By Mary Ann Mulvihill-Decker
My grandmother caught the Spanish flu.
The pandemic of 1918 came in three waves. Gram caught it in the third wave, in 1919, in Sag Harbor. She was a healthy young woman of 22 at the time. The sad thing, though, was that she was pregnant.
Elizabeth Ann Mulvihill lived for 43 days in 1920. She died 100 years ago this summer. Gram and her family were told that the virus had caused “failure to thrive” in her brand new baby.
I learned about Elizabeth Ann at St. Andrew’s Cemetery on Brick Kiln Road as a very young girl. Her tiny gravestone lies, almost as an asterisk, besides the solid McDonough stone honoring my great-grandparents in our original family plot.
Our Irish family traditionally visits and decorates graves on holidays, so I was taken over and over to all of the various stones and read their inscriptions and heard their stories.
As I pondered the strangeness of death, I tried to discern the emotions of my elders. We tied wreaths and holly sprigs onto some of the stones; we artfully arranged flowers or Indian corn upon them. We said prayers and, in our very individual ways, celebrated each of their lives.
Of the 23 descendants (and counting) of Anna and Daniel Mulvihill, Elizabeth was the very first girl. They would go on to raise three strong children at “The Brickilns” in Sag Harbor.
My dad, William, was a novelist, history teacher, environmental champion and, as an Army solider, fought in Germany in World War II. He was a man of integrity, humor and creativity.
His older sister, Dolores Zebrowski, was an RN when she courageously enlisted in the Army and served on troop trains caring for severely injured soldiers who were often as young as she. Dolores became director of nursing at Southampton Hospital and an insatiable world traveler.
Their elder brother, Dan, served as a combat medic in the Pacific Theater and became a local dentist.
But I have often wondered: Who would Elizabeth have become?
She was the aunt I never got to know, to play games with, to love. I never got to send her a Valentine or take her to lunch. All because of a microscopic virus that took her away from her mom and dad, her McDonough grandmother and aunts on Glover Street, her Mulvihill relatives in Connecticut — and even from me.
Sometimes I put a tiny pumpkin on her grave; sometimes I bring her some blossoms from my garden. How would she have counseled me? Would she have made me laugh, like her sister often did? Would she have joined the Army too? Loved to travel or write? Been fascinated by her Irish heritage, like my dad, who became a dual citizen? Loved animals or played fiddle, like her mom?
Anna McDonough Mulvihill studied medical books in her spare time, while she ran the homestead at the now-landmarked home amid the beautiful Anna and Daniel Mulvihill Preserve. She even diagnosed my grandfather’s Rocky Mountain spotted fever when the doctors could not, the first documented case on Long Island. Perhaps had she been a boy she would have gone to medical school.
So she probably knew about as much as anyone in town about the Spanish flu pandemic. Maybe she was the reason no one else in the family succumbed to its deadly virulence.
How far have we come in a century? In Spanish flu times, people practiced social distancing. Countless schools, libraries, businesses and theaters were shuttered. Many churches closed.
Contact tracing was a thing. Convalescent serum was tried. People wore masks, which were mandated in many places across the country. Posters threatened of jail time for noncompliance.
Five hundred million people were infected on Earth, about one-third of the population. An estimated 50 million people perished.
Not even the top epidemiologists can see into the future. But if COVID-19 were to track the Spanish flu epidemic, which began around February 1918, spiked again with devastating ferocity that fall, and returned the following year, we are in this crisis easily until the end of next year.
The variables are many; maybe we’ll get a safe, rigorously tested vaccine, or an effective treatment. Maybe science will finally trump politics. Or maybe, because there are so many more people on Earth, constantly traveling, whether by choice or as refugees, it will last much longer. Or because so many people refuse to comply with the most basic public health measures: wear a mask and socially distance.
Now I stay home as much as possible. I see people without masks in the village every time I go downstreet. I love to swim but for the first time in my life have avoided the beaches all summer.
Thankfully, I haven’t yet lost a family member or friend to the virus. But the odds are that I will.
But it does feel personal, since our family has already suffered from a pandemic, the loss of Elizabeth Ann, the remarkable girl and woman who never got to be.
We’ve known for months now, despite being told the opposite, that the young and healthy can also get very sick and die from coronavirus. Let’s protect our young women and men as we try to protect our elderly. We must all keep in mind the danger of exposing a pregnant woman to the virus.
Please wear a mask for them. There are enough tiny graves in our cemeteries.
Mary Ann Mulvihill-Decker lives in Sag Harbor.
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