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'Blue Death' Documentary Recalls Montana Stories Of 1918 Influenza

In fall of 1918, the University of Montana shut its doors after dozens of Student Army Training Corps members collapsed from illness during routine drills. Hotels converted into hospitals. Most were sick or caring for the sick. 

It was influenza, or Spanish flu, a disease that turned the skin blue and killed more Americans than World Wars I and II combined. 

Glimpses of the 1918 influenza are hard to come by, despite the severe impact of millions succumbing to the virus across the world. In Montana, 5,000 people died within a few months; it was the fourth-worst-hit state. 

"Blue Death: the 1918 influenza in Montana" reveals the local stories of Montanans from the Spanish Flu. The documentary was created by UM professors 

Public Broadcasting Corporation

The lack of historical storytelling of the deadly time period led UM historians and researchers to create a documentary titled "Blue Death: The 1918 Influenza in Montana."

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The 55-minute documentary showcases the sentiment of Montanans during the influenza outbreak and focuses on six stories of death and survival from Missoula, White Sulphur Springs, the Blackfeet Nation, Red Lodge and more. 

Film Director Dee Garceau said the documentary hopes to rediscover those historical accounts from the Spanish flu, as people during that time seldom discussed the topic because of the negativity and loss surrounding it. 

"If we think of history, especially history of the American West or of Montana, as our collective memory, there is a big piece of amnesia regarding the 1918 flu," Garceau said at the Missoula premiere on Tuesday. "This was a very traumatic experience, so people tended not to write about it in their letters and diaries. They tended not to hand down family stories about it."

UM history professor Leif Fredrickson said severe loss made people want to hide or suppress the dark details of death and destruction. 

Nonetheless, UM researchers and other historians across the state traced firsthand accounts through decedents, newspaper clippings, letters and diaries to reconstruct the stories. 

The documentary shows the pandemic through the lenses of children, married couples, tribal leaders, Black women and young men, many of whom traveled to Montana for new life opportunities.

A young boy fights for survival at a hotel in Forsyth. Families are divided and eventually reunited by the illness. And a group of tribal leaders race to stop another disease outbreak within their community.

Some of the same themes from the COVID-19 pandemic were present in 1918. People wore masks to protect themselves, businesses were forced to close, and some residents resisted the restrictions. 

But, unlike COVID, which put older adults especially at risk, the flu outbreak was most damaging for people ages 18 to 40.

When the virus infected healthy people, their immune systems overcompensated to fight the disease, causing secondary issues like pneumonia and heart complications.

Unlike modern times, there was no vaccine to slow the virus. 

Jabour said other aspects of history collided with influenza during this time, including the suffrage movement and increased social services from the government in the early 20th century.  

"Programs were really being pioneered, mostly at the local and state level, in the 1910s, although many of those experiments were derailed by the influenza of 1918 as well as the U.S. Entry into World War I," Jabour said.

Fredrickson said most U.S. History textbooks seldom mentioned the 1918 influenza during the Progressive Era. He said part of the reason for the documentary was to shed light on that lost history. 

After the COVID-19 pandemic, more textbooks now show the history of the Spanish flu, Fredrickson said. He said it is good to compare both of the pandemics to better understand the world's response.

"But, there is still a lot to be done in terms of remembrance and reckoning with this incident," Fredrickson said. "It needs more than just familiarity in people's mind ... It needs a real deep dive (into) what these experiences were like for people, and people in different localities that experienced it differently." 

The documentary is free to watch and available on the Public Broadcasting Corporation at pbs.Org/show/blue-death/.

Jabour and Fredrickson, Blackfeet historians Leon Rattler and Cheryle Cobell Zwang, Crow historian Reno Charette, Stillwater County historian Penny Redli and Forsyth oral historian Gordon Dean provided contextual remarks on camera within the film.

Garceau, Associate Producer Ashby Glover, University of Minnesota Professor Lori Ann Lahlum, and film interns Kym MacEwan, Ginger Duncan, Kevin Mobley and Chad Keller conducted the research for the documentary. 

The documentary has been available online since the start of the summer, and received awards from the WildSound Film Festival in Toronto, the Documentary Feedback Film Festival in Los Angeles and the Chicago Indie Film Festival.

The film will be shown at the Montreal Independent Film Festival this month.

Griffen Smith is the local government reporter for the Missoulian.

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Cemetery Tour 'larger That Expected'

Much of the special tour of Belleville Cemetery Saturday morning was focussed on the horrendous Spanish Flu epidemic in 1918 at the end of the First World War.

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Before heading out on the tour, cemetery General Manager Dan Atkinson, gave a talk in front of a registration tent about the awesome scope of that world-wide epidemic and its effect on Belleville and the cemetery. Among early victims were veterans of the war who had returned home injured. But the death toll was so large that one plot of land was set aside for "mass burials," he explained. And indications from digging cemetery staff have made indicate that there is at least one more area where unregistered bodies had been buried.

"We really have no idea how many are in these areas," he told a crowd of several dozen people, "It could run into the hundreds." The areas discussed lie at the west end of the cemetery adjacent to Highway 2.

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"Once our people discover bones, they just leave things alone," he concluded.

Another plot in the same area of the cemetery is designated for deceased veterans of wars from the Korean War to the First World War, he said, and falls under the Commonwealth Graves Commission, who really do check on the care of the area from time to time, he said.

Gary Nicholl, president of The Hastings County Historical Society, commented with surprise that "more people showed up than we expected." Warm and sunny weather greeted the tour, but the still-dewy grass was hard on footwear.

The tour took in 10 specific stops, including the graves of some of Belleville's leading pioneer personalities, such as Richard Arnott, William Wrightmeyer, Adella Henderson, J. B. Henderson, Charles Herchimer and John Latta. Descriptions of such illustrious citizens and their contributions were made at each site.

Now 152 years old, the cemetery is a treasure of the city's history.

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History's Headlines: Plague Year 1918

Perhaps there was no more a patriotic time in the Lehigh Valley's history than the early fall of 1918.

Red, white and blue bunting hung everywhere as megaphone-waving men inspired crowds to buy Liberty Bonds. Allentown's Center Square had a small pavilion where, after patriotic oratory was over, bonds were available.

And John Philip Sousa himself was present more than once to provide the toe-tapping music that thrilled the thousands who came to listen.

Many in the crowds had fathers, brothers, husbands and boyfriends who were "over there," making the world safe for democracy as President Wilson had pledged. Most of those at home had no real understanding of the horrors of the trench warfare and the deaths it caused. Many would find out later when it was over and their doughboy didn't come home.

So in all the hoopla about World War I, it would have been easy to overlook that fall a recommendation from the U.S. Public Health Service. It said that the so-called "Spanish flu," which was already traveling the world, was dangerous and spreading.

If it hit the Lehigh Valley, it had the potential not just to disrupt the local industries that were essential to the war effort but kill hundreds if not thousands.

The Health Service recommended immediate measures be taken. City councils should prohibit all public gatherings and close all schools. Saloons, theaters, pool rooms, soda fountains and even churches should be closed until the danger had passed.

It was as if a big wet blanket had been spread over the joyful patriotic spirit. Allentown Mayor Al Reichenbach resisted this message, as did other public officials across the Valley. Even when the state Commissioner of Health Dr. B. Franklin Royer ordered all saloons and public places of amusement closed, the mayor objected.

Allentown had been the first city in the state to make flu a reportable disease, he pointed out. It was all an excuse by Bethlehem Steel officialdom to prevent union organization.

And besides that, there was no comparison between Bethlehem and Allentown. "Bethlehem is filthy and dirty," Reichenbach said, "a wagonload of refuse could be secured from three blocks of the highways. The streets are covered with thick layers of dust, the worst breeder of diseases."

Allentown, on the other hand, the mayor noted, was a clean city and therefore had nothing to fear. This discussion was still going on when the virus arrived to end it. And Bethlehem's story itself has an interesting twist to it.

Nobody knows absolutely, positively for sure where the pandemic of 1918 began. Soldiers in British camps next to pig farms, pigs in Kansas or workers who had traveled from China to Europe to provide labor forces are among the theories that have been suggested over the years.

But one thing that is fairly certain is that it did not start in Spain. The reason it got the name Spanish flu is both simple and complex. WWI had thrown a blanket of security restrictions over most of the world's press. But Spain, which certainly had a share of flu deaths, being a neutral country in the war did not have similar restrictions on the press.

So, most of the stories about it came out of Madrid. The Spanish government protested but there was little they could do. By the time American magazine cartoonists caught up with it, skeletons wearing outfits that faintly resembled that of matadors were haunting the pages of popular publications.

If the pandemic did not directly have its roots in the war, it almost certainly hastened its spread. Close quarters increased transmissions. Soldiers, whose immune systems were weak, had increased susceptibility to all kinds of diseases. And then there was the changing nature of world travel.

In the 18th century, it could take a ship three months to cross the Atlantic from Europe to America. By 1918, a fast ocean liner could make the trip in five to seven days.

The disease was first observed in America in Haskell County, Kansas, in January 1918 by local doctor Loring Miner, who reported it to the U.S. Public Health Service's journal. On March 4 of that year, Albert Gitchell, an army cook at Fort Riley, Kansas, become the first American to be recorded with the flu.

Shortly after, 522 men at the camp reported sick. By the end of March, a case was reported in Queens, New York.

As it galloped around the globe, the flu became a full-scale pandemic. Deaths numbering millions swept the then colonial empires of Britain and France. The death toll in India's British-ruled districts was 13.88 million. China was not hit quite as hard at about 1 million deaths. Iran, better known than as Persia, saw anywhere from 900,000 to 2 million deaths, somewhere between and 8% and 22% of its total population.

Although those in the Lehigh Valley did not know it, by the fall of 1918 when the feuding mayors of Bethlehem and Allentown were battling it out, the pandemic was about to enter its most deadly phase in October.

It was not until Monday, Oct. 7 that Reichenbach caved in to state authorities and closed most theaters and schools. The Lyric, now Miller Symphony Hall, the Orpheum, a vaudeville house, and the Strand, a movie theater, were the first to close. The public schools closed on Oct. 8 and remained so until Nov. 18.

By then, Allentown had 135 cases. This was probably an underestimate. The number rose to 265 cases shortly, and the city's public health officer noted that as many as 25% of the cases were not being reported as most people feared job loss and public stigma, if the dreaded quarantine signs were nailed to their doors.

But the bond drives did not stop at Center Square. Crowds shared space on top of each other in a way that would have given a 21st century epidemiologist heart failure. With theaters and saloons closed, it was the best, or for that matter the only, show in town. Unlike today in Pennsylvania, liquor stores were all privately owned and neither the state nor the cities saw they had any authority to close them.

It was from Oct. 1 to Oct. 22 during the height of the biggest bond rallies, that the number of cases in Allentown began to mount. There were 2,084 cases reported in the city. Oct. 27 saw 397 cases alone.

Allentown Hospital became so crowded by Oct. 14 that many of the nurses had moved back home to make room for flu sufferers. By Oct. 20, 28 nurses had themselves come down with the flu and more were reporting they were sick each day.

It was in the city's Sixth Ward that many of the most severe cases were reported. People continued to go out to work even though they were very ill. Lime was spread on the ward's still largely dirt streets, and pamphlets in Italian, Yiddish and Slavish were given out to explain how to stay well.

A free dispensary, soup kitchen and temporary home for children opened in the community. In some cases when parents died, relatives would not take the children because they feared they also had the flu. Local service clubs like the Allentown Rotary Club and the Kiwanis took the lead in these efforts to provide shelter for these children.

But it was the death of prominent young men that really caught the Lehigh Valley's attention. District Attorney Warren K. Miller, 35, died from influenza. George A. Miller, burgess of Slatington and representative to the state legislature, died at age 31.

Miller's death was followed by that of Francis Crispin, 26, a rising executive in the Traylor Shipbuilding Corporation. Samuel Traylor called it one of the worst most severe blows the company had ever suffered. At the same time, 13 young men in training at Camp Crane to be Army ambulance drivers at the Allentown Fairgrounds also came down with the flu.

But almost as fast as it had hit, by early November the number of cases began to drop off. On Nov. 11, the war ended, and the pandemic slipped into the background.

In 1920, the U.S. Department of Commerce gave the following death statistics for the major municipalities of the Lehigh Valley:

Allentown: flu 203, pneumonia 205;

Bethlehem: flu 39, pneumonia 66;

Easton: flu 131, pneumonia 151.

Local historian Ann Bartholomew, who wrote the chapter on the period in Allentown's past in a 1987 history, calls the figures for Bethlehem "highly suspect" because the city's board of health made no attempt to keep statistics for deaths.

St. Luke's Hospital records show that while 199 sufferers of the flu were admitted,and 166 suffering from pneumonia, there were no deaths from flu and only 78 from pneumonia. Bartholomew suggests that the powers that be at Bethlehem Steel at the time had a hand in keeping figures low to keep war production profits up.

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