Smith Hotel on day of completion. On balcony, from left to right: Ben Smith, Manuel ("Cap") Peters, Lewis Higgins (played the fiddle), Bob Smith, Frank Wallis ("top boss" or head carpenter). On porch below: Fritz Disher (lumberyard man), Lee Bennett, Bill Smith, Uncle George Buchan, B. F. Smith (owner of the hotel), Lemuel Smith.
At the Museum
September 24, 2006
Let’s look at something a little different this week. The flu epidemic of 1923 on the South Plains is very much a part of our history, and did affect Littlefield and the surrounding area in a big way.
I’ve written in the past about the Smith Hotel, completed in 1913 by B. F. (Frank) Smith. By 1923, the year the flu epidemic hit this area, a lot of changes had taken place at "the hotel". Allow me to bring you "up to date".
"Things seemed to be going well for the Smiths who remained in or around the hotel. Life went on at a pleasant pace, and no one foresaw the changes that were soon to come. But within a very few years, the DID come. In 1914 and 1915, Ben (one of Frank’s sons) continued with his freighting and hunting, both of antelope and coyotes, hauling and selling the hides, with a "back-load" of supplies and saleable merchandise for the towns-people. Bob Smith (another brother) had married in 1915, and was ranching in New Mexico with his new bride.
"Then the changes really started. Lorado ( a sister) married Edwin "Mac" McKnight and went with him on an oil drilling crew to south Texas. Berta (another sister) married Ed Cosgrove and had moved to Causey, New Mexico. Gladys (yet another sister) married Frank James and moved to Artesia, New Mexico. Carl (a brother) had gone to help brother Bob on the ranch. And B. F. Smith died in 1916.
"Effie (another sister) and Milton Wharton moved to Flomont, Texas, while both Ben and Desbro (another brother) had gone to serve their country in World War I, both being sent to Europe.
"The hotel, once so alive and ringing with family and friends was without a Smith to run it. It was leased by the Smith children to some people who agreed to operate it and keep it open. However, they only stayed about a year or less, then moved out, taking as much of the furnishings as they could carry. No one ever heard of them again!
"For about a year, there was no one to tend to things, and word of the evacuation didn’t reach any of the Smith children for quite some time. In fact, no one knows if anyone ever even bothered to try to contact them. People would just go into the hotel, pick whatever room they wanted and stay for as long as they wanted. More often than not, when they left, they took whatever they took a fancy to of what was left of the furnishings…..a bed, a chair, a mirror or whatever. By the time Berta and her husband came back to Littlefield in 1918, the hotel had been COMPLETELY stripped of everything. ‘here wasn’t even enough to set up housekeeping.’
"Berta began to put the hotel back in order as best she could, buying what she could from a furniture/funeral home in Lamesa, and by picking up a bedstead here, a chair or table there, until she finally had the hotel refurnished. She began to run it again, as nearly as she could, in the manner it had been operated earlier. Except, this time, there was only Berta, her husband, "Cosgrove", their daughter Zelma (who was only about 4 years old at the time) and Cosgrove’s daughter, Eula, who was about 8 or 10, to do all the work.
"Carl Smith had stopped working for Bob and had come back to take a job on the railroad section line, so he moved into the hotel to help out when he could. This was a Godsend, because Cosgrove died in 1922, and that left only Berta and Carl (when he came in at night) to carry the load.
"Later on that year of 1922, more help arrived, when Lorado McKnight and her husband "Mac" came back to Littlefield. They immediately moved in and began to assist with the hotel duties.
"Just one year later, in 1923, "Mac" McKnight died in the terrible flu epidemic that was sweeping the nation at the time. While the epidemic affected most families in town, "Mac" was the only one who actually lived in the hotel to catch the flu, and this was probably because he was one of the ones who was attempting to help others in town and exposed himself. Bob Smith, Milton Wharton and all able-bodied men were "making the rounds", going from house to house and doing whatever they could to try to help the stricken towns-people. Both "Mac" McKnight and Milton Wharton caught the flu and died from it. Bob Smith caught it, and said he was "scared he would die and afraid he wouldn’t", he was so sick. He was given up for dead at one time, but managed to survive.
A publication titled 1918 Revisited: Lessons and Suggestions for Further Inquiry, by
John M. Barry, Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Center for Bioenvironmental Research at Tulane and Xavier Universities, the enormity of the flu epidemic is addressed:The 1918–1919 influenza pandemic killed more people in absolute numbers than any other disease outbreak in history. A contemporary estimate put the death toll at 21 million, a figure that persists in the media today, but understates the real number. Epidemiologists and scientists have revised that figure several times since then. Each and every revision has been upward. Frank Macfarlane Burnet, who won his Nobel Prize for immunology but who spent most of his life studying influenza, estimated the death toll as probably 50 million, and possibly as high as 100 million. A 2002 epidemiologic study also estimates the deaths at between 50 and 100 million (Johnson and Mueller, 2002).
If that doesn’t quite put it in perspective, this quote taken from the same document states:
The world population in 1918 was only 28 percent of today’s population. Adjusting for population, a comparable toll today would be 175 to 350 million.
Yet another reference, this time from a physician of the time:
A letter from a physician at one U.S. Army camp to a colleague puts a more human face on those numbers:
These men start with what appears to be an ordinary attack of LaGrippe or Influenza, and when brought to the Hosp. they very rapidly develop the most vicious type of Pneumonia that has ever been seen … and a few hours later you can begin to see the Cyanosis extending from their ears and spreading all over the face, until it is hard to distinguish the colored men from the white. It is only a matter of a few hours then until death comes…. It is horrible. One can stand it to see one, two or twenty men die, but to see these poor devils dropping like flies…. We have been averaging about 100 deaths per day…. Pneumonia means in about all cases death…. We have lost an outrageous number of Nurses and Drs. It takes special trains to carry away the dead. For several days there were no coffins and the bodies piled up something fierce…. It beats any sight they ever had in France after a battle. An extra long barracks has been vacated for the use of the Morgue, and it would make any man sit up and take notice to walk down the long lines of dead soldiers all dressed and laid out in double rows…. Good By old Pal, God be with you till we meet again (Grist, 1979).
That letter reflected a typical experience in American Army cantonments. The civilian experience was not much better.
Medical attention was hard to come by in the 1910’s and 1920’s. It was several years before Littlefield would have a doctor in its midst, much less a hospital. Those of us who are of "baby-boomer" age and older tend to think of "the good ole’ days". They were good days, in so many ways. I love history because it helps us remember that modern conveniences make things so much easier for us, comparatively speaking, It also reminds us of the "stock" we come from. We may have to tighten our belts one day soon, but that’s not a problem. We, or at least our founding fathers, thought nothing of it when times got tough, and we are our parents’ children.