She was convinced they were spared because they lined their windows and door jams with onions.

Harrisburg, PA

Here is the story my grandmother, Helen Eckert Fry, told me on how she and her family survived the 1918 pandemic when neighbors and friends died on both sides of their home.

In 1918 she lived in Harrisburg Pa. She was 19 years old, married and a mother of a newborn, my aunt. They lived with her parents and her younger siblings. She was convinced they were spared because they lined their windows and door jams with onions. She also made poultices from onions and they all wore them around their necks. They moved to Philadelphia where I was born. We always had raw onions with our evening meal. She ate raw onion sandwiches every week and was 90 when she died. My mother, her second child is 98 now and attributes her good health from eating raw onion sandwiches weekly too. She also has never had the flu vaccine due to egg allergies. 

My grandmother was Pa Dutch and I believe practiced pow wowing. She often sent me to vacant lots to hunt for milkweed to treat her warts and was a firm believer in rubbing gold on her lip whenever she felt a fever blister starting. I always joked with her saying they didn’t get sick because no one would get close to them due to the onion smell that floated off of them! In around 1921 they moved to Dryville and then 1926 to Kutztown and then 1942 to Philadelphia first to the Crescentville neighborhood and finally Burholme.

Contributed by Mary Lou Gross, Granddaughter of Helen Eckert Fry.