to be cared for by his mother as he suffered the ravages of this same flu. Shocking to everyone, this young eighteen-year-old man had died in his mother’s arms just a few days ago.

A couple of months ago, right after his June birthday, he had enlisted to serve his country in this war that had been raging in Europe that so many had hoped we could we could stay out of.

“You look awful!” she cried as she moved toward her husband. He looked up at her with mournful eyes that were a confirmation of her words. She put her wrist to his forehead, but she already could feel the heat coming from him. Bertha put her arm around him and led him into the apartment. She sat him in the kitchen and went to the bedroom to find the extra sheets she kept in the bottom drawer of the dresser and hastily made up the bed in their room that she had stripped just a few hours before. As soon as she finished, he moved gratefully from the kitchen to lie down in the freshly made up bed and fell into a restless sleep. Bertha could tell he was burning with fever.

About three hours later she heard, “Mama, we’re home!” from seven-year-old Katie as she opened the door to second floor railroad flat on West Front Street in Plainfield that she knew as home. It was a little after three thirty on this early autumn afternoon, and Katie and her little sister Ronnie had just climbed the stairs that led to the third floor landing That set of stairs had led to another door and a dark staircase they now mounted. Inside the doorway it was dark with no window opening on this side of the house. The stairway they had already climbed led up from the street entrance and had a warm, autumn afternoon light from the high windows that opened into a cavernous hall which led up from the front entrance below.

The front doorway was set back slightly from the street and shared a small stoop with angled entrances on the left and right to the grocery store and the other shop on the ground floor.

The grocery store on the floor below their flat was one of three that the Wilson family owned here in Plainfield. Up until last year her father had managed this store, but now her Uncle Miles had taken over managing it and had moved his family into the second floor apartment below the one on the third floor that Katie’s family lived in. Her parents, Bill and Bertha, had lived there since they were married in 1909 when her father managed the family grocery store. Now Bill had a small office in the back of that same store where he ran his real estate and insurance businesses.

“Come on, Pokie.” said Katie imperiously as she looked back at her little sister lagging behind.

Katie and Ronnie had walked by themselves home from St. Mary’s School. The walk was about a mile and a half from the school where Katie was in the second grade and Ronnie had just started the first grade. School had only been in session for about three weeks after the summer vacation. It was a pleasant enough walk on this early October day and a welcome release from the work of the classroom on a pleasant, autumn day like this one.

Sometimes after school got out for the day, Katie had to stop for piano lessons or wait for her sister Ronnie who was just starting lessons on the violin before heading home. They both went to music teachers near the school, but on different days so they waited for each other during lessons at Mrs. Lapin’s house, another relative in their close-knit family who lived near the school. But not today. It was Friday and they had made leisurely progress toward home, although Ronnie did tend to dawdle and be distracted which annoyed her older sister.

Last year Ronnie was not yet in school and Katie had made the trek with her cousin Miles who lived in the apartment below hers.They were almost the same age, two months apart and in the same class. Since Ronnie had started school this year and joined Katie on the walk her parents had told her it was her responsibility that her little sister Ronnie got home safely. And she was her “ little” sister. Although only thirteen months apart, Katie was much taller and had the more active personality. Getting her home was a big job. Ronnie could not find her way out of a paper bag and tended to get distracted by every bird or creature that crossed her path.

This year her cousin Miles had formed his own little posse with some of the boys. Today they had taken a different route. The boys tended to go off on short treks of their own which sometimes took them into yards or near the railroad tracks that her parents had told her to avoid. Kate had been up for that kind of adventure last year escaping the boundaries her parents had wisely set up. Now she had to toe the line or lose her sister who would surely not keep up and get lost somewhere.

When she heard the girls call out, Bertha came hastening from the kitchen past the dining room to the top of the stairs where she shushed them. Their little brother Billie was still taking a nap in the children’s bedroom off of the kitchen, but he should be about ready to get up now the way he usually did when his sisters came home from school. But her husband, Bill had gone to his sick bed in their bedroom which was near the top of the stairs and she did not want the children to disturb him.

Today, however, Katie saw there was a look of concern on her mother’s face and an added note of urgency in her calls for quiet.

“Your father is in the bedroom asleep.” she said in a hushed voice.

That was very unusual and Katie searched her mother’s face for some kind of explanation. “Daddy came upstairs from work early. He is very sick.”

Instead of eating lunch with her, she told them their father had gone right into the bedroom and lay down. She did not want to alarm them so she did not say he seemed to be overcome with a headache and fever that was also giving him the chills. He had said he ached all over.

Bertha had noticed his color was not good and he seemed to be starting a cold when he came home so tired from his K of C meeting last night which had worried her. Usually he came in in high spirits from one of those meetings, but not so last night. They were busy gathering smokes and chocolates for the “boys” in France and held the meeting despite the growing awareness of the worsening outbreak of flu all around them.

The men at the meeting had wisely kept the windows open despite the cool night air to avoid spreading the illness, and Bertha was afraid that had brought on the sickness. People had told her that was not how it spread, but she had a hard time believing that. Many people insisted that keeping the windows open would help them stay healthy and avoid the flu that was going around, but now she was not so sure. This sickness seemed to be spreading all around them like wild fire.

There had been many people around them who seemed to be suffering from the flu for a couple of weeks now. Concern was growing and distracting many from the continued effort to support the troops, the ones in training at Camp Dix and the ones who were already “over there”. Word had been circulating about the boys in Europe being hit with the flu and even some in the training camps at home, but great effort had been made to keep people focused on positive efforts to maintain the war efforts.

Katie’s Uncle Walt, another of her father’s brothers was a fighter pilot somewhere over there since last spring. Many had been hoping that the war would end before the United States became involved, but that had not proven to be the case. Early in September, her father’s youngest brother Leo, who had just turned eighteen in June, had left for training in the Merchant Marine which was being included in the war effort. That had taken him to Boston and there were many reports that the flu was rampant up there even before the emergency had been declared here in New Jersey on September the eighteenth.

The last couple of weeks had brought many reports of illness here at home. One of the clerk’s in the grocery store the Wilson family owned on the ground floor had been out sick since last week and another one had been taken ill yesterday. There were quarantine notices on many doors in the neighborhood. Bertha had already heard of some people that they knew who had lost family members. Unlike other flu outbreaks in the past, this seemed to be effecting young adults in their prime very seriously and sometimes very rapidly.

“Take your jacks and the chalk to draw hopscotch on the sidewalk and go play out front of the store. We will have supper in a little while.” Bertha said as she walked back into the kitchen and checked at the door to see if Billie was stirring from his nap.

Later, as she worked in the kitchen and Billie played on the floor, Bertha could hear the sounds coming up from the sidewalk below. It was clear from the many voices that rose up from below that more children had gathered outside including her niece and nephew, Miles and Marie from the floor below. She guessed that the baby Rita was in her playpen as her mother, Bertha’s sister-in-law Ella, prepared dinner for her family downstairs.

About 5:30 Bertha went to the bow window in the front room to check on the girls. Sure enough their cousins were there and a couple of the neighbor kids had joined them. “Katie! Ronnie! Come in and wash your hands. It’s time for supper.”

The girls noisily climbed up to the third floor and shushing them, she hustled them past the bedroom where Bill was still asleep and over to the kitchen sink to wash up. As she did so, she noticed that they each had some colored sugar around their mouths that needed wiping also. She knew that all they had to do was show their faces at the tall glass counter of the grocery store below and one of the clerks would hand them something…usually some penny candy.

She had asked the boys that worked there not to do that, but she knew it was a losing battle. The children knew all they had to do was stare pleadingly up at Al or Pete when one of them was free from working with a customer. No words were said and the wink they received told them their deal was struck. Bertha had other things on her mind and said nothing tonight although she knew that Ronnie’s appetite was not the best and she would have to be prodded to eat her stew. Katie was a different story. She would usually eat without any prodding.

She seated Katie and Ronnie on the far side of the enamel top table and put their stew in bowls in front of them. Billie was in his high chair on the side near the bedroom next to her. He was not interested in eating much. He had been cranky since his nap and she thought he too was starting with a cold.

Before sitting down herself, Bertha quietly opened the door to the bedroom to see how her husband Bill was doing. He was barely alert and did not want anything. She said she would bring him some tea later after the children had finished their meals.

Sitting there watching her brood she realized that she did not feel hungry either. She hoped that she was not coming down with something too. She had just started to get over the morning sickness that had afflicted her during July and August and part of September. She wondered why they called it morning sickness. It seemed to plague her throughout the whole day! Whenever she went down to the grocery store below to pick up something for dinner, she would be assaulted with smells that usually did not effect her when she was not pregnant. But now, that early period of pregnancy was over and she felt better although her waist had started to thicken and she knew she would have to choose her outfits more carefully. That was not a problem. She had suffered a miscarriage between Billie and this pregnancy and she was glad that those early days were behind her. Come the spring there would be another mouth to feed.

The next morning, Saturday, it became clear that Bill was very sick and his fever had elevated. He had had a hard night and she had slept in the front room so as not to disturb him when he did finally fall into a deep sleep although she woke up several times to check on him.
He suffered from asthma which made his breathing even more labored. She had gotten out the inhaler that he used to see if she could provide him some relief.

Recently Bill had taken a part time evening schedule as a train conductor to get away from this rural environment that seemed to effect his asthma during the day. He would take the night train in the evening that picked him up right in back of the apartment. He felt the cool night air in the more urban environment of Newark gave him some relief.

Now his breathing was very labored and she was worried. She hurried the girls outside to play. With Billie in her arms, she made her way down the back stairs to call the doctor and her mother-in-law at the other grocery store to ask for her help.

Billie whined in her arms as she made her way up to the third floor again. As she kissed his brow he felt warm. In a little while she would have to give both of her patients some cool alcohol rubs to bring down the fever and make them more comfortable. She knew the doctor would not be able to get there for a while. His wife had told her he was overwhelmed by calls.

The rest of that weekend was terrible. Katie and Ronnie were taken around the corner to their grandfather Colvin’s house on Clinton Ave. by Aunt Ursie, Bertha’s sister. Ursie had come over on Saturday afternoon with baby John and brought Katie and Ronnie home with her. That day and the next day Sunday the girls were shuffled between their grandfather Colvin’s house on Clinton Avenue and Aunt Mary Colvin Higgins’ house next door.

Bertha continued to care for husband and young Billie. Her mother-in-law, Kate Wilson, came over Saturday and Sunday afternoon to look in on them and offer advice. She gave the baby soothing alcohol rubs and tried to comfort him while Bertha looked after her husband who was suffering so horribly. Her brother-in-law Miles and his wife Ella came up from time to time from the apartment below to look in on them and try to offer as much comfort as possible.

By Wednesday, after five days in bed, Bill was feeling better and went downstairs to look in on his office and see if he could pull some things together. The grocery store was in disarray. Shelves had not been stacked and Miles, with the help of a couple of neighboring boys, met people at the locked doors and tried to fill their orders as people waited outside.

Miles looked exhausted and gave Bill the bad news. “As of last night Ella has been taken by the fever as she was trying to care for baby Rita.” Now they were next to each other in the same bed and his mother-in-law was keeping the two older kids away and trying to help out with the other chores.

Bill slumped back in his office chair. He was already exhausted. Shortly he headed upstairs to check in on his wife and son. Bertha was seated slumped over the kitchen table trying to get Billie to eat some lunch. Her head was throbbing and she feared that she was coming down with the flu. That filled her with dread. She was exhausted and very much afraid of what that would do to her and the new life she was carrying.

She put young Billie in for a nap and went into the bedroom room that Bill had recently vacated to lie down. Her mother-in-law, the elder Kate, had seen to it that there were freshly laundered sheets there yesterday. Bless her. She was a woman of both inner and outer strength who had seen much of life’s vicissitudes in her sixty years on earth.

About the same time the elder Kate, came up the front stairs. She had brought some meat and vegetables up from the store downstairs and put it in a pot on the stove for broth. She had feared that the nursing care that Bertha had taken on for her husband and son was taking a toll on her and being “in the family way” was wearing her down.

As she went about the kitchen moping up, she couldn’t help but fear the worst. It seemed to be happening all over. The mass at St. Mary’s Church was held outside last Sunday in the field near the church and the health department had ordered public gatherings to cease. There were to be no social gatherings even with the windows open as they were last week and the theaters, soda fountains and bars had been ordered to close. Most of the schools were still open, but some classes had no teachers and some of the older girls were being sent into the classrooms of the lower grades where the teachers were sick try to maintain some some learning, but with the high absenteeism that was probably not too effective.

Nearby, Muhlenburg hospital was filled to capacity and they had opened an annex which was filling up and overflowing onto the porch. Only the most critical patients were being admitted and the call had gone out for women who could to come to the hospital to assist the nurses with caring for so many ill patients. The high school principal had mustered some of the older boys to join men from the area who were helping out any way they could. They were running for supplies and helping with the laundry. With new cases being recorded every day and the death toll mounting, the end did not seem to be anywhere in sight. The campaign for selling war bonds was behind its goal because no one could get out to make the purchases which had started out so well.

This time Kate had brought her night clothes and a change of clothes for the next day because she had feared the worst. She now knew that she would be sleeping on the sofa in the living room to care for her pregnant daughter-in-law. She would also check in on her son Miles and his sick family in the apartment below.

That entire week it was apparent that Bertha was seriously ill. Kate was afraid that Bertha’s illness would turn into pneumonia as it had for so many others. And so she had stayed on in the apartment and left those at her home over the grocery store on West Third Street in the care of her daughter Mary and Jack’s young wife Liz. Liz’s baby Betty was only two and she did not want to spread the flu any further. Her son Bill was still recovering and doing what he could while running over to check on the two girls, Kate and Ronnie, who were still staying on Clinton Avenue with his in-laws. Another weekend had come and gone. All church service had been cancelled at St. Mary’s. They had planned on doing some field masses on Sunday, but even that was deemed too dangerous in light of the epidemic. The priests were being run to exhaustion caring for the sick and burying the dead. They had put out a call on Sunday for any men who could help at the cemetery to bring shovels, horses and other equipment to help dig graves.

By that Monday evening, Bertha’s condition only seemed worse. She had a very high fever and there were tell tale signs of blood from her nose and mouth. Downstairs, Miles’s wife Ella and baby daughter Rita were still sick. Elder Kate was up and down between the two apartments and both of her sons were trying to manage the businesses along with their sick families. Most of the employees were not coming in because they had been struck low with the illness.

It was not good and that Tuesday afternoon after the doctor left, Bill and his mother Kate agreed he had to send for an ambulance to take Bertha to the hospital. They were only admitting the most critical and the doctor had not given them much hope.

Bill stood leaning against the dresser and staring down at Bertha as she struggled to breathe, her head was propped against the pillows banked up against the headboard. The Birdseye Maple bed and other pieces were the latest in style and had been their first big purchase as a married couple. He ran his hand through his hair as he looked on now as it became the place of her suffering. They had barely been married for nine years. She was his soulmate.

The wedding had been a simple affair. Bertha’s mother had died suddenly shortly before the marriage was to take place. Her father insisted that she and Bill should go ahead with their plans to marry while she had felt that they should wait. Bertha was the oldest of seven children. Ursie, her only sister, was five and a half years younger and, at the tender age of fourteen, was barely ready to take on her mother’s role alone. Her sister was called Ursie, but she was really Catherine Ursula, named for her grandmother Catherine (Kate) Ralph Burke who had fled the famine in Ireland to sow a future for herself and her family in this land of promise. The youngest of her five brothers had just turned six a week before his mother’s death, but they were a close family and all lived within steps of one another. They would all watch out for one another. Her father Mike Colvin was the strong pillar of the family and did justice to his strong peasant stock.

Bertha and Bill had gone ahead with their plans to wed, but they married on a Tuesday afternoon and Bertha had worn grey in mourning for her mother who was only forty one when she died.

Now a new cloud seemed to be hovering over their future. They had three children and had already lost two more. The future for them all as well as this newest child that was due in the spring seemed in peril. Bill turned over the pewter hand mirror on the bureau. It bore her initials BCM. In it he gazed at his own sad reflection against the dimly lit ceiling of the bedroom. He put it down and fiddled unconsciously with the celluloid hair receiver box and nail buffer that Bertha kept there along with the mirror as he waited for word that the ambulance had arrived. Those items had been a gift from Bertha’s parents to mark her sixteenth birthday.

Bertha had been her young parents first child born at home in High Bridge in the aftermath of the blizzard of ‘88. They were so proud of the young woman she had become. Now her widowed father just fifty-three lived a short walk away down Clinton Avenue on the other side of the railroad tracks with his younger children and some other members of his extended family nearby.

Bill heard his wife’s labored breathing and saw the beads of sweat that had dampened her light brown hair against her brow. A knock on the third floor landing door alerted him to the arrival of the ambulance. He then heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs and knew the moment he had both awaited and dreaded was here.

Bill stepped into the light of the kitchen. His mother had gathered the girls in a corner of the kitchen as they huddled together aware of the worsening of their mother’s condition. Billie was asleep in his crib and their grandmother hoped he would stay that way. It would do him no good to be a part of this scene. He was just getting over his sickness and needed his rest.

The men looked solemn and weary as the mounted the last flight of stairs carrying a canvas stretcher that was attached to wooden poles. They all wore masks and it was apparent that they had had very little respite in the last few days. Ronnie stood with her small arms around her sister Katie and her mouth was open as she gazed at the men entering the kitchen. Katie glanced up at them and then sank deeper into the corner.

The men moved wordlessly in front of the kitchen door and into the bedroom following the gesture from Bill indicating where their patient was.

After hearing her mother moaning as she was shifted from her bed to the stretcher, Katie let out a wail and her grandmother Kate stood closer and held on to both girls’s hands. No child should have to see a scene like this, but she herself had witnessed many and worse in her sixty years on this earth. There seemed to be no end and little did she know that the fear that had plagued her for so many months that something would happen to a loved one overseas in France was about to be realized in a far worse way right here at home.

The next few days were a blur for her. . She was now running up and down the back stairs between the two apartments. Ella and baby Rita were still sick downstairs and Ronnie and Kate had fallen sick on the other floor the morning after their mother was taken to the hospital. Her son Miles had all he could do running between his sick family and trying to keep the store running for his customers who were managing so much sickness in their own families.

Bill was back and forth between home and the hospital and the outlook was grave. As the doctors had feared, the pneumonia was getting worse and she was not able to rally for herself and the new life she was carrying. Her young daughters had rallied and on Monday, almost a week after Bertha had entered the hospital, Bill gathered his three children for the drive to the hospital. The doctors had warned him that if he did not do so now she might not recognize them.

The scene was dreadful as Bertha tried to caress the three children as they were lifted up to her one at a time. When young Billie was lifted up she weakly uttered “Dear God, spare me for these, my babies! All of them.” It was not to be so. She died before the next morning.

Bill drifted through the next few days with a funeral to plan. They had been told that only the immediate family could attend the Mass to be held on Friday. Bertha’s father had his house made ready to receive his daughter’s body. She was dressed in her grey wedding gown and laid out in the living room.

The floral tributes were overwhelming. Bertha was a very active member of her parish, her children’s religious instruction and the work of the Daughters of Isabella, the women’s auxiliary of the Knights of Columbus. No one could enter the house except the immediate family, but as the horse drawn hearse arrived, many gathered on the sidewalk and in the driveway of Bertha’s Aunt Mary Higgins’ house next door. Bill guided the two girls out behind the coffin that contained their mother’s body followed by his parents and sister who carried Billie. Even the coffin had to be hastily constructed the demand had been so great for such things in the last few weeks.

Katie leaned into her father’s side as she walked beside him. She was very aware of the weight of this moment, but Ronnie, a year younger, waved to the crowd that had gathered and was hastily corralled by her father into the wagon for the family. It took a while for the men, some of them her uncles to secure the coffin and mound up the flowers that had been sent in tribute. With that the family headed for the church for first of the three funerals that they would endure in the next two weeks. Bill’s brother Miles died by week’s end and during his funeral, his brother Jack’s young wife passed away. She was buried on November 11th as Armistice Day was being celebrated in the streets around them. Walt and his brother Leo who had joined the fighting were spared, but Bill, Bertha’s husband had several relapses and died a year later.

More people died from the Spanish Flu during that outbreak than died in all the wars in Europe. This kind of explains why young Kate, later my mother, was such a fanatic for washing hands and covering your mouth when you coughed or sneezed.

Contributed by Catherine W. Ryan, granddaughter of Bertha and Bill, daughter of Katie. Finished Dec 2, 2018