Women Helping Others

This a tradition that goes back to the invention of the needle.  Women would meet together to make baby blankets, quilts for the homeless, bedding for men in war and quilts for each other.  The women pictured in this quilt are members of the Legion of Loyal Ladies.  They have come together to make hospital bedding for the people who have been afflicted by the Flu Influenza in 1918.

 On March 4, 1918, a company cook reported sick at Fort Riley, Kansas. By noon on March 11, 1918, over 100 soldiers were in the hospital.  Within ten days, 522 men at the camp had died. By March 18, 1918, the virus had reached Queens, New York.In 1918, the United States and the world was in the grips of the 1918 Influenza pandemic, which infected 500 million people across the world and killed as many as 25 million people in its first 25 weeks.

 My own grandmother fell sick in 1918 and was given 24 hours to live.  She survived and died at the age of 96.

 This pandemic has been described as “the greatest medical holocaust in history”. In 2020, the world experienced Covid-19.  The jury is still out on which is the greatest holocaust.