Haiti & the Spanish Flu

The scenes of Haiti after the earthquate have brought up memories for 95-year-old Bessie Bandervilt. She grew up in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, in the tiny town of Metropolitan, which was really just a lumber camp for the Metropolitan Lumber Company, 100 families in tiny log homes. The loggers had been recruited from the Finnish-Swedish border, so some were Finns who spoke Swedish and others were Swedes who spoke Finnish.

The Spanish Flu of 1918 hit Metropolitan hard. It took only 12 to 18 hours after exposure for the flu symptoms to hit, and it didn't take long after the symptoms appeared until death. Every day, bodies were carried out of the houses. No family was untouched by that deadly flu, save one.

There was one man, Bessie can't remember his name now, who, for some reason, kept his children out of school the day the flu virus hit Metropolitan. So his was the only family that did not have someone sick or dying or dead. Each day, morning and evening, he and his children went through the town, milking the cows for every family, leaving the buckets outside the doors, so they would not be exposed to the germs inside.

Bessie is alive because of that milk. She looks at those pix of Haiti on the TV and thinks to herself that all the money in the world is not as useful as one family that is willing to milk the cows.