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BHSU historic articles mirror present-day recommendations for COVID-19

28 April 2020

Screenshot of archived Normal School article addressed to the students about the Spanish Flu

Articles from the Black Hills State University archives about the Spanish Flu are providing some unity between alumni from 100 years ago and students affected by the Coronavirus pandemic today. Elizabeth Foss, history major from Broken Bow, Neb., will graduate from BHSU May 9. She says when people look back at the student experience at BHSU during this pandemic, “they will see students trying their best to manage a complete shake-up of the norm.”

Spearfish Normal School, the school that would become BHSU, closed temporarily on October 15, 1918 as a means to prevent the spread of the Spanish Flu which lasted from 1918-1920.

In an article published October 11, 1918 in the Normal School newspaper, the Anemone, Jas L. Miller, M.D., Public Health Officer, warned against the epidemic. Similar to the advice of the present day, Miller asked that students “avoid public gatherings…take good and wholesome exercises each day….and Avoid dancing. Positively.”

Miller advised that every student “contracting a cold report at once to the proper authority.” He also asked that no student leave Spearfish until further notice, and if they did leave, that they must not return to Spearfish until given permission by former BHSU President Fayette Cook.

Paul Higbee, writer and BHSU alum from the class of 1976, notes that 1918-19 was the last academic year in Cook’s 33-year presidency at Spearfish Normal.

“It was a sad, tough year for Cook to say his farewells as President,” says Higbee. “When the Spanish Flu hit this part of the country, it was right when World War I was ending. It should’ve been a time of great celebration. Instead, everyone was hunkered down and scared.”

Higbee says the death of 29-year-old Edna Hare caught the attention of the Spearfish community. Edna was the wife of Lyle Hare, local physician and former coach at Spearfish Normal. The football stadium on campus is named after Lyle Hare to this day. Edna was “someone everyone knew,” says Higbee. She died fairly early in the epidemic and the couple had a two-year-old daughter at the time of her death.

Travel by train was still common in 1918 and is considered a major contributor to the spread of the Spanish Flu. Higbee says Edna Hare had just returned from a visit to eastern S.D. when she fell ill.

Dr. Thomas Weyant, assistant professor of history at BHSU, says the realities of industrial society changing how people lived, worked, and interacted with one another also impacted the spread of the Spanish Flu.

“In the U.S. in 1918, people were living in cramped, unsanitary conditions. Toilets were not inside; there were community outhouses. Diseases spread very rapidly,” says Weyant.

The first reported case of the Spanish Flu was in March 1918 at a military installation in Kansas. Weyant says the Spanish Flu got its name because Spain was a neutral power in World War I. While the flu was rampant in the U.S., Great Britain, France, and Austria, those countries were not reporting their numbers of cases.

“They didn’t want their enemies to know the population was suffering,” says Weyant.

Higbee says Americans were very cautious for a long time after the epidemic subsided. In journals from the 1920s, people still took any cold or flu very seriously.

“A term common back then was ‘our family was laid low’ by the flu or cold. In journals, you can read how people kept themselves somewhat isolated for a number of years. The strain did dissipate, but they wondered if it would come back. Gradually over time, individuals began to forget the severity of the epidemic,” says Higbee.

As a BHSU student, Foss says she was surprised to find similarities in how BHSU is responding to the current pandemic when reading through the historical articles on the Spanish Flu.

“It’s easy to imagine parallels between modern students such as myself dealing with the Coronavirus pandemic and these past students dealing with the Spanish Influenza. Schedules have been changed suddenly, movement restricted, meeting in groups discouraged, and the fear of what mass sickness would mean for the community and its members,” says Foss. “With the advent of online learning, thankfully many students today at BHSU can finish out the semester on time.”

Special thanks to Lori Terrill, BHSU archivist and historian, for gathering the newspaper clippings used in this story.

BHSU historic articles mirror present-day recommendations for COVID-19

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