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People expected the flu to kill a handful of victims. They expected babies to succumb, and the elderly, and the sickly. This was a sad, normal part of life. Still, Modern Medicine was conquering mountains, and an improved grasp of sanitation and inoculation had lessened the blow of most diseases. Prompt action and modern methods could likely contain the damage of any new epidemic. But not this time.

Earlier in the year, most likely around the Fort Riley military base in Kansas, a fairly strong flu virus arose. It crossed the Atlantic with the troops bound for French trenches. Upon reaching Europe, the virus spread quickly, where it took on the name “Spanish flu” because the Spanish newspapers were the only ones reporting on its journey.

With World War I winding down, the disease accompanied returning troops back home. By early September, it was in Boston, where it had mutated into something far more deadly. There it branched out from seaports to military bases, along the railroads to major cities, reaching the smaller venues, seeping down the lines like a poison, exploding out around the towns and railroad stations.

Friday, October 4, 1918, The Newberry News reported on mundane matters. Nearly three thousand had attended the Luce County Fair, drawn to its exhibits, baseball games, and horse racing. Visitors came from all over the eastern peninsula, including Seney, St. Ignace, the Soo, Marquette, and Manistique. St. Gregory’s choir held a dinner party. The Red Cross organized a community singing class. Mrs. H. E. Smith gave a going-away party for Mrs. F. J. Park. Six young recruits left for the training school in Ann Arbor. The prospects of the University of Michigan’s football team were weighed and found to be “anything but brilliant.”

True, brief snippets of “news from around the state,” mentioned the death-by-flu of three Michigan soldiers at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station outside Chicago. Such things happened in wartime. There was no other mention of the epidemic. It was, after all, nearly 400 miles away.

Yet, even as the paper was going to press, that optimistic October day, death had struck Ruby Blankinship. She was a twenty-year-old widow with two small children living with her in-laws, the Philip Blankinship family. Her husband, Charles, had died in a freak accident only a few weeks previously, scalded to death at the charcoal plant.

Three days earlier, both Ruby and her mother-in-law, Lillie, had sickened. Now Ruby was dead and her children were orphans. Spanish flu had arrived. Lillie Blankinship died the next day. Goldie Blankinship Stone, a five-month bride whose husband was overseas, was the third to die, along with her premature baby. Then Mrs. Grace Stoll, Philip’s niece, died, too. She was twenty-three years old and had a one-year-old daughter.

Immediately, the Board of Health ordered all schools, churches, theaters, and pool halls closed. Lodge and club meetings were forbidden. It was too little, too late. Within the next six days, more than 100 additional people had fallen sick. And twenty-five more at the State Hospital.

But town residents did not yet realize the danger. Funerals were still being held, complete with out-of-town visitors, and the circuit court still planned on judging cases the following week. After the schools were ordered closed, several teachers even took up temporary positions with the Horner Flooring Company and other factories.

In any case, work at the Horner plant soon was crippled by a worker shortage. The Dollarville mill and the furnace were forced to close outright, and the flu was “raging among both the patients and attendants” in the State Hospital. Entire families were stricken, leaving no one to care for the sick “as it is impossible to secure nurses.”

By Thursday, October 17, four teenagers, an infant, and a three-year-old boy also had died and panic was spreading. The avalanche of death had begun. “There is a profound air of sadness and depression over the city, and business of all kinds is at a practical standstill,” lamented the paper.

It was a sudden disease, a “swiftly spreading malady.” A person could be fine at dawn and dead by dusk. And while the hale and hearty fellow was still feeling fine, before he showed any symptoms at all, he would have spread the virus to other victims. Beginning with cough, high fever, chills, and “catarrh” (a Victorian term for inflammation of the throat), this particular flu soon turned violent. Victims bled from the nose, mouth, and ears. The lungs filled with blood, and patients suffocated and choked themselves to death. Those who survived the initial run of the disease—those who seemed to be on the mend—often would then come down with pneumonia and die anyway.

One of the most frightening aspects of this particular flu was just whom it struck down. The vast majority of deaths were between the ages of fifteen and thirty-five. Young adults were not expected to die. Stolid, solid, healthy, hearty, husky souls in the prime of life were supposed to shake off illness. They had already successfully escaped the ravages of childhood disease. They were teens and twenty-somethings, newlyweds and young parents. They were popular fellows like twenty-nine-year-old Howard Reynolds, a local baseball star, a “trained athlete.” He died a few days after his wife, orphaning two small sons.

Young people were not supposed to die. Yet they did, by the score. The very heartiness of their immune systems betrayed them, launching such a violent counterattack against the virus that the ensuing battles literally tore the lungs apart. The disease was violent and baffling and mysterious. No one knew how to stop it. No one knew how to treat it.

Newberry at that time had several beloved doctors: Dr. Bohn, Dr. Perry, Dr. Gibson of the village, several doctors at the State Hospital, and a dozen or so trained nurses. They were all overwhelmed.

Because of World War I being fought at the time, the country as a whole suffered from a shortage of doctors and nurses. Many of the best and brightest had been enticed, drafted, and shanghaied into the army and were still serving overseas. Those left did their best. Dr. Gibson and Dr. Bandy (of the state hospital) became ill themselves. So did Mrs. Catherine McLeod, head of the local Red Cross. Professional nurses Minnie Hall, Mary Catherine Reardon, and Cora McLeod abandoned their city careers, hurrying home to help friends and family. Mary Catherine Reardon would catch flu herself and die. So did Katherine Simmet, a State Hospital nurse.

The State Board of Health sent what additional doctors it could spare. Three doctors arrived from Marquette and soon were joined by six medical students from Detroit. Together, they fitted up the John Street Grade School as a temporary hospital. There, nineteen more succumbed. When the school proved inadequate, the doctors commandeered the Newberry Hotel, a new, three-story brick building, for its replacement. The new hospital held sixty beds. They were needed; Luce County racked up twenty-five more deaths over the next week.

No one knew what to do. Theories abounded, of course. A “traveling man” recommended hot lemonade, bed rest, and a concoction of Castor oil and manganese sulphate. Everyone wore a paper mask, even though “the good doctors disagree as to its effectiveness.” Residents of the Soo drank up all the whiskey in town. According to family lore, Philip Blankinship, in a desperate attempt to save his remaining family, brewed up a “horrific” tasting “pine pitch tonic” that he fed to his surviving children twice a day.

Meanwhile, the Board of Health printed inane rules about breathing through one’s nose, keeping clothes clean and loose, and chewing food well. They urged parents to keep their children at home and ordered quarantine on homes where the influenza raged—but only after pneumonia appeared. “Why,” asked the incredulous paper, “… wait until pneumonia develops before establishing a quarantine? Why not quarantine the ‘Flu’ at once?” Later, the Board distributed a free serum “which is claimed to be a preventative after three treatments.” And yet, and yet, sighed the paper, “the doctors and health officers are all at sea” with “many divergent opinions as to its cause, and the proper treatment.” By November 1, more than 250 cases were in the county.

By early November, the horror began to abate. The first week saw only seven deaths. The second week had only five. The virus had moved beyond the town and was flaring in the surrounding communities, farms, townships, and lumber camps. Doctors sent their critical cases into the Newberry “hospital,” which was “crowded to its capacity, new cases being brought in as fast as room is made by the departure of convalescent patients.”

Still, slowly, the virus declined. Churches and schools were reopened by November 18, and the emergency hospital officially closed November 29. The disease rallied in December and January and gave a parting shot of a half-dozen or so more deaths. Then it was over. It had been “a long dreary siege that depressed the spirits of the old and young alike.”

Dozens of men and women were widowed. Six pregnant women gave premature birth, and all six died, while none of the babies lived past a year. More than twenty-five children lost their mothers, several lost their fathers, and six were outright orphaned altogether. Three Newberry soldiers—Reamie Geoffrey, Francis Pelletier, and Lee Morrill—died far from home (Lee’s younger brother, Charles, working in Petoskey, also died).

Phil Blankinship, as seen, lost a wife, daughter, daughter-in-law, and niece. Mr. and Mrs. Howard Reynolds both died, as did Mr. and Mrs. Edward Switzer. Brothers Charles and George Houghtelling died within days of each other. Moses and Lizzie Beaver, then working in Germfask, lost three children and a newborn grandson. The county was out $10,000 in costs. Mr. Campbell had to have his entire hotel “thoroughly disinfected, scrubbed and cleaned from cellar to garret” with all the bedding “put through a sterilizing process.”

It was a horrible time and a sobering rebuke to the spirit of progress.