Rose Riegelhaupt (1906–1984) grew up in the Jewish community of Poughkeepsie, New York. She wrote this memoir, which was recently discovered in an old box of her papers, sometime in the late 1970s.
IT WAS THE YEAR 1918. It was a year of hell and devastation—the year of the Spanish flu.
I was 11 years old and had just moved to Poughkeepsie with my father and mother, my younger sister, and two baby brothers. By some good fortune we had all escaped any vestige of the flu, because the small town from which we came, in Washington County, on the border with Vermont, was free and clear of the bug which seemed to plague the big cities.
Convinced that it was the fresh air which protected us, my aunts who lived in Poughkeepsie rejoiced at our good health. To make doubly sure that the evil infection would stay away, they placed around each of our necks a cloth bag containing a large slab of camphor on a string. The camphor, they assured us, would ward off the bad germs.
After moving into our new apartment over the summer, my father opened his tailor shop. My sister and I tried to enroll at public school in the fall, but we attended for only a few short weeks. Hysteria had taken possession of the city. Ravaged by flu, the city closed its schools and movies and places of public gathering. Bars and restaurants closed. Fear clutched at everyone’s heart.
The disease, for some reason, seemed to strike at teenagers and the young. It hit with lightning speed. In a few days—often in 24 or 36 hours—it was all over, in spite of superhuman efforts by doctors. Pneumonia set in; there were no antibiotics. The death toll was high. We learned that it was a pandemic, sweeping the entire world, and that it had started with the soldiers in World War I and made its way through every country, like the Grim Reaper, cutting his swaths for harvest. Was it any wonder the people of Poughkeepsie trembled?
One day my friend Natalie met me in the street and told me the terrible news: “You know Bea Cohen, whose sister Gertie is in our class? Well, she died of flu, and was ill for only two days, believe it or not.” I burst into tears.
“Of course I knew Bea!” I exclaimed. I think she was just 18—a beautiful girl and so sweet. She had just graduated from high school and was engaged to be married to David Stein. Natalie wiped tears from her eyes.