When I was growing up on my great-grandfather’s farm east of Lone Rock, numerous times during my youth my great-grandparents, Karl and Olga Ewoldt, talked about surviving the flu pandemic of 1918. At one point during that period, both of them, plus their daughters, Elva, my great-aunt; and Ella, my grandmother, all contracted the flu at the same time.
They became so ill that Karl’s brother Henry and his wife Minnie had to come to the farm and care for them. Eventually, they all recovered, and life moved on. But not everyone in Kossuth County was as fortunate, as almost 150 county residents ultimately died.
Read the rest of the column in the May 21 Kossuth County Advance.
