Weekly Newspapers Report on Local News
This newspaper is a member of The Colorado Press Association and The National Newspaper Association where we have been active in both Associations for many years. As a result, we have made friends with many newspaper associates across Colorado and the USA.
We exchange newspapers with other publishers in many parts of Colorado and the United States.
Some of my favorites are the Northwest Iowa Review in Sheldon, Iowa, and The Oberlin Herald in Kansas. The Kansas weekly newspaper prints the price of wheat, corn, and soybeans on the bottom of their front page.
A front-page story written by The Herald’s editor caught my attention in a recent issue on a local museum round table discussion on WWI and the Spanish flu. America is still recovering from Covid and the influence on work habits and stay-at-home workers. Questions still arise over the long, or short range, impact on those who were vaccinated. I had the two shots and didn’t get Covid, my wife Gerri didn’t get a shot and she escaped the dread disease as well. The bottom line, Covid was a massive epidemic and millions of Americans suffered or died from the disease.
World War I was known as “The Great War,” or “The War to End All Wars” with the United States entered the war in April of 1917.
My father served in World War I and was drafted into service along with his brother from their ranch near Craig. They both survived the war and returned home.
Herald editor Destry Jackson covered the round table discussion and wrote the following, “There were two killers in September 1918; the war which killed 10 million and the Spanish Flu that killed over 50 million.
In the United States alone, 675,000 people died from the flu, more than died in the entire Civil War.
Jackson relates that the Spanish Flu might have come from Haskill County in Southwest Kansas with that county having lots of cattle, swine, and birds and started reporting cases of severe flu and pneumonia in late 1917 to 1918, with a local doctor warning other doctors about the severe illness in Kansas, rather than Spain.
Jackson continues, “Young men from Haskell County were sent to Camp Funston, near Ft. Riley, the largest of 16 training camps during WWI in the midwest.
Only 109,001 men were in the army at the beginning of WWI so many men began to be drafted. There were 56,000 men that trained at Camp Funston in tight quarters and within three weeks 1,100 were sick and 88 were dead. The surviving soldiers were sent to many different areas of the fighting and came into contact with many people.
The second wave of flu at Camp Funston was in September 1918 with 3,534 cases, and in October 1918, 11,290 cases. Soldiers injured in WWI combat were 227,000 and soldiers killed by Spanish Flu 340,000.”
The Armistice was signed November 11, 1918, sending soldiers home, bringing with them the third wave of the Spanish Flu. Christmas pageants were canceled and churches and schools closed.
Jackson captured a children’s rhyme at the forum that the kids used when jumping rope that was popular at the time. “I had a little bird. Its name was Enza. I opened up the window and in-flu-Enza.”
His story concludes that at the session it was reported that every single human infection of Influenza A is a derivative of the Spanish Flu from 1918, over 107 years ago. It appears from the Oberlin Herald’s front page that the Spanish Flu might have started in Kansas, not Spain.
Did Covid come from China, or somewhere else?