I was reading the Washington Post this morning and came across an article discussing a study showing that the blood of those who survived the 1918 flu pandemic were still producing antibodies 90 years later. It's a very interesting article. As I was reading, I remembered I had planned to write a post about this pandemic because I recently discovered my father's mother and older brother (Joseph Agazio) both got sick in 1918, but I just never really got around to writing it.
The only information I have on how the 1918 flu affected my family came in a story passed to me by my cousin. Apparently both my grandmother and uncle had this flu, and unfortunately my uncle died after only a few months of life. I'm not sure if my grandmother was sick while she was pregnant, or caught it afterwords, but she survived to have my father a couple of years later (fortunately for me). All I know of my uncle is he was born sometime in 1918, died the same year, and is buried somewhere in Boulder County. I find it curious I never heard anything about this story while growing up, and didn't even know I had an uncle named Joseph. I'm going to be visiting my brother in Colorado for 3 days in September and I plan on trying to find and take photos of Joseph's grave. I know the family was living in the town of Lafayette during the 1920 census while my grandfather worked as a coal miner, so this will be my starting point.
I found a few links to information on the 1918 flu pandemic (AKA Spanish Flu) you may find interesting:
The Great Pandemic - Department of Health and Human Services
Spanish Flu - Wikipedia
The 1918 Flu Epidemic - Gena's Genealogy (a fellow genea-blogger with interesting links on the subject)
Spanish Influenza Much Like Grippe - New York Times, September 22, 1918
New Influenza Cases Doubled - New York Times, September 28, 1918
85,000 In Bay State Ill With Influenza - New York Times, September 30, 1918
