The real flu...

One summer in middle school,  when my grandfather was still alive, I was downstairs in the basement of his home, snooping around, when I ran across a photo of a woman who was rather young, quit pretty standing sternly with a slight smile on her face on a mountain side, a rocky grade of boulders.  On the back of the brown press board photo was the name "Odia".  I asked my grandfather "Who is this Odia?"  She was his sister.  She was the oldest of his siblings - Odie, Oscar, (America) Jane and Owen.   My great Aunt "Odie" died in the 1918 Great Influenza Epidemic (or Pandemic).  She was 17 or 18 years old.  And I learned, in middle school, what a great epidemic this was.  Half a million people died in the US alone.  Millions of people died world wide.  My great uncle Oscar would later kill himself in the early 1960's leaving my grandfather Owen Dorr and my great Aunt (America) Jane (Dorr) Simeth as the remaining family - and really the only Dorrs I would know.  I have no idea what it would be like to lose a family member to an epidemic.  AIDS isn't even close to being able to compare - so I won't even try.

And I listen to these stories of the pig flu - and yes it's important to be concerned and pay attention.  But wow - I can't even imagine being a part of a massive influenza outbreak.  And being remembered as beautiful woman on a press board...