Digital Bob Archive

DECEMBER 1918:

The Juneau schools reopened on Monday, December 2, but three of the teachers were absent and were recovering from the influenza. Douglas schools did not reopen until the 9th.

Members of the Juneau Women's Club and several other women's organizations met at the Elks Hall and pledged themselves to save food in every possible way in order to help feed the starving populations of Europe. The group was addressed by P.R. Bradley, the Federal Food Administrator for Alaska, and by several other speakers.

LeRoy Vestal, the son of Mrs. Ray G. Day of Juneau, said to be the youngest Alaska soldier, was reported on his way home. He was only 15 when he enlisted and was at the front during most of the war, first with the Fifth Field Artillery, then with the 109th Tank Battalion. He was wounded during a tank battle and spent some time in a hospital.

Word was received of the death of influenza of Mrs. Anna Vanderbilt in Seattle. She was the wife of John W. Vanderbilt and was well known in Juneau where they lived in 1906 and 1907 when he was caretaker for a mine at Lemon Creek. Vanderbilt Hill on the Glacier Highway had been named for him. He was serving in the tank corps in France and a son, Oliver, age 18, was also in the service.

The City Council arranged with Cash Cole for the use of his team of horses to haul the fire equipment during times of heavy snow in which the automobile trucks bogged down. The city was to build a barn on Fourth Street opposite the Fire Hall to house the team. (It stood where the City Museum is today.)

At the Juneau High School Mary Kashevaroff was named editor of the 1919 school yearbook, The Totem, with Myrtle Jorgenson as her assistant. Others on the staff of the annual were Roy Torvinen, Dorothy Troy, Walstein \"Bud\" Smith, Belle Hood, Emmett Connor, Charles Perelle, Marian Summers, Vivian Sparling, Gertrude Nelson, Elbi Torvinen and Nadja Kashevaroff.

The influenza quarantine was reimposed on December 18 when about 75 cases of the disease were reported in Juneau. The schools were again closed as well as churches and other public places, including hotel lobbies. The wearing of gauze masks by all persons when outside their own homes was again required. The papers ran long lists of hints for avoiding the flu. The town was shocked and saddened by the influenza deaths of Mrs. Lester D. Henderson, the wife of Alaska's first Commissioner of Education, and of Myrtle Jorgenson, a high school senior who had only a few days earlier been named assistant editor of the yearbook.

The reimposition of the quarantine put a real damper on the Christmas season. The quarantine was, however, lifted again just before the end of 1918, a year that most Juneauites were not sorry to have behind them.