CORONAVIRUS, A MIRROR OF DAYS PAST

The 1918 influenza pandemic (January 1918 – December 1920); Also known as the Spanish flu, was a deadly pandemic, It infected 500 million people around the world, or about 27% of the then world population of between 1.8 and 1.9 billion people, including people on isolated places such as the Pacific Islands and in the Arctic. The death toll is estimated to have been anywhere from 17 million to 50 million people, and possibly as high as 100 million World-wide, making it one of the deadliest epidemics in human history.

Grandpa Joe, coming to America on the Italian passenger liner Madonna, sailing out of Genoa, Italy, arrived on the shores of the promised-land and met my grandmother Francesca through a friend, Felix, or as we knew him: Zio Felice, Grandma’s older brother.

Grandpa Joe was an industrious man who took no one’s guff and was as tough as nails. His dream was to start a business and make it as prosperous as the prejudice world of the 20th Century would allow an Italian to do. After marrying Francesca, Giuseppe started a fruit and vegetable store, operating out of a storefront and finding a respectable apartment in Brooklyn. At this point, he now had three children with Francesca, my dad, my aunt Angelina, and my uncle Joe.

When war came to America, he and his new best friend Raffiello, immediately enlisted in the US Army, leaving behind his wife and children to prove he was an American and belonged here. Both fought on the fields of France and returned to the USA when peace was declared. Grandpa was mustered out of the army, but almost immediately came into contact with the world pandemic known as the Spanish flu.

Lying in a hospital bed not far from his home, he was very sick but as sick as he was, he was restless and pined for his Francesca and three little children. In the mid-winter of 1920, a blizzard hit the New York Metropolitan area. As the snow rose in feet and the winds packed their punch, the cold air was at its lowest, and Grandpa had enough. He decided to climb out of the hospital window and walk the blocks to his home. The driving winds and cold, the snow almost up to his hips, he found his way home where he collapsed, and a few days later, he died from pneumonia. All this occurred a hundred years ago.

He left the World with a widowed mother and three small children, one of them less than a month old! He was an Italian with a qualifier: American.