Ghosts of the past come rushing back

Social distancing — and disruption. The closing of schools, factories, small businesses and churches. Quarantines. Panic buying.

They’re all making the news these days, harkening back to the so-called “Spanish flu” pandemic of 1918.

An estimated 30,000 Georgians died from it. All told, about 675,000 Americans succumbed, most of them young adults 20 to 40 years old. Worldwide death estimates range from 50 million to 100 million — many of them soldiers, in trenches and barracks. 

An emergency hospital in Kansas during the 1918 influenza epidemic. (National Museum of Health and Medicine)

Back then there were no vaccines, antibiotics, ventilators or electron microscopes. Health officials could not test people with mild symptoms so they could self-quarantine. There was little protective equipment for health-care workers. And it was almost impossible to trace contacts, since this particular strain of H1N1 flu seemed to engulf entire communities so quickly.

The outbreak came in waves. The first one hit that spring. The second, in the fall, was the most deadly. (Health officials are worried about that prospect now in the face of our current circumstances.)

In all, a half-billion people were infected — about a third of the world’s population at the time. One estimate says the virus infected up to a quarter of the American population of about 103 million people.

Safety guidelines from Illustrated Current News (National Library of Medicine)

It was a silent foe for months. In the early days, many folks didn’t take it seriously. Back then, authorities “didn’t know what was happening, didn’t know what to do and, therefore, they did the human thing, which is to say it’s not happening,” Dr. Alfred Crosby says in his book “America’s Forgotten Pandemic.” Then people started dying.

In Georgia, the flu wave hit Camp Hancock near Augusta in early October. Recruits received physicals, then were sent off to crowded training camps for later deployment to Europe to fight in World War I. Military trains brought the virus to camps near Atlanta, Columbus and Macon — Camp Wheeler — before it spread to nearby cities. (And Camp Wheeler had just dealt with a measles epidemic the year before.)

Downtown Macon in the early 1900s.

“Today in Georgia History” pegs the date the virus descended on Macon as Oct. 15, 1918. “The Spanish influenza epidemic sweeping the nation hit Macon, with 250 new cases reported in the previous 48 hours.”  

Two huge forces were at cross-purposes that fall: continued soldier recruitment to fight (and the close quarters that effort entailed, from military trains to troopships), and the need for social distancing and shutting down activity to quell the virus’ spread.

It’s hard to believe, but the virus and its devastation weren’t often front-page news at the time, at least not in Macon. 

The major countries fighting in the war didn’t want to give their enemies any advantage, so the extent of the flu’s rampage — from both local and national leaders — was often minimized. There was wartime morale to consider. And officials wanted to preserve the public order and avoid panic.

Dispatches about the flu often ran on page 3 inside The Macon Daily Telegraph, said Joe Kovac Jr., a senior reporter for The Telegraph who looked at the paper’s coverage and tweeted about the outbreak recently:

“Our Spanish Flu coverage in Macon in October 1918 included an editorial on embracing inconveniences to avoid spread. (Wearing masks appears to have been encouraged: “A city of bandaged faces is better than coffins piled up in our morgues.”)

One subhead read: “Total of 191 New Cases Are Reported at Health Office, 46 Being from Payne’s Mill

Spanish flu update in The Macon Daily Telegraph.

From an editorial of the day titled “Flail the Flu,” which Kovac cited:

“If these men who have our community health in charge come to the decision all public gatherings should be closed they will act promptly and without fear because public sentiment is already strongly for that,” it read in part. “Fortunately it seems we are so far from the epidemic stage in Macon there is every hope it will not even threaten to reach that stage and that as it stands now it can be as well handled by people going pretty well as usual about their affairs provided they exercise due personal diligence in protecting both themselves and other people.”

As for our current challenge, we don’t know yet if the past is prologue, as Shakespeare told us. But we do know this: In this time of great uncertainty, what has gotten us through other national crises will serve us well now: Setting aside differences and pulling together. Helping each other however we can, from a video call to a grocery run for an older neighbor. Staying connected, through social media or across a backyard fence. Letting others know that they are not alone.

Stay safe and take care. And let us hear from you.

‘You are as good as anyone’

Ruth Hartley Mosley always made an impression.

She was tall and beautiful, with piercing eyes. A commanding presence in any setting.

She didn’t have time for trifles. Her mother died when she was 12. Her father, a boot maker, instilled in her a sense of resolve and self-sufficiency that guided her all of her days. 

She was born in Savannah in 1886, but lived in Macon most of her life, moving here with her first husband, Richard Hartley (Years after his death, she married Fisher Mosley.) She was a successful businesswoman during a time when the odds of such an achievement were squarely against a woman, especially a woman of color.

She owned a funeral home, more than a hundred rental properties and was one of the first women anywhere to earn a mortician’s license.

A nurse by training, Mosley helped teach dozens of black midwives. She also was active in Macon’s civil rights movement. After her death, she was an inductee into the Georgia Women of Achievement. (Authors Margaret Mitchell and Carson McCullers were in the same class.)

Still, many folks have never heard of her. 

“She had a vision, and she knew what she wanted,” said Gerri Marion-McCord, executive director of the Ruth Hartley Mosley Memorial Women’s Center. “She believed that if you had the ability to give, it was your responsibility to do so. … Not enough people have been exposed to her throughout the community.”

The Women’s Center is located in Mosley’s former home. It’s a beautiful old building on the short stretch of Spring Street near the Cotton Avenue Historic District. It is a “contributing building” to the Macon Historic District, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.

Until recently, that district — Macon’s leading black business community at one time — was on Historic Macon’s Fading Five list of endangered properties because of intense commercial development pressure. The district itself has made substantial progress thanks to preservation efforts and the work of such groups as the Cotton Avenue Coalition, but the Women’s Center is not on so firm a footing. It needs structural work. There’s plenty of rotten wood. The plaster walls are deteriorating.

“It’s shameful for a place like this to be in our community and not be recognized or preserved,” McCord said during a look around the center. “I don’t think we know what we’ve got here.”

But that could change — with the community’s help. McCord announced Tuesday that the center is in the running for a share of $2 million in preservation grants. Just 20 historic sites across the country that honor women’s history are eligible for the Partners in Preservation funding, provided by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and American Express.

But it will all depend on the number of votes that the center gets by Oct. 29. McCord urged Middle Georgia residents to go to voteyourmainstreet.org/macon and vote for the center. You can vote up to five times a day. There will also be a free Rockin’ and Rallyin’ for Ruth concert from 6-9 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 29, in High Street Park, right up the street from the center and across from First Baptist Church of Christ. You can vote there too.

During the turbulent 1950s and ‘60s, Mosley hosted civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy, as well as Thurgood Marshall, before he was a Supreme Court justice. Her home was a refuge for them in the Jim Crow South, much like other sites that were featured in the movie “Green Book.”

Mosley cherished Macon, and she wanted the best for its residents. Since it opened its doors to the public in 1978, the nonprofit Women’s Center has provided help in keeping with her wishes: increasing educational opportunities for women and enhancing their life skills, as well as providing services for the community. That has included classes for aspiring nursing assistants.

Her estate included two trust funds. One provided financial assistance for needy students who wanted to become nurses or other health care providers. It’s been depleted. The other fund established the Women’s Center, but it, too, will soon be exhausted.

“She put her money where her mouth was,” McCord said. “It was very important to her to give back to the  community that gave so much to her. She tried to fulfill needs she saw in the community.

“She lived in her moment. She didn’t know that things would open up and be more inclusive. She left resources to provide for her people.”

Mosley died in Savannah in 1975 at age 89. She is buried in Linwood Cemetery, in the Pleasant Hill neighborhood.

The next time you’re strolling around Tattnall Square Park, take a moment to stop by the majestic fountain in the middle of the park.

At the base of the fountain wall, you will find words of inspiration and encouragement from influential Macon residents who’ve made a difference over the years.

Ruth Hartley Mosley is among them.

Her message there, set in stone, is as timeless as the values she held dear.

“You are as good as anyone. Never let the fact that you don’t have anything keep you from achieving.”

Here’s what ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ film crew thought about downtown Macon

Flint’s Grocery is gone. So too are Weber’s Cafe, Jay’s Beauty Salon and the Rathman/Lewis drugstore, “where you get what the doctor ordered.”

The Middletown Journal, like hundreds of its latter-day brethren, has also shut down.

They were all part of the filming for “Hillbilly Elegy” along Poplar Street. Now, workers have knocked down scaffolding and repainted storefronts up and down the street.

Photo: Oby Brown

It was our latest close-up for a major film, and several members of the small army of women and men working here said Macon should be proud of what it has downtown.

In particular, what it has saved downtown.

“You’ve got great buildings,” said Rick Riggs, the charge scenic artist on the set. “We were very pleasantly surprised at the architecture around town. … You’ve got great little storefronts. … There’s a great opportunity to revitalize the downtown area. We see it.”

Photo: Oby Brown

Riggs was standing outside a row of remade storefronts in the 600 block of Poplar. He described the process of replicating street scenes from Middletown, Ohio, where most of J.D. Vance’s bestseller is set, during three periods: the late 1990s, in 2012 and the late 1940s -- in that order -- for shooting. Workers had to “distress” a site one day, then use historically accurate touches -- appropriate colors, for example -- when they re-created the boom times of post-World War II Middletown. 

In all, at least 20 stores or buildings were transformed for filming across the county, most of them in and around downtown. Ron Howard is directing the Netflix movie, which stars Amy Adams and Glenn Close. The memoir tells the story of Vance’s family in Middletown and their struggles with poverty, alcoholism and abuse.

During the height of filming in Macon, one worker took a break and extolled what he’d seen downtown. Standing on the sidewalk, he noted the old Armory Building at the corner of First and Poplar, which was completed in 1885, then pointed out St. Joseph Catholic Church a little farther up the hill.

He called downtown Macon “a gold mine.” The buildings, by and large, are in good shape, and for movie purposes, you can take a store, add neon signs and you’re back in the 1950s. Then you can take out the neon and add LED lighting for a more modern look. But the sites work equally well for both settings, he said.

Photo: Oby Brown

Most of the folks in town for filming had never been to Macon, and almost all of them are gone now. Matt Sparks, a native of Jefferson, near Athens, is getting to know the city well, though.

He was assistant location manager for “Hillbilly Elegy” and a scout too. He arrived in town about a month before shooting began, and he’d just been in Macon in April for four days of shooting on HBO’s “Watchmen” series. During that filming, workers turned parts of Second and Cherry streets into 1940s Brooklyn.

“There’s a lot of room for opportunity here,” he said. “I look at the buildings and wonder, ‘What did this used to be?” Downtown Macon, he said, “has so much to offer.”

Plenty of forward-thinking Macon residents have reached the same conclusion in recent years as they converted long-dormant buildings into new retail or living space. You need only look at the soon-to-open Kudzu Seafood on Poplar, Famous Mike’s nearby, the Macon Beer Co.’s new taproom, which is nearing completion, or the dozens of other sites breathing new life, thanks to the preservation mind-set.  

When he could, Sparks took walks down alleyways and even paid a visit to the Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park while he was here.

“There are parts of history that just flash out,” he said of downtown’s buildings. “For me, it brings character to the city.”

In time, one stretch in the 600 block of Poplar that was used for filming will be torn down to make way for the planned Hyatt Place, a six-floor hotel with more than 100 rooms. 

Joe Couch, another member of the “Hillbilly Elegy” crew, saw a good bit of that work during his years as a Savannah resident. But he knows you’ve got to pick your spots carefully.

Couch, a prop maker for more than 40 years, said he marvelled at what he saw downtown.

“These are beautiful,” he said, looking around. “You don’t see this much any more. A lot of places, they’re tearing down everything. You haven’t done that.”

Then he paused.

“You should show a reverence for them,” he said of the old buildings. “If not, they’re long gone.”