It was about this time of year in 1918 that this terrible event occurred:\ The Great Flu Epidemic of 1918 By Frank Green In the fall of 1918 a great catastrophe swept down on the Peninsula. No one incident, before of since, took as many lives in such a short time as the Great Influenza Epidemic of 1918. The epidemic supposedly started at an Army base in Kansas and quickly spread across the country, taking hundreds of thousands of lives. The Spanish Influenza of 1918 was a particularly virulent stain. The disease first appeared on the Peninsula at the many military bases. The drafty confined quarters offered a rich environment for the flu to quickly spread. Soon the civilian population became infected. The flu first made ins appearance in Newport News in mid September. Days later it was reported in Hampton, Elizabeth City County, Phoebus, York County, James City County and Williamsburg. It soon reached such proportions that schools and other public buildings were ordered closed. In early October, the State Board of Health ordered that all public meetings were forbidden. Also by early October, reports of people infected with Spanish Influenza increased to about 100 a day. This quickly overwhelmed the local hospitals and schools and other buildings were requisitioned for emergency hospitals. Deaths were coming at an alarming rate. Nearly every obituary noted that deceased passed away from Spanish Influenza or sometimes called the gripp. There were many obituaries that just noted unidentified white male or unidentified black male etc. People were dying were they lay. Funeral directors soon ran out of caskets and had to build them by hand. Soon the C&O railroad arrived with cars filled with new caskets. As many as 50 victims were removed by trains to Western areas for burial. Newport News city council reported on October 8, 1918 that there were nearly 8000 cases in the city. There were 3500 reported at the shipyard alone. The flu was so wide spread and affected so many people that it even caused a lowering in the area’s crime rate. On October the 18th the City of Richmond reported 51 deaths in a 24-hour time span. York County was also one of the areas that suffered in the flu epidemic. John H. Coke, a student at Fork Union Military Academy was one of the first York natives to succumb to the flu. He was only 19 years old and the son of Mr. and Mrs. W.P. Cooke of Yorktown. The munitions plant at Penniman had a ratio of deaths. Many of these people were from out of state and doing war work there. It was almost impossible to get them home after death. The owner of Bucktrout Funeral home in Williamsburg had to set aside a part of his land at the intersection of Griffin Street and Newport Avenues a cemetery for flu victims who came from Penniman. Bucktrout reported taking in 91 bodies from October to December 1918. On October 13th, it was reported that a local Williamsburg undertaker had to requisition a truck in order to haul the bodies from Penniman for burial. The Dupont Company paid the expenses for the burial of its employees. York County itself had several people die of the Spanish Influenza. Stanley Wornom and his wife Neva Burcher Wornom were both stricken with the flu. Stanley died and his funeral at Providence Methodist Church was held outside, because people were afraid to go in the church for fear that being inside would make them more likely to catch the flu from another person. His grave remained open with the expectation that Neva would soon follow him in death. She recovered and remarried. One of the amazing stories to come from York County during the time of the influenza epidemic was that of Dr. L. O. Powell. Accompanied by Dare native Julia Butler, Dr. Powell worked for as many as twenty hours a day, for as many as ten days straight. Thelma Hansford remembered that he would give a patient two pills; a brown one and a green one. She figured that the brown one was creosote and the green one was aspirin, a fairly new drug at the time. While she did not get the flu, both of her parents did and both survived. What is truly amazing was that Dr. Powell did not lose a single patient during the entire epidemic. (I remember as a small child, Doctor Powell, then in his eighties making a house call to see me). It was reported in January 1919, that in October 1918 alone, 5999 Virginians died of the flu. By December 1918, the flu began to abate somewhat, but remained well into 1919. The Spanish flu epidemic finally subsided when humans began to build a natural immunity to the disease.
Posted on: Fri, 19 Sep 2014 23:02:22 +0000
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