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| Remembering the 1918 flu epidemic through some voices from the past Julia Allen McCullers, who grew up in Smithfield and returned home in later years where she and her husband Earl resided until moving to Raleigh's Springmoor retirement community several years ago, recalls what her mother told her about the horrible flu epidemic of 1918 that killed 675,000 Americans and perhaps 50-million persons worldwide. She shared those memories with fellow Springmoor residents a couple of years ago: My
mother, who was a school girl in 19l8, recalled
that everyone in her family --- seven siblings and
both parents --- were sick at one time. Her mother
would creep from her bed in the morning to make a
big pot of oatmeal to sustain those who were able
to eat, and the neighbors milked the cow and
placed the milk on the front porch --- but did not
dare come in to check on them. She said that a
relentless headache was the symptom she remembered
best. A hassled country doctor did make one visit,
and although he could not do much for them, he
left an envelope of little white pills that seemed
to help with the dreadful headaches. They were
aspirin tablets --- the first the stricken family
had ever seen or heard of. I have no theories
as to why that family survived and so many others
lost one or multiple members.
 A member of the Johnston County Heritage Commission before moving to Raleigh, Mrs. McCullers portrayed a local victim of the 1918 flu epidemic during the Heritage Center's annual Ghost Walk at Riverside Cemetery in 2011. Here's a goodly portion of her script for that presentation: My name is
Rowena Helms Rand, but my friends have always
called me Ronie. I was born in 1865, the year
the Civil War ended. I grew up
here in Smithfield and married Tom Rand in
1899. Tom had a good job as overseer of the
brickyard. When our first
baby came along, it was a
sweet little girl that we named Charity. But in
November of 1906, just when the cold weather
began, our sweet Charity came down with a
terrible sore throat and high fever. The
doctor said she had diphtheria, and there
wasn’t much he could do to help her. There was
no hospital closer than Raleigh. Listening to her
struggle to breathe was awful, just awful. I
still can’t talk about it without crying. Our
little girl died in my arms. She was only
six years old.... Tom and I had
two other little girls, and they were the joy
of our lives. But in the fall
of 1918, something even more deadly than
diphtheria was making the rounds. World War
I had the whole world turned upside down, with
people going every which way, and Spanish
Influenza came to even the most isolated
places in the world. It came to
Smithfield and Johnston County... and almost
every home had somebody sick inside. Our
house was no exception. First, our sweet
little girls were sick: high fevers, terrible
headaches, racking coughs, sore throats. When
they began to get better they were as pale as
ghosts and as weak as kittens. Tom, my husband,
had to go to Norfolk on business. While he was
there, he fell sick with influenza too, and he
was in the hospital up in Norfolk for over a
week. He
couldn’t come home, even though things were
very bad at our house. In the
meanwhile, while I was still nursing our dear
little girls, I suddenly felt dizzy and weak
and burning up with fever. Some of the saintly
Smithfield ladies who had volunteered to help
the Red Cross during the epidemic came into my
house and nursed the girls and me the best
they knew how. There were no
magic drugs, no hospital, and few trained
nurses to help the handful of doctors who were
working day and night, making house calls to
the countless hundreds of people who were
sick. My flu turned
into pneumonia, and I died at home. I was
buried right here in this old Riverside
Cemetery. I
was 53 years old. My husband and
children lived, and one of my daughters,
Pauline, went up to New York City to train at
Bellevue Hospital to become a nurse. I think
that what she saw in 1918 during the flu
epidemic inspired her to choose a career in
nursing. I’ve heard that
millions and millions of people died of
influenza in 1918. Can you believe it? I can
vouch for how awful it was, but for that many
people around the world to die of the same
disease ---
well, it’s just hard to believe! You folks (at the Ghost Walk) may some day face another epidemic. Let’s hope and pray that history will not repeat itself. |
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