CAVENDISH
IN THE TIME OF COVID
Due
to Covid-19, and Stay at Home orders, we were unable to provide a spring newsletter.
However, we’ve been collecting stories and information, which will be archived for
future generations. We’ve also been posting special Covid related articles to
the Cavendish Historical Society Blog (URL above).
We’re
having to adjust to new ways of doing things. Consequently, the Museum is only
available by appointment (numbers above) and those coming must adhere to Covid
prevention protocols-wearing a mask, physically distancing, coughing into your
elbow, hand washing and staying home if not feeling well.
July
12 (Sunday): Epidemics
& Pandemics: Their History and Their Impact; 2 pm at the Cavendish
Historical Society (CHS) Museum. This talk is in memory of Phyllis Bont who
worked in two epidemics- polio and AIDS.
August
9 (Sunday):
Program to be announced.
September
13 (Sunday):
Annual Phineas Gage Walk & Talk, 2 pm at the Museum
October
11 (Sunday):
Last day the Museum is open for the season. Indigenous Peoples Day Program.
REMEMBERING
PHYLLIS BONT
It
is with deep sadness that we report the passing of Phyllis Bont on June 6. In
March 2018, Phyllis was among the first group of women we honored during March
(Women’s History Month) with what has become an annual feature-“Cavendish Women
You Should Know.”
Phyllis
Flint was born in Grand Rapids Michigan. Attending Wayne State in Michigan and
Butterworth Hospital in Grand Rapids. Phyllis became a nurse and married the
love of her life Dr. Eugene (Gene) Bont, whom she had known since she was 4.
They came to Cavendish in 1957.
Raising
seven children, along with providing foster care and entertaining many of the
neighborhood kids, she also served the critical role of the “country doctor’s
wife.” When Dr. Bont recognized the critical need of the physician’s assistant
(PA), Phyllis worked with him, the VT Medical Society, the VT State Legislature and Springfield
Hospital to design a program that would allow PAs to work at an unprecedented
level of independence in a community setting and to get the Vermont Physician
Assistant Practice Act passed. A corresponding Act for Nurse Practitioners
(NPs), made it possible for Phyllis to become one of the first registered nurse
practitioners (RNP) in the state. While she had pursued the degree to expand her knowledge as a home
health nurse, she ultimately joined Dr. Bont at the Black River Health Center.
Together, they moved to Albany, NY, where she worked as an RNP for the Albany
Medical Center’s Family Practice program, seeing patients, and teaching/mentoring
residents and future RNPs.
Upon
retirement to Cavendish, Phyllis embarked on a second career as a full time
weaver/fiber artist. She was one of the founders of Six Loose Ladies, creating
weavings as well as teaching the skill to others. The gorgeous shawls and scarves she made where her way to
continually “wrap someone in loving kindness,” as she liked to say.
In the last few years we have been
grateful for the many hours Phyllis donated to CHS by answering questions and
sitting through countless interviews. She gave us much needed information on a
number of topics and she put an end to the local lore about Mr. Hickernell. No,
he is not buried in the basement.
A last thank you to Phyllis and
Gene. Not only was it one of the great love affairs to witness, but you made
our community stronger and healthier during the 63 years you lived here. We
miss you and regret we will no longer be able to call, or stop by, and say, “Do
you know anything about…”
CAVENDISH
& VERMONT FLU PANDEMIC 1918
In
the midst of Covid-19, we’ve been asked how Cavendish weathered the flu of
1918. Where there many deaths?
There
aren’t diaries and other resource documents to look through, which is part of
the reason we are asking people now to keep journals and share with CHS so that
future generations will know how things were in Cavendish during the Covid
pandemic.
Just
as this past January, where the media was obsessed with presidential
impeachment hearings, so too was the focus on World War I (WWI) when the first
cases of flu were reported from Kansas.
Incorrectly
labeled the “Spanish Flu,” Spain was not involved in WWI conflict so their
media was free to report on it, hence the name. There is evidence, however,
that the flu actually started in Haskell, Kansas.
Haskell
farmers raised hogs. “The county sits on a major migratory flyway for 17
bird species, including sand hill cranes and mallards. Scientists today
understand that bird influenza viruses, like human influenza viruses, can also
infect hogs, and when a bird virus and a human virus infect the same pig cell,
their different genes can be shuffled and exchanged like playing cards,
resulting in a new, perhaps especially lethal, virus.”
We cannot say for certain
that that happened in 1918 in Haskell County, but we do know that an influenza
outbreak struck in January, an outbreak so severe that, although influenza was
not then a “reportable” disease, a local physician named Loring Miner…went to
the trouble of alerting the U.S. Public Health Service. The report itself no
longer exists, but it stands as the first recorded notice anywhere in the world
of unusual influenza activity that year. … Several Haskell men who had been
exposed to influenza went to Camp Funston, in central Kansas. Days later, on
March 4, the first soldier known to have influenza reported ill. John M Barry, Smithsonian Magazine November
2017 At Camp
Funston in March of 1918, in three weeks, over 1,100 of 56,000 troops were
admitted to the hospital and 38 of them died.
On
Sept. 21, 1918, Charles Dalton, secretary
of the Vermont State Board of Health, ordered local health officers to report
any influenza cases. While the state’s newspapers carried his warning that the
epidemic would reach Vermont in the coming days or weeks, the flu was already
here. At the same time the papers posted Dalton’s warnings, they were also
including that 40 students at Middlebury and 60 at Norwich University were
already sick from it. More than 50,000
Vermonters would contract the flu and more than 2,100 would die.
As we have seen Vermont’s government struggle with closing
down schools during the Covid-19 epidemic, their predecessors had the same
fears. The 1918 Governor, Horace Graham, wrote to Dalton on Sept. 26, “Do you
not think some general action ought to be taken by the Board with reference to
this epidemic. If it is contagious what about permitting all these conventions
and meetings(?)” The Governor had other issues to consider as he was worried
what effect banning gatherings would have on the sale of Liberty Bonds for the
war effort.
Dalton issued an order to local
health officials stating they had the right to close schools, churches, and
other places of public assembly. Note that the state was leaving this in the
hands of the health officers. Dalton also stated, “Health officers should make
it plain to all persons that the disease is spread by coughing and sneezing in
public or around other people.”
Funerals were allowed, though if you
were sick you couldn’t attend. The massive numbers of deaths took precedence
over war news.
Finally, on Oct. 4, Dalton ordered
the type of “stay at home” order we experienced from March through May, as he
ordered all schools, churches and theaters closed, and prohibited all public
gatherings. The ban was lifted on Oct. 31.
Just as scammers are quite active during Covid-19, the
charlatans of their day promoted Dr. Williams’ Pink Pills to “ease the stress
of families of the ill.” A clothier in Barre insisted everyone needed a
raincoat as dampness was linked to illness. Vick’s VapoRub was another cure all
being promoted.
Global travel as we know it today,
did not exist then. However, because of WWI, the troops brought it with them
and it quickly spread throughout the United States, Europe and the rest of the
world.
The flu came in three waves with the
first in the early months of 1918, the second in the fall of 1918 and the third
in early 1919. Of the three phases, the most-deadly was the second wave.
According to
the Vermont Historical Society, First noted in reports coming from Fort
Devens, Massachusetts, where American troops were assembled for transport to
Europe to fight in World War I, the disease quickly spread into Vermont through
the transportation centers of St. Johnsbury, St. Albans, White River Junction,
Rutland, in the more densely populated communities of Burlington and its
neighboring towns, and—most severely hit of all—Barre and Montpelier.
By the end of September and into early October, town medical officers began exercising their authority to close all public meeting places—schools, churches, places of entertainment—and a statewide ban on public meetings went into effect. The Vermont Supreme Court, after postponing its October term several times, finally cancelled it altogether. Middlebury College was quarantined, and the University of Vermont postponed opening its autumn term.
The flu subsided in November—just as World War I came to an end—but scattered and less severe outbreaks persisted into February 1919. Statistics reported by the Board of Health for 1918 show the devastation. In a state with a population of 355,956 in the 1910 census, there were 43,735 cases of influenza in 1918, resulting in 1,772 deaths. The disease thus attacked 13 percent of the population and accounted for 25 percent of deaths for the year. These were approximate figures only, and do not include cases and deaths from pneumonia.
The epidemic had devastating effects on social and family life in Vermont. Because the Spanish flu had the peculiar pattern of fatally attacking people in the middle years, many children were left with one or no parents and were sent off to live with relatives elsewhere. In hard-hit communities, the deaths came so rapidly, in such great number, and under the stress of quarantine, that funeral ceremonies and interments were frequently performed unattended by mourners.
Cavendish was impacted just as much as the rest of the state and country. Of the four Cavendish men who died in WWI, three died from flu. As Barbara Kingsbury noted in her book, “Chubb Hill Farm and Cavendish, Vermont,” The Civilian population was hit hard by “Spanish influenza, too, though it spread the quickest in the crowded Army barracks and camps. The epidemic caused much more suffering on the “home front” than any fuel and food shortages.
A
review of the town’s death certificates for 1917-1920, for causes listed as
influenza, la ’grippe, flu, pneumonia, and/or chronic bronchitis, found at
least 15 pandemic flu deaths. As can be seen in Table 1, the age of flu deaths
in Cavendish in 1918-1919 reflected a younger age, as well as several women who
were pregnant, including one where the child was stillborn and the mother died
shortly thereafter.
Table
1: Flu Related Deaths from Flu 1017-1920
|
Year
|
Total Deaths
|
Flu Related
|
Age Range
|
Occurred
|
|
1917
|
27
|
5
|
41-68
|
Feb-May
|
|
1918
|
27
|
6
|
24-60
|
1
June 5 Sept-Dec
|
|
1919
|
34
|
12
|
Newborn-71
|
10
Jan-June, 1 Sept, 1 Nov
|
|
1920
|
26
|
5
|
4
Mos-79
|
Jan-April
|
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