“His fellow kitchen mates decided that if they sent him to the infirmary that he might die there, so they kept him warm by the stove.”

Sugar Hill, NH & Georgia

My grandfather, Homer Aldrich lived in Sugar Hill, NH with his parents and four siblings. In 1918, Grandpa was stationed at an Army base in Georgia.  I don’t know which one, Grandpa didn’t really like to talk about his time in the army. He got a telegram in the fall of that year from his mother asking him to come home. His oldest sister, Blanche Aldrich Hibbard, had gotten the flu. Sugar Hill is a tiny place up near the Vermont border, but it got to her. She was pregnant at the time. Both she and the baby died. Grandpa took the train home all the way from Georgia and then he had to take the train all the way back. And somewhere along the way, he got the virus too. He had been working in the kitchen at the base and his fellow kitchen mates decided that if they sent him to the infirmary, that he might die there so they kept him warm by the stove and he managed to survive. He was too sick,however, to be sent overseas so he never did go to war. He went back home to Sugar Hill and survived many more harrowing scrapes as a farmer and carpenter. He died there as an old, old man and is now buried in Sunnyside cemetery with his sister Blanche and everyone else they ever knew. 

Story contributed by Dorothy Lagrimas, Granddaughter of Homer Aldrich