We're taking a journey back in time, guided by our special guest - John Grabowski from Case Western University!
In this episode, John explores the devastating impact of the Influenza Pandemic on Cleveland, particularly on our own Calvary Cemetery. Join us as we contemplate how our past continues to shape our present through personal histories, global pandemics, and the enduring impact it has on our lives.
Do you have a topic you'd like us to discuss? Please email us at podcast@clecem.org!
Please feel free to "Connect With Us" via our website at www.clecem.org.
Follow us on:
Facebook: @catholiccemeteriesassociation
Twitter: @CLECatholicCems
Instagram: @clecatholiccems
Blog: @clevelandcatholiccemeteries
Podcast: "CCAirwaves" on your favorite streaming platform!
We're taking a journey back in time, guided by our special guest - John Grabowski from Case Western University!
In this episode, John explores the devastating impact of the Influenza Pandemic on Cleveland, particularly on our own Calvary Cemetery. Join us as we contemplate how our past continues to shape our present through personal histories, global pandemics, and the enduring impact it has on our lives.
Do you have a topic you'd like us to discuss? Please email us at podcast@clecem.org!
Please feel free to "Connect With Us" via our website at www.clecem.org.
Follow us on:
Facebook: @catholiccemeteriesassociation
Twitter: @CLECatholicCems
Instagram: @clecatholiccems
Blog: @clevelandcatholiccemeteries
Podcast: "CCAirwaves" on your favorite streaming platform!
cambio. Hello everyone and welcome back to CC Airwaves. My name is Paige Matillo and I'm here with the director of Cemetery's, andre Law, and a special guest, john Grabowski, who is a professor at Case Western. How are you doing, john?
Speaker 2:I'm fine. How are you Paige?
Speaker 1:Doing pretty good. It's a nice day. It's a beautiful day.
Speaker 2:We should be doing this outside.
Speaker 1:That would be cool, but we have all the soundproofing in here so you know it makes it sound better for our listeners.
Speaker 2:We won't hear the birds. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So why don't you start off by telling us a little bit about yourself?
Speaker 2:Well, I'm a native born Clevelander. I won't tell you when I was born, that's a top secret but my parents were second generation Americans. My grandparents came, my mother's parents came from Slovenia. My father's parents came from Poland, and they are. Most of them are buried. My parents are buried at Calvary, and my grandmother there's a long story about her Antonia Bohinsvuk. She died in 1915 of tuberculosis and she was buried in an onomar grave, but it's been marked now, so the family's here.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow, yeah, so yeah.
Speaker 2:And so I do a lot of grave visiting. I'm kind of an amateur genealogist.
Speaker 1:So will you be visiting them while you're here today?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I will make a stop to see mom and dad.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's good.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Now, where did your, where'd your family grow up on the east side?
Speaker 2:They grew up in what is now known as Slavic Village, which is my Polish family, and that was known as Varsava at that time, at 74th and Irma, one house away from the New Brigham South Short railroad tracks. And my mother's family grew up in St Clair, which is the major to Slovenian neighborhood, and she was born on a street that was known as it was like court street, but it was known as Kodi of us chicken streets.
Speaker 3:Kodi of us yeah, st Vitus.
Speaker 2:Yep, st Vitus church. Yeah, my mother got kicked out of St Vitus school, but that's another story as to why. So history is interesting when you take it personally.
Speaker 3:It really is. I find that well, you know, as a student of history, I did. I studied it to John Carroll and then also, just growing up, my parents are first generation. I'm first generation. My parents are immigrants, and they were. You know, they were all refugees from where?
Speaker 2:may I ask? From Slovenia, slovenia?
Speaker 3:you know, after Tito took over, things were a little unpleasant or very unpleasant for some, and they ended up my grandfather's ended up in the camps in Austria. Okay, then traveled, you know, eventually found their way to Cleveland and then brought their families over. So it's when you talk about yes, it becomes very personal when you're connected to these world events that have impacted you so dramatically.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's seriously. Historical society has a wonderful collection of diaries. I forget the man's name, but he was from the camps in Slovenia. I lived just off the 50 off of 55th street and we got some of his cookware which they made out of aircraft metal when they were in the camps is for cookware, so they actually hand forged it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's our incredible, incredible stories of, you know, just of human dignity and and survival, and you know how you know, people looking out for each other. It's, and I would imagine, the same thing with the, when you think of the influenza epidemic that we're here to talk about today, I have to, I have to believe that it would. It's such a huge impact and it didn't you know, across all, all racial and ethnic lines. You know, a pandemic is not, does not discriminate.
Speaker 2:It doesn't you know, and it you know it began in Europe and it was kind of kept under wraps because of World War one. At that point they didn't want to induce panic. And then it came over on ships, because that's the way diseases travel and it spread rapidly. I mean, cleveland had one of the highest, not the highest, influenza death rates in the nation. Got a student case, western Reserve, who did a really good study on that. But and he did the study when COVID was on, because there's a lot of comparisons between COVID and influenza and you know there are different mortalities, there are different ways they're transmitted.
Speaker 2:But the influenza comes during World War one and you know everything is in the war effort and, unlike with COVID, they weren't going to shut factories down.
Speaker 1:And you were saying that when the influenza first happened, that it did take them a while to shut down the schools and that the factories kept going because it was wartime, right, yeah?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the schools even. It was a hard time shutting down schools. And then there were questions we know, before they were shut down were these kids really truant or what was going?
Speaker 1:on.
Speaker 2:And the city tried, tried to get a handle on it. And you know they were encouraging wearing masks. People didn't really know how it was transferred but they knew it was probably sneezing and breathing, whatever else. And we're looking at, you know, structures that you know that that were fairly closed. No, there were air conditioning or anything else. So, yeah, why was Cleveland hit so hard? Cleveland was hit hard because the factories were here. It was fairly crowded and we're looking at, we're talking about immigrant neighborhoods and you know they. They were packed neighborhoods. Cleveland was the sixth largest city in the nation in 1910. It would become the fifth largest city in the nation in 1920. The population was pushing toward 800,000 at that point. And if you know the city streets and drive in the city streets to see where the factories are, all the homes were there. So it was a walking city and the homes were cheek by jaw, side by side. I mean, if you, if you were lucky living in an immigrant neighborhood, maybe you had an early Cleveland double you know which you.
Speaker 2:you bought and then you had their tenant help you pay the mortgage. But still that was crowded and you know workers didn't want to lose their wages either, and so there's a double whammy going there. The factories want to keep going and the workers are basically saying we you know, we need the money.
Speaker 3:That's, it's, it's really, and you're so right, when they look at the city of Cleveland and you look at the neighborhoods and where they are and how they're located. And you know, I've, I've always known, especially when you you know, growing up around the, especially the St St Vitus neighborhood. I was originally in Collinwood when I was born, so you know I talked to people about being born at Huron Road Hospital in East Cleveland and you know and what East Cleveland was at one point.
Speaker 3:And then you think about those communities and in the 55th area, you know, and how packed they were like when that that big gas, the East Ohio gas explosion happened. I mean, that's another example of you know, because those neighborhoods were so tight, tight put together. So tightly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sort of a sidebar on that. That that's where my Selenium parents lived near. Grandparents lived near there. My mother was born on the street called Lake Court and that entire street was was wiped out. Almost all the buildings on it was north of the railroad tracks which was kind of odd at that point. And so you know, there there are family stories that I want to kill the podcast with family stories.
Speaker 2:But you know there was a Steehe family that lived there. My mother grew up with Louise Steehe. They were great friends and Louise Steehe- was was very tight with money what most people were but the story was that while the neighborhood was burning, the Steehe family was pulling all their mattresses out out to get them out of there.
Speaker 1:But yeah, you know and it's, it's.
Speaker 2:It's hard to just if we go back to the influenza, what people need to do is drive those neighborhoods and see where the factories were, because this was a walking society and people. The closer you were to the factory, you know, the easier it was to get to work. So, yeah, very, very tightly. I mean, you know Cleveland Heights, where I live now, was just beginning to flourish at that time. So you know the suburbs that we know. Lakewood was the first one, cleveland Heights, cleveland and Shaker eventually. But Shaker only had less than a thousand people during this period. It was going to a 2000. So they're all crowded in the city.
Speaker 1:How many people you got? Sorry, I forgot how to ask that. How many people contracted the disease?
Speaker 2:I don't have the figure handy. It was substantial but it was second to St Louis, and when we don't have accurate figures, because they have to be estimates, you know how many people reported the disease. There was nothing like we have now. So they're looking at people who were hospitalized and and that's how they would do the count.
Speaker 2:How many people didn't come in, you don't know at that point and I mean, I'm at Case Western Reserve and at that point they actually have a special sort of barracks area where they they put beds in because the hospitals couldn't carry the load. Cleveland at that point.
Speaker 3:So they were stretching the beds around at that point, yeah, I would imagine that the hospital system you know, until they realized what they were dealing with. You know, you showed up with the. You know the cough or the flu or whatever, and the symptoms and when did when? When did they identify it as the Spanish flu or whatever it was to refer?
Speaker 2:to. I think it was like several months before that peak in November. I mean, it did, it was. I think September, october was when they began to really ramp up and understand what was going on and it spotted.
Speaker 2:You know, there are different towns that had you know, around Cleveland where the flu was also active, if you will. But Cleveland, you know, began by October. That's when the mayor began to issue edicts and so forth about, you know, the flu and you know I would call it social distancing. But you also have to understand how people traveled. If they were not walking to work, they were on streetcars. And the whole thing was how do you regulate people on streetcars and the bad habit of spitting on a streetcar? That was bad to begin with, but it was so bad Spitting on the streetcar.
Speaker 2:Please do not spit in the streetcar.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow, yeah.
Speaker 2:So that's, I think, part of it. You know, and here at Calvary we were talking earlier about this I mean, there were like 985 burials in November alone and 81 on one day in tournaments. Yeah, that's incredible. It's something we've never.
Speaker 3:quite frankly, when COVID hit, we started preparing for that possibility that we would have to be digging trench graves and you know, thankfully we never got to that point. We did have our share of COVID deaths, but you know they came in small numbers. So, you know, whatever was being done to manage that the most recent pandemic seemed to be very effective and because, you know, I mean we would have been prepared, we would have been able to do it. But again it would have been the same process. We would have been digging trench graves and just burying people one after the other.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and at that point you're digging graves by hand, aren't you? In 1918, they were digging them by hand. Yes, you know, it is not like it is now. No, so this was all hand labor at that point, yeah.
Speaker 3:Today you know the machinery that you use to dig. Anything is incredible, yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm veering here, but I think you know, do you have a holding vault here? Because I know some cemeteries had a holding vault for the winter. We did yeah.
Speaker 3:We did have it here. We don't have it anymore for, you know, obviously, reasons we don't. The equipment can very effectively get break through the frost line, when you know, and we do have contraptions that will thaw the dirt if we need to, but usually the teeth on the back of a backhoe will break through the ice and the frost. But back then, now they would, they would. They would just, you know, burn open fires to, you know, soften the ground to dig it. But it was all dug by hand and we did. Yes, you're right. And if you look the we call it, the engineers building today division A, that's where the holding vault was and that's where they would store the bodies in the winter, before they were, until the ground was thought enough to bury.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, I live near Lakeview, and same thing. They have the holding vault below the Wade Memorial Chapel there, which is no longer used because of the equipment.
Speaker 3:We don't. Yeah, we don't need it, but it's interesting that you bring that up. And yeah, it was, it was just reality. And the horses and you know they're our stables now are are converted into, you know, storage for equipment and and mechanics. So our stables in the back, where you know we used to repair machinery, so it's. It's funny how you can transition from what was in 1918 to what is today.
Speaker 2:Dude is. Is there a way someone can look at your records and and since look by month to see exactly who was buried? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:We actually, um, our interment records are very thorough, so I can go pick a day, uh, from 1893 and on, and we can tell you, we can, who was buried, where they came from, what the cause of death was, so forth and so on. And it would be, you know, on November. You know, if you went to 1111, 1111, 1118, you would find who was buried on that day, um and uh, and you know what the cause of?
Speaker 3:death, where they, where they were born, all that stuff. So, yes, and it's all handwritten to this day and people ask, why do we still hand write in those books? And there's, part of it is tradition, but also part of it is, you know, those records. There's more permanence to those records than to the electronic files. I mean the cloud. If something happens to the cloud, those records are gone. Um years ago we had, um, someone was suggesting that we put everything on CD roms, that this is the best, most effective way. It'll last forever. Well, now find something that we'll read, a CD round, right, yeah, it's the same same issue we have in the archives, you know we have, I'm going way across from this, away from it.
Speaker 2:But uh, you know we collect all kinds of media that collects data and holds data and you know we have. We have tapes and whatever else, where you know the machinery doesn't exist anymore. But I was going to ask those. Is that to be interesting to look at November and look at the names and the addresses and to see where the nodes were, where these people were?
Speaker 2:coming from and how many families and perhaps neighbors who you know were there. Um, you know, this proximity that really spread it and uh, and that that would be. I'd like to see that in terms because we're going to. I'm an, I'm a historian.
Speaker 3:You're more than welcome to spend some time in our um, in our vault, and go through the books if you like.
Speaker 2:If you let me out of the vault afterwards. But yeah, I, you know this the the story of the flu. You know, obviously, you know it starts in Europe and uh, then they, the warring nations, kept the word down because they didn't want their enemies to know that they were suffering. But you know, the Germans were suffering, the English were suffering, it was, and they were just keeping it quiet. So the whole Spanish flu thing is when did it start?
Speaker 3:Oh God, I can't, I can't Do you have a guess, an estimate as as to when?
Speaker 2:um, I think, I think it's well, it starts long before it hits the United States and it then spreads. I think we're looking at and I'd have to, I need some notes here, it's really accurate but we're looking at months, well, months ahead, before it hits the United States and people knew it was was coming and you can trace it. The first cases come up at army camps and these are the ships that are going back and forth and those are the carriers of, of of you know what, what carries it over its transportation, and so if you've got soldiers going back and forth and shipboard, uh, that brings it over. So it starts, I believe in an army camp in Boston and a couple of other army camps in the United States where people have been traveling back and forth.
Speaker 3:So, considering how it, you know, considering the, you know the devastating effect of that particular flu, um, it must have been exacerbated by the fact that there was a war going on and the, the, the movement of soldiers, and everything you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, and soldiers, you know they're not going to give them individual bedrooms, they're going to be in barracks and if you're looking at, you know shipping troops across the ocean or back. I mean you're looking at ships loaded with troops coming up, so you know.
Speaker 3:And they don't have their own state rooms. No, no, they don't yeah.
Speaker 2:So so we're looking at, you know, the mechanism for the rapid spread is really the exigency of war, and it's not that medicine is bad. At that time they, you know they try things to to cure this. It's just that the war is going on and I think the war is one of the defining factors. Again, you know, can't shut the factories down, we have to win the war. The interesting thing too is that by armistice day, november, the flu has died down enough that that, you know, they've taken the warnings off. The mayor has taken the warnings off and the Cleveland citizens go out to celebrate the armistice, november 11th.
Speaker 3:So the war exacerbates the flu and obviously has devastating impact on the, on the warring parties, and so their populations are dramatically affected by this. This disease, this pandemic Did it cause or did it bring about the end of? Because of the devastating effect impact it had on the, the troops, the people at home? Do you think that it may have had a was a factor in bringing about the end of the war?
Speaker 2:There are well, there are some people who basically are going where you're going. They say that it impeded the armies because they were losing men and it certainly could have been a factor in the end of the war Weakened the armies on all sides and the German army as well. But the Germans were already on the ropes by the time that this came up. I mean, they had a major once, once the Germans had basically gotten Russia out and they brought all their troops from the Eastern front to the Western front and they came up with something called the Kaiser Schlag, the Kaiser or their, and they they made a really good run almost of getting to Paris, but then were pushed back and that army just eventually collapsed. And so you're looking at a lot of things that were happening in Germany at that point. Rationing was very extreme, food, food shortages, material shortages because of the Allied blockade in Germany, and I think that final push for victory. When it collapsed, everything just fell apart in Germany and the revolution began at that point.
Speaker 3:And how long after, after the end of World War One, was it before the pandemic kind of fizzled out?
Speaker 2:We have records, I think it was still. There were still new flu cases that were coming up at the Cleveland Workhouse in the early, early part of 2019. Okay, so there are little trickles and there are people that said this would continue, and it's interesting because it's spread from east to west across the United States, so some of the cases are a little bit later too. How far did it?
Speaker 3:how so did it impact all of the continental United States to go and I'm sure it was into Canada and Mexico? You know how was the impact down in the southern parts of the United States.
Speaker 2:I'm not sure, but there was an impact there's. I had a grad student who did a study of it. I should have brought that with me, but there are statistics on there, are things online that you can look up on the 1918 flu, the pandemic, and they'll give you all the details of which cities had the highest rates of mortality when it hit a certain city and so forth. And I've heard and I say this with my fingers crossed because I'm not sure if I remember this correctly that they were able to dig up some bodies in Alaska and the permafrost and were able to extract the agent for the flu. I've heard that too.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but I heard it was due at being done for purposes other than just research. Right, yeah, you know trying to you know I mean conspiracy theories, are you know, are.
Speaker 2:Trying to weaponize it?
Speaker 3:Yeah well you never know. I mean it's who knows what sometimes people do with the things that they discover.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you know, supposedly that's still sitting around in somebody's lab. But yeah, it's, it was there, you know, and there were flu epidemics before that, including there are smaller ones, I think, in the 1890s and another one that occurred before that, and you know, going the way back machine.
Speaker 2:One of the worst things that hit Cleveland was the cholera in the 1830s and at that point the only way that you could deal with the Asian cholera is what was called. That came up through Asia, across Europe, to the United States by boat and then some soldiers who were fighting the Black Hawk War came down with it and they were quarantined on a boat and the boat docked in Cleveland and they basically said you know you're going to dock at Whiskey Island, but it still managed to spread in Cleveland. The death toll was minor compared to the 1918 flu but nevertheless Cleveland was a small city at that time it had an impact on it.
Speaker 3:Now why is it that they call it the Spanish flu?
Speaker 2:Oh, I should know that I can't answer that with any authority. No, that's okay, it's okay yeah.
Speaker 3:I did. You know, it's referred by people, refer to it in so many different ways and one of the common ways is the Spanish flu, you know. Did it? Or originate somewhere, you know in one of the major cities there.
Speaker 2:I think it was just a name that was applied to it or something like that. I'm not sure.
Speaker 3:Because I would imagine, I would imagine that even though Spain was not part involved in the war directly, I would imagine a lot of men you know off to the glory of war, you know, and that's how, maybe is it possible that may have had part of the.
Speaker 2:I think that name may have been thrown at it simply to get it away from another path of origin.
Speaker 1:That's interesting.
Speaker 2:I'm not certain. You know, and I hate to be uncertain about that, but it was known. You know it was the Spanish flu.
Speaker 3:Is that to minimize the impact that it would have on the soldiers fighting that it was, or just they needed to refer to it as?
Speaker 2:something. We need to refer to it as something you know, and that's that's one of the things, that sort of going sideways here the mortality statistics for the warring troops. A lot of that mortality is from disease such as the flu, particularly in the 1918 period, and that's always the case with the American Civil War number. You know a lot of the deaths. There were not battled deaths, they were right illnesses and we're still trying to cope with vending modern medicine in 1918. So you still had that, so we. I mean there have been estimates of what percentage of the deaths that occurred among the warring powers that time were due to the flu or due to a, you know, battle, battle death, if you will.
Speaker 3:Well, the trenches were just.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. You can't, you can't isolate somebody in a trench. No, no. And you know, and and I would expect and this is speculation on my part that each of the warring parties was, you know, as I mentioned a little bit early, trying to keep the news of the flu under cover because they didn't want the other side to know how badly they were suffering.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's amazing to me when you watch some of these and you read history of. I'm always fascinated by World War I because, in my view, World War I was the foundation upon which our modern world has been built and our modern headaches were created. I think of what happened in 19.1919, and then in 1921 and beyond, and it'sit'syou know my grandfather, my father's parents, were teenagers at that time and my mom's parents were born in thatinduring that time. So it's you know the difference in ages. But just to think what they experienced, and if you think of where some of thosethe most brutal battles of the war were fought on the Italian-Slovenian border.
Speaker 3:Well, the Austro-Hungarian border, but it was Slovenian, it's justand how the flu would have impacted all of them, and you know the effects that that would have had. And thenso I do find it fascinating, and you know Ijust to point to that time and so you think about the world impact of you've got thisthe Great War happening, You've got this flu that is killing millions of people, and it justit just amazes me that you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it'syeah, it's interesting. I have a question when in Slovenia was your family from?
Speaker 3:Well, my mother's side was fromoutside of Bled, so Kran would be the city that was nearby. And then my father is from a place called Trebne and the small little village of Dobrinić, and then hiswhere he lived was called Malavos, and so do you know the story of Frederick Bodega, the first bishop of Marquette. My family home was his home.
Speaker 2:Okay, soand there's a Bodega Dom on.
Speaker 3:St Clair.
Speaker 2:Historical society holds a few early prayer books of Father Bodega.
Speaker 3:Really yeah, wow.
Speaker 2:Good friend. Do you know Joe Valencić? By any chance.
Speaker 3:I know who he is. My parents knew him andor know him, and then I'm sure you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're off the flu here, but my familymy mother's mother was buried here. Antonio Bohins was from Kropa, which was a hillside iron forging town, and she married John Vuk.
Speaker 3:I know that name too. Yeah, Bohins Vuk. These are all common.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so he was down the hill. But it's interesting because, you know, there were never any stories that have come down to me from my father about how his parents may have experienced flu, and I think this is one of the fascinating things I wonder. You know, the memory of the 1918 flu pandemic is revivified, if you will, because of COVID. When people began looking at COVID as it spread, then they began looking back at the flu.
Speaker 3:Well, because I mean there was such ayou know, I think there's a lot of commonality with it. First of all, it is a flu pandemic. And then also how it spreads. And if you look at historically, you're right. I mean, they started shutting down movie theaters, they started shutting down other venues, public venues. They started looking at masking. It became a very, you know, a requirement, and so a lot of thoseyou could see a lot of similarities in those pandemics.
Speaker 2:Sure, yeah, I did see that the masking was kind of hit or miss in 1918. The other thing we did mention is that we're looking at. You know, cleveland's real reaction to the flu is it begins probably mid-October and it goes and then sort of drops off just before the armistice is signed, and so it's. You know it's there and it's over. You know it's certainly not over for the people who lost family but we've it only comes up because of another catastrophe. This was dark old history until COVID came about.
Speaker 3:Except here, because we yeah, we spoke of it. It was part of our history when we celebrated the 125th of Calvary I mean, it was before the pandemic and we had a monument made that was placed out there in memory of those who lost their lives during the pandemic of 1918.
Speaker 1:What section is it in?
Speaker 3:It's out back. I can take you to it, I just can't think of the number at the top of my head.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and youit's kind of interesting because your monument was here before COVID and then afterwards, when all the news came out about the flu, people were retroactively creating monuments to flu victims in other cities.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it took a disaster to remind us of another disaster.
Speaker 3:And I think that usually, you know, we try to find that, you know that commonality and try to reach across time to connect ourselves with those that saw it. And you know, calvary's history here is really amazing and you know, ironically we do have some that were buried in early 1919 in that section as well. So I mean, so that's the carry-on, so some may havedo you know what thewhat's the word I'm looking for? It's the length of time from diagnosis to Incubation. Incubation period. Yes, thank you. Yeah, any idea what that?
Speaker 2:No, I don't you know.
Speaker 3:I'm curious how long somebody would haveonce they were diagnosed. If they wereif it was a fatal diagnosis, how long would they have survived? And if they were diagnosed in 1918, did they live? You know, were they able to survive long enough into 1919? Before they passed yeah, and then, so that our records would reflect that you know they didn't die in 18.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know, and from what I've read is that the flu deaths were just horrendous terms of congestion and it would just take over.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, we all know what the regular flu is, so I can't imagine one that's going to kill you. Yeah, you know I mean, and we all know that even the regular flu that you can get can kill you too. So it'syou know, I can't even imagine something that much worse.
Speaker 2:A lot of it, I think, depends on your lifestyle and your habits and whatever else, and your ability to fight off the virus. Well, you know.
Speaker 3:I think that came up with COVID too. I mean, if you're you know, if you have certain other comorbidities, you know your chances of surviving are significantly reduced. Yeah, and.
Speaker 2:I think the COVID you know, the COVID regulations, you know persisted longer in homes for the aged too, because that was one of the victim areas.
Speaker 3:Yeah, sure.
Speaker 2:There was a good program on PBS on the influenza epidemic a couple of years ago. They talk about a little song the kids sing. I saw a little bird that opened up the window in influenza. I saw a little bird. His name was Enza. I opened the window in influenza.
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh yeah, Well, it's funny how nursery rhymes now that you it wasn't Ring Around the Rosie, isn't that about a disease or something like that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was just talking to Joel about that about how it's a nursery rhyme to like kind of help kids understand how fatal it is. But then it still is brought up today, like you hold hands and you go in a circle, but it's really about a deadly disease. So it's really scary.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'd still. Would you know I'm sure it's been done, I've seen it that if you plotted all the deaths available that you could describe to the flu 1918, 1919, and then you plotted them geographically, if you could see it, I'm going to guess the central city in the crowded neighborhoods would have been, didn't care if you were Polish or Slovenian or German or anything.
Speaker 3:I, you know believe me, the names. If you look at the names of the, you know I've gone through. You know just in cure. I've never done anything more detailed, but I opened the page one time and it was just amazing that you know where people were from, and so forth. It had just crossed all lines.
Speaker 2:This was a cemetery here, though you know it's kind of interesting because you know the history of Catholicism. Can I view on this? Sure of course you know, when Moses Cleveland came to survey the area, among his crew there may have been one Catholic. I mean, this began as a very Protestant city and with the arrival of the Irish and Germans, who were in all of Catholic, it began to change. By 1880s, catholicism was the largest single denomination in the city of Cleveland.
Speaker 3:No kidding. Well, and then the Eastern Europeans started coming over, you know, from all those different areas, and it just it exploded. Well, I mean you look at the churches. You know I years ago, when I used to work in the finance office down at the diocese, so I did see a lot of the, the churches that are now closed, and so I mean, literally, you know there's, there's the Slovenian church, I mean you could look at the German church, and there's the Polish church over here the.
Speaker 3:Croatian church is over here and it's amazing if you drive down superior. They're all ethnic and they're all you know, their own, their own, particular you know, group. So, like I said it, just it. And then, as, as you travel further out into the suburbs, there were no longer specific to any ethnic group, and you know, with intermarriage and so forth and so on, before you know it, those ethnic parishes had no, they didn't have the same purpose, right, yeah, and you?
Speaker 2:know at 1920 I get paid to remember these crazy numbers but that two-thirds of the city's population was either a foreign birth or foreign parentage and another 35,000 it's 1920, another 35,000 were African-American. Was the beginning of the Great Migration and you know the immigrants and the migrants who came up from the South War workforce. Yeah it was jobs, yeah, and and in a way they were kind of disposable to many factories.
Speaker 2:if you know, one group went on strike, you just accept you you found out which ethnic group didn't like them, you brought them in. We have the card records of the employees of what used to be the place that made elevator cages and wire screens on Superior St Clair Avenue, and they were careful enough to make sure they just didn't say Yugoslavia, they said Serb, croat or Slovenian on it. And so there are these things that go on. Within the business. There's a famous oh god, I'm way off track, but if we're looking at our neighborhood here, where we're around, if you're looking at Holy Name Church, which was an Irish parish at one time, they they worked in the rolling mills which used to be along Bessmer Avenue and it's called Cleveland Rolling Mills, and there was a strike in 1882 and the Irish and the Welsh went out on strike or not.
Speaker 2:The Irish went out on strike and they broke the strike by bringing in Polish immigrants. They got them off the boat coming in, and then the Poles went on strike in 1885. But yeah, it was this game. But getting back to the flu and ethnicity, you know, I think one of the issues too was you know how much of the news was being sent out to the communities in a language they could understand. That may have been possible, because a lot of the World War I I wouldn't call propaganda, but preparing the city for war, making ready for war it had it had an ethnic group in it and they they issued pamphlets in different languages at that point.
Speaker 2:So I wonder if that went out. Or did they go to the newspapers at that time Merchka Domovina, you know the vector and Anziger and say you know, here's what you need to write about the flu, but but it's such a short period, though. We're just looking from a. Hey, it's early October, something's happening here. It's middle of October, oh my god, we had to do something. And really, november. Well, it's almost over and it's. You know, it's the armistice. Let's celebrate the armistice and just let it go.
Speaker 3:Well, and you know it's funny that you mentioned you brought that up Yugoslavia earlier, it's it's funny that you, you know there was so much suspicion amongst the, the various ethnic groups. Well, you know, germans didn't associate with Poles, poles certainly didn't like the Germans. And then you know that there's that Serb, croatian, slovenian. You know that I mean there the animosity is there A?
Speaker 1:lot of bad blood.
Speaker 3:There really is. So I mean well, that's why you had a Slovenian church and a Slovak church and a German church and an.
Speaker 3:Irish church and a Polish church. Because, you know, that's why you have a Polish national church, because the Irish bishops refused to to ordain any Polish bishops and so they created their own denomination. So it's, you know, it's the Polish National Catholic Church or National Polish, whatever it's it's, but it's amazing. So you know if you're connecting that to the flu, the pandemic, you know if one community wouldn't talk to the other community, and so it's like you know we're not gonna warn them because that's them.
Speaker 1:So close to the door yeah how insular was it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean that's, that's what you're looking at and that and again, you know it's linguistically getting across, but you know if you're not really cozy with with another group and it's, you know there's a. I was thinking. There's another cemetery that interests me and it's on east of 71st Street in Cuyahoga Heights, which is Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Speaker 3:That's St Mary's, the Heights, yeah, the.
Speaker 2:Immaculate Heart of Mary Church. And Immaculate Heart of Mary Church has a really interesting because it's a split from St Stanislaus Church Right.
Speaker 3:We have that. That's one of our cemeteries.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we took it over in 1995. Okay, and you still, if Father Koleshewski has his cross and monument at the front.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, we had, so all the records are here.
Speaker 2:Oh, really yeah.
Speaker 3:Cool, it's a neat little little old Polish cemetery. So it's and, yeah, it's beautiful, you know, beautiful. A lot of history there, a lot of history there as well. It's cemeteries, you know, just like the conversation we're having today, we're talking about a historical event, and where are we? We're at Calvary Cemetery in Cleveland, talking about an event that had a national and an international impact.
Speaker 3:And so, you know, cemeteries are repositories of, you know, not only those that that went before us, but they're their places of history and where we can truly immerse ourselves in the memories of those that that were here and and and you know, we, sometimes we see these old pictures and things of that nature, and we, you know, we, the way the photograph may have been taken, it almost looks surreal and and we, we sometimes forget these were real people, real lives, and they were impacted by all these things that went on around them and, you know, what brought them to Calvary is their faith and faith, and something of the you know, for the future, and and they lived their faith from birth to death, and Calvary Cemetery is a repository of all that history and and all that, that, the connection that we have to them. I, I always look at our cemeteries as places where we connect to our past and and have hope for the future.
Speaker 2:You're absolutely right. It's interesting because at the Historical Society you know, one of the things we have a huge genealogical collections.
Speaker 2:Obviously you know you're looking at ancestrycom, the 900 pound elephant that drives it, but you know it's still cemetery records and and there would be people who would go out and they would decipher all the tombstones and forgotten cemeteries and all those records are with us and you know so how far you can trace your family back and I think, for you know people like ourselves sitting at the table, we're rather recent comers here to Cleveland, but yet you know it. Where I find my history, you know, is that sure, the census and other records, but I still go out to see my grandparents tombstone, yeah, you know, and.
Speaker 2:I mean, that's the tangibility of it and I think you know it's a strange tangibility but it's still there.
Speaker 2:I don't know if I ever told you the story that I grew up on the 71st Street in Irma and my father, when his mother passed in 1953, his father had died in 1940s, when my father was in the war, when his punies would blossom, that was the time he would harvest them from the front of the house and then we would go and we would take the bus all the way up and get off at Calvary and walk all the way to the grave and he put the flowers there and that that was his ritual. He also got something back from Calvary he used to take cuttings if you're evergreen bushes and would start to evergreen bushes at our house and that may have that made been symbolic for him.
Speaker 2:Of course I don't know, you know that's, that's what it sounds very much so. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, it's, it is some. It's how we're connected. We're so we are, so we are all so interconnected. It amazes me sometimes that we we focus on our differences rather than our similarities. And and the thing I find most beautiful about Calvary, it doesn't, you know all these diverse groups that may not have like themselves and we're not cooperating, or, you know, had these animosities in life. They're all buried together, yeah yeah, yeah it's.
Speaker 2:It's interesting, we go on forever on this one. But when I go to visit my grandmother's Slovenian grandmother's grave on, who died very early on 1915. I walk up there and there's one in Arabic script for Mr Aboud, you know, and the names are you know, because there's not a Slovenian section here. No no that's, that's where it is.
Speaker 3:No there are. No, there are no specific sections for any group. I mean it's, you know. I mean we do have, we do have areas where you know the Vietnamese, you know, I just think of when you think of sections of Vietnamese Apostolate out of St Boniface bought an area over at Holy Cross and so a lot of that area, but but there's not specifically a Vietnamese section. You know the, the only, the only area in the cemetery that is segregated in a way, is the pre section, so that they, you know they sacrifices that they made in land for the vowed religious, they may have a place for their order, but they're not divided up by ethnicity, they're divided up by their. You know the dedication there they dedicated their life to, to Christ, in whichever way, and whether a vowed religious or a diocesan priest or so forth. So, but other than that, no, and you know, and we're all just, we're all together.
Speaker 2:It's and it's the flu that brought us together here at this table today. You know, and it's, it's, it's a strange thing, and you know I think I've said this before if we wouldn't be talking about this, had we not gone through COVID.
Speaker 3:No, not to the degree that we are. Yeah, and and what's what's what I find most interesting is that all those people that died in you know, 1919 and early 19, 1918 and early 1919. You know, today, we remember them today, we acknowledge their, their lives, and we think about you, know who they were and what they experienced and why they experienced the things that they experienced and how they lived and why they lived in the neighborhoods that they lived in, and so forth. So it I think it's important that we recognize, you know who they were and and that they were here.
Speaker 2:You know it's Calvary, you know, I guess you know it starts with what? 103 acres and you're 300 plus acres now and and and you know it grows because you know Bishop Rapp. You know we go back to the history of Catholic burials in Cleveland initially.
Speaker 2:You know the first cemetery in Cleveland was on the site of what is the Higby's building. It was kind of just, you know, and when they started Erie Street cemetery, that's when the graves were moved there and in some Catholics, probably Irish, who came in, were buried in Erie Street cemetery. But Bishop Rapp looked at what was going on. So we need a Catholic cemetery.
Speaker 2:So we started St Joseph at that point, which was pretty close to Woodland Cemetery which was a new France Banking General Cemetery and some of the Catholic families reinterred their people from Erie Street to to St Joseph Cemetery, you know, and some of the other families reinterred their people to Lakeview Cemetery when that was open, so you know you could move at a time.
Speaker 3:but people still move people today yeah.
Speaker 2:And so St Joseph's, you know, is the place that there's a lot of early ethnicity there. It's the guts at the beginning of Catholic Cleveland there.
Speaker 3:And St John's is right down the road, which is a German, predominantly German, cemetery.
Speaker 2:So well, and we don't have a Slovenia cemetery.
Speaker 1:Well, I think that's all the time we have for today. So thank you, John, for joining us and telling us more about the 1918 influenza. Is there anything that you'd like to promote? You mentioned earlier that you guys have podcasts with the Cleveland Historical Society.
Speaker 2:Well, the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History has podcasts, and periodically I'm on stage at the music box talking about Cleveland History. But I'd also like to promote the Western Reserve Historical Society, because if you're tracing your family history, it's the place to go and we have an incredibly strong collection of ethnic archives Wonderful. Yeah got a lot of things that we collected that. That was. That was my job way back to start that.
Speaker 3:So if we wanted to come down and take a look, what do? How do we go about doing that?
Speaker 2:Contact us. The library is open three days a week and Ann Cindillar is running the library and she's checking. She's Catholic and she can show you the ropes are using. We've got a lot of genealogical aids there. Wonderful we also have a number of record books at funeral homes. Oh wow, yep. All right Well thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 1:And thanks for listening to this episode of CC Erweaves and a huge thank you to John Grubowski for joining us. We'll see you next week.