By Tim Marsh
My sister and I knew only one grandparent.
Born in 1879, our paternal grandmother died in Newberg (Yamhill County), Oregon, at age 94 in 1973 when I was 25 years old and my sister was 28.
Our maternal grandparents, U.S. immigrants from Sweden, died in the late 1930s (he) and early 1940s (she), before my sister and I were born in 1944 and 1948, respectively.
Our paternal grandfather, John Joseph Marsh (photo), an immigrant from Ireland and husband of the grandmother we knew, died of the Spanish influenza in 1918 at age 49 in Bellingham (Whatcom County), Washington. Bellingham is about 90 miles north of Seattle.
On June 3, 1918, the Bellingham Herald reporting on his death said, "John J. Marsh (was) one of Bellingham's most genial citizens and for nearly twenty-five years employed in the fire department of this city, half of that time as its chief..."
That was when fire engines were horse drawn.
Although we did not know our Irish Catholic grandfather John, he’s never far from our minds.
My sister’s first name is Mayo, for County Mayo in Ireland where our grandfather was born and where he and other family members lived before coming to America. My middle name, John, honors him.
According to HistoryLink.com, on October 3, 1918, the worldwide Spanish influenza epidemic arrived in Seattle. It was part of the influenza pandemic which engulfed the world. Grandfather John died June 1, 1918, of that influenza.
A story in a March 2020 edition of the Wall Street Journal said, “President Woodrow Wilson was so focused on winning World War I that he would not listen to repeated warnings about the pandemic from the chiefs of the Army and Navy, and even from his own personal physician. The U.S. ended up losing 675,000 lives to influenza, compared with 53,000 killed in combat in World War I.”
That brings us to today. My sister and I are among those reading about coronavirus and its impact on the world. We never thought there would be anything to seemingly rival what killed our grandfather and so many others.
This is a worrisome time. We pray research will result in stopping the coronavirus calamity.
Writer Tim Marsh (Timothy John Marsh) lives in McMinnville, Oregon. His grandparents are buried at Bay View Cemetery, Bellingham, Wash.
