6 Scientific American, March 2021LETTERS
[email protected]FORGOTTEN TRAGEDY
I read “The Pandemic We Forgot,” Scott
Hershberger’s article on the 1918 influenza
pandemic, and noted your call for stories
at the end of the online version about an-
cestors who experienced it.
Among the 675,000 people in the U.S.
who lost their lives 102 years ago were near-
ly all of my great-grandmother’s immediate
family. Both of her parents and a brother
died. Her first husband and their one-year-
old daughter died the same day in October
1918 and were buried together in the same
coffin. At the age of only 22, she was preg-
nant with her second child, a son who
would never know his father. She also had
to raise her younger siblings who survived.
This happened in Oklahoma, a state that
is currently dealing with spikes of COVID-
and very sporadic mask compliance—with
no statewide mandate in place. It’s demor-
alizing that a century after the 1918 pan-
demic, I have to ask: What have we learned?
Shannon Leigh O’Neil via e-mail
The collective “forgetting” of the 1918 pan-
demic Hershberger describes rang true for
me and my family. My 91-year-old grand-
mother told me that her father (my great-
grandfather, Georg Monsen) survived the
pandemic but that his older brother, the
older brother’s wife and their two kids all
died of it. I’ve been alive for four decades
and am close to my grandmother, but I nev-
er heard any of this history until now. Plus,she said that her father had hearing loss for
the rest of his life because of the effects of
that flu, as did other members of the fam-
ily who had it but survived. This all took
place in western Norway, where my grand-
mother is originally from.
Tabitha Grace Mallory
Henry M. Jackson School of International
Studies, University of WashingtonMy grandfather died in the second wave of
the pandemic on September 24, 1918. He
was 26 and otherwise very healthy. My
grandmother was deeply affected by his
death, and she always seemed to believe
that she could have done more to save him.
This made her deeply anxious about the
health of everyone in the family and espe-
cially me, as I was given his name. I always
hid any cold that I had from her. In lots of
ways, my grandfather’s death reverberated
through the generations. His name was
Samuel Rubinson, born August 15, 1892.
Samuel Guttenplan
Professor emeritus of philosophy,
Birkbeck, University of LondonRegarding the lack of collective memory, I
had the same question when I heard of the
pandemic and discovered my grandmoth-
er had died during it. It was the only fami-
ly story ever told about her. Gone at 38,
leaving five small children. My father was
nine years old. My 2010 book Influenza and
Inequality: One Town’s Tragic Response to
the Great Epidemic of 1918 covers the epi-
demic in one small town: Norwood, Mass.
It has dozens of personal stories from sur-
vivors, families and descendants.
I believe that this lack of collective
memory is linked in large part to the pop-
ulation of victims: the majority were young,
foreign-born and poor. Like today, those
who could afford to stay home and avoid
infection were the privileged. Then, as now,it was marginal communities—those who
lived and worked in hazardous environ-
ments and lacked medical access—who
were struck down. Who was going to me-
morialize young poor immigrants? Let us
hope today’s victims will not be so invisible
and easily forgotten.
Patricia J. Fanning Professor emeritus
of sociology, Bridgewater State UniversityMy dad would have been about 16 years old
when the 1918 influenza both took his own
father’s life and sickened him. I was a child
when he told me that, as the disease faded,
“all [his] hair fell out.” In 1920 my father—
with, by then, an abundant resupply of
hair—entered the U.S. Naval Academy. No
doubt at least some of his classmates were
also influenza survivors. I’m in clined to be-
lieve that in the process of bonding with one
another, they would have shared their “col-
lective memories” of experiencing “the flu.”
At age 75, I’m at the tail end of those
who were spared by vaccination from the
terrible scourges of smallpox, tetanus and
diphtheria. But we had to risk the compli-
cations of illnesses now rarely seen in the
developed world: measles, rubella, chick-
en pox, mumps, polio. Such experiences
have certainly generated moments of col-
lective memory.
Elizabeth R. Hatcher Topeka, Kan.EDITORS’ NOTE: Read unabridged versions
of these letters and several others about
people whose ancestors were affected by the
1918 flu pandemic at http://www.scientificamerican.
com/1918-pandemic-lettersSPACE WAR TRASH
In “Orbital Aggression,” Ann Finkbeiner dis-
cusses options for avoiding conflicts in
space. But she does not address the ques-
tion of whether any such space war would
be inherently self-defeating. Even if a war in
Earth orbit was entirely one-sided, with the
“enemy” not retaliating, the creation of large
amounts of new orbiting debris from delib-
erate satellite destruction could become
self-propagating. An attacker could find ac-
cess to orbital space denied to all countries,
including itself, because of an ever escalat-
ing cascade of debris-satellite collisions—
making any space war a mutual-assured de-
struction of the orbital environment.
Mark Protsik San Jose, Calif.“It ’s demora l i zi n g
that a century after
the 1918 pandemic,
I have to ask: What
have we learned?”
shannon leigh o’neil via e-mailNovember 2020LETTERS
[email protected]