1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic Memories

In this story a woman reflects on the stories her grandmother told her of the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic. Here is an excerpt:

My grandmother lived through the Great War, the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, World War Two, the cultural revolution of the ’60s and three decades beyond.

There was little that could threaten her nerve but until the day she died, Marie Starace was afraid of two things. One was lightning. The other was “The Grip” — the deadly flu that wreaked havoc on the Brooklyn, New York, neighborhood where she was born and raised.

So vivid were her memories of the influenza pandemic of 1918-19 that whenever she saw us with open coats and throats exposed to the cold, she would gravely warn: “Button up or you’ll get the grip.”

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Memories of 1918 flu pandemic haunt 21st century