The Spanish Flu

If there was one thing that struck fear into the hearts of the Italian community it was the flu. The flu swept through towns like the plague. It seemed to travel on the wind. People who would be walking down the street perfectly fine, in hours would be dead.  It seemed to hit young adults to middle aged the hardest. It was a terrible disease. When you thought the person was over the worst and getting better they would suddenly take a turn for the worst and die of suffocation because of respiratory failure.  My grandmother Carmella was hit the hardest. In 1918, her two sons, Anthony (the baby at that time,) and Nicholas (in his late teens) were struck with the flu. Anthony died within days of respiratory failure after it appeared he was getting better. Nicholas survived but never fully recovered due to respiratory and heart problems and died later. Carmella was emotionally crippled and would walk up the hill to the church cemetery and cry on a daily basis for her lost children. As was the practice at that time they were buried out of the home. The funeral director would come to the house and embalm on the spot. My Aunt Jerry said that she and her sisters would stand and watch him do his work. She said she turned to her relatives and said her brother was going to get up and walk away. They would have an Italian wake for 3 days at the house. The priest came to the home and the services were held there and from that point the body was carried to the cemetery for burial.