Family of Flu Survivors.

Grays Ferry, South West Philadelphia.

My grandmother, Margaret (nee Hannigan) McGuire, and her sister, Mary Agnes (nee Hannigan) O’Brien, both survived the 1918 flu. My grandmother’s family lived at 2518 Dickinson Street.

My mother, Catherine Bittle, is 89 years old and has never had the flu. I think her mother passed on some kind of super immunity to her. I am 57 and have had the flu only twice in my life. (One of those times was after receiving a flu vaccine when I was in college, the one and only time in my life that I got a flu shot, so I have never gotten a flu vaccine again.) I recall a flu epidemic when I was a child (1968-69 “Hong Kong” flu) when every member of our family and most people in our neighborhood were sick. My mother and I were among the few who did not get sick. Again, I am crediting my grandmother.

Contributed by Cynthia Bittle, Grand Daughter of Margaret Hannigan McGuire.