Remembering the effect of another pandemic

Spanish Flu 1 Minute

Gadfly’s maternal grandfather, George F. Coxe, garage foreman, died in the Spanish Flu pandemic, 1918, age 30, when my mother was five, precipitating a family slide into poverty and alcoholism that lasted decades.

This picture and this document is literally all I know about him. He disappeared from history. Leaving a gap in my DNA. Not even a gravestone to visit.

George Coxe picture

George Coxe death certificate

Has your family “escaped” such outbreaks? Ebola? H1N1? AIDS? Asian Flu? Polio?

What stories do you have to tell?

Would you share?

Published by The Bethlehem Gadfly

Edward J. Gallagher, Bethlehem immigrant, retired, nearly 50 years as Professor of American Literature at Lehigh University, known as "Dr. G" and "Conan the Grammarian" to students, whose virtual world avatar "EdwardScholarhands" stares at you here, has reinvented himself as the Bethlehem Gadfly.

Published

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