We Didn’t Ask Our Parents About World War II – Or Our Grandparents About the Spanish Flu

As our parents in the Greatest Generation have died, we have berated ourselves for not asking them what it was like during World War II.  Not just our fathers, who went to war, but also our mothers, who stayed at home.¹ 

But as coronavirus/Covid-19 spreads, I am feeling another missed opportunity:  Not only did we fail to ask our parents about what it was like during World War II, we didn’t ask our grandparents or great-grandparents what it was like during World War I² and the Spanish Flu.   The Spanish Flu is estimated to have killed 50 million people around the world from January 1918 to December 1920, including 675,000 in the United States.  The former was double the number of deaths in World War I.  The latter was more than five times the number of deaths the United States suffered in the war. 

And yet, we didn’t ask them the questions that we can’t help thinking about today: 

• What was it like to have 675,000 people die out of a population of 92 million?
• Did they know anybody who died from the Spanish Flu?  Or who got the Spanish Flu but recovered?
• What did the government do – or not do?  Was it the federal government or state government or some other level?
• How much fear was there?  How afraid were they?
• Did they worry about a relative or friend getting sick?  What happened if (when-?) they did?
• Finally, how did they get through it? 

While we didn’t ask them these questions, what we know is that they did get through it.  And so will we.  While we might not know how we will get through it, they didn’t know how they were going to get through it, either, when they were in the middle of it. 

But if we could go back in time and ask them that question now, I think what they might say is that, if we spend our time helping each other, instead of complaining and criticizing each other, we will get through it faster – or at least it will seem like we are.
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¹ We were lucky that, when our son was in elementary school, he had an assignment to ask somebody about what it was like during World War II.  So he asked his grandmother.  While I was not smart enough to ask her myself, I was smart enough to make a videotape of what she told him.
² My wife’s aunt, who was about ten during World War I, did talk about the anti-German feeling in America, even (or maybe especially) in a city like Chicago with a large German population.

Comments

[Susan Allen]

I didn't know you made a videotape of what Grandma told him. That is great. I want to listen to it.