History Snoopin': Banishment of the hated mask

Banishment of the hated mask

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by Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune

Monday, April 20th 2020

“We’re trying to save human lives here,” said Councilman John Carkin. “This council should be commended instead of getting senseless opposition.”

The crowd of at least 40 masked men hooted and booed. “It’s a highhanded outrage,” said a furious Councilman James Keene. “It smacks of the Bolsheviks.”

Medford City Council had just voted 4-3 to leave the decision of whether to abolish the mask requirement to the best judgment of the city’s board of health, a board composed of the four council members who voted in favor of keeping the masks.

It was December 1918. Jackson County was still fighting against the threat of the 1918 flu pandemic that was racing around the world and had already brought death to at least two county residents.

Mayor Charles Gates fired back at the agitators, reminding them that the flu epidemic had steadily decreased since the mandated wearing of masks had begun just three week earlier.

“There are only two classes of people opposing the masks,” he said, “those too dignified to wear them, and those who place the almighty dollar above human life.”

It had begun in early October, when Mayor Gates received a letter from Medford Dr. Elias Porter, who was studying in a Massachusetts hospital when the pandemic struck with a vengeance.

“It is the most terrible epidemic ever visiting America,” he warned, “and is very fatal. The disease appeared in Boston early in September. On the 14th of that month there were 21 deaths, and from that date until noon, Oct. 5, there have been over 80,000 cases and 2,270 deaths.”

Mayor Gates announced that starting Oct. 14, 1918, “We have decided to close all places of amusements, theaters, moving pictures, churches, lodges, schools and all public meetings of every description where people congregate, until the epidemic has subsided.”

Within days, William Barnum, one time boy-conductor on the Rogue River Valley Railway, was dead, and residents were getting sick.

Gates ordered a mandatory quarantine of anyone suffering from the flu and required a sign be posted on their door to warn the public.

By November, with 50 cases known in the county, the upper floor of Medford’s Sacred Heart Hospital was turned into an influenza ward.

Red Cross women began sewing flu masks, selling them to local stores and the public for 15 cents each.

On Nov. 24, when new cases had slowed, merchants who had lost most of their customers were delighted when the bans on gathering groups and closures were lifted.

However, two weeks later, with four deaths in four days and 150 cases of influenza, the council reinstated the gathering ban and the closures.

Also, everyone was now required to wear a mask everywhere they went, even inside where they worked. Violating the mask requirement meant a $5 fine for each offense, and over 20 men eventually were cited.

A Mail Tribune editorial supported the move. “The flu mask has been proved the best preventative, and while it entails considerable inconvenience, it is a question of safety first.”

Some merchants circulated a petition asking that the mask measure be repealed.

“The businessmen,” said City Health Officer Dr. Elijah Pickel, “are injuring their own cause. With flu masks, the individual can shop downtown without danger. Without them there would be danger on every side.”

On Jan. 4, 1919, the ban on gatherings and the mask requirement were lifted.

From the beginning, there had been 531 cases in the county, two confirmed deaths, and 26 deaths from pneumonia brought on by the flu. Sixteen deaths were in the county, outside of the cities.

“The schools reopen and all social activities will be on in full swing,” said a Tribune columnist. “It is expected that churches will be crowded again. 

Lovers of moving pictures will now be able to enjoy a show in comfort, thanks to the banishment of the hated mask.”

Writer Bill Miller is the author of five books, including “History Snoopin’,” a collection of his previous history columns and stories. Reach him at newsmiller@live.com.

https://mailtribune.com/lifestyle/banishment-of-the-hated-mask

To Live and Die a WASP: Collision at Avenger Field

16 April 1944 

Collision and Death of Two Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP)

The 38

Jayne Elizabeth Erickson 44-6

(14 Apr 1921)

&

Mary Holmes Howson 44-4

 (Feb 16, 1919)

Women Airforce Service Pilots Jayne Erickson & Mary Howson

Excerpt from To Live and Die a WASP:

At Avenger Field on April 16, 1944, Elizabeth Erickson (44-W-6), with 111 days still left before graduation, was almost half way through her training.

 

Twenty-five-year-old Mary Howson (44-W-4) was in the homestretch, with just 38 days to go. It was a warm Sunday afternoon with a light, southeasterly breeze—a good day for flying.

 

Mary, flying solo, was the last of her classmates to approach for a landing.They were completing a 530-mile roundtrip training flight around San Antonio.

 

Elizabeth was practicing touch and go landings. Previously, she had made three of these practice landings with her instructor, but now, she was alone in the cockpit and lining up for another landing.

 

Both women were flying AT-6 Texan trainers. For some reason, the ground controller didn’t notice that the women were both at 800 feet and descending from opposite directions. Both were on their next to the last turn, in preparation for their final approach to the runway. Elizabeth and Mary were on a collision course. …

Women Airforce Service Pilots Jayne Erickson & Mary Howson

Just after 1:20 p.m., Mary Howson and Elizabeth Erickson’s AT-6s slammed into each other. As the planes began tumbling, Mary managed to unfasten her harness, climb out of the cockpit, and jump, but she was too low and her parachute never completely opened. Elizabeth had no chance at all. She was trapped in her cockpit and unable to jump. Both women died instantly just a few yards apart.

The following evening, all of the trainees and training staff attended a memorial service for both women in the Avenger Field gymnasium. Classmates took up a collection to send both friends home.

Mickie Carmichael (44-W-4) accompanied Mary home for her funeral and burial in the Washington Memorial Chapel Churchyard, Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.

Elinor Fairchild (44-W-6), Elizabeth’s friend, accompanied Elizabeth to her burial in Seattle’s Lake View Cemetery.

RIP     

History Snoopin': A Tenderfoot Remembers

A tenderfoot remembers

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by Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune

Monday, April 13th 2020

A hundred years ago, just about everyone knew that the county seat was going to move from Jacksonville to Medford, and not everyone was happy about it.

Chandler B. Watson, better known as C.B., had come to Southern Oregon in 1871, nearly 50 years earlier than his conversation. He said the courthouse move was heart rendering, just as sad as if a member of the family had been taken away.

 

Chandler B. Watson

“Old Jacksonville, as I first saw it, comes before me now,” he said, “a moving picture of animation and energy. I am living again in retrospect, in the presence of that picture, such a one as will never again be seen except to memory.”

Arriving when he was barely into his 20s, C.B. had been an active resident. In those 50 years he had been Jackson County district attorney, Ashland city attorney, editor of the Oregon Sentinel newspaper, a local historian, and so much more. He had abandoned his Illinois home and fell in love with Oregon.

 

California St., Jacksonville, Oregon

“For one who had recently arrived as a tenderfoot,” he said, “a new world was opened and his young blood was made to tingle as he tried to come into correspondence with his environment. To such a one there are memories not to be obliterated, and sentimental preferences he would not suppress.”

C.B. understood that moving the county seat was in the public’s interest, “in the interest of the great majority,” he said. Jacksonville’s population had been falling for years. His only worry was whether the old, brick courthouse would remain standing.

“If you take away the courthouse, some suitable monument of lasting character should be erected at the old site.”

He remembered when Jackson County ran all the way from Goose Lake in today’s Lake County, through Klamath and Jackson counties, and up to the Josephine County line.

He admired the resident’s sense of duty and how they responded to a summons or subpoena “with less complaint than they do today.”

Those were days when a visit to the county seat might require days and nights of travel and camping. “A cheerful and uncomplaining attitude was maintained,” he said. “All were neighbors, though separated by forests and mountains of great extent.”

The county courthouse in 1871 was a simple wooden structure standing where the brick courthouse still stands. “The jail was little more than a dugout banked with dirt,” he said.

He was also amused that Medford would be the new county seat, remembering, “50 years ago jackrabbits and coyotes held high carnival and sole possession where Medford now stands. At that time there were not more than two farm houses within what is now the corporate limits of the present metropolis.”

There were vast open spaces and only a few tiny villages. Phoenix was second in population to Jacksonville, and miles of desert separated Central Point from Eagle Point, where the foundation of a flour mill was being laid.

“There were no thoughts of railroads,” C.B. said, and the passing of the overland stagecoach was the chief daily event.

“Roads were little more than trails. Kerosene lamps and tallow candles furnished the only light at night and special messengers on horseback performed the duties now obtained from telegraph and telephone.”

They were all fond memories for C.B. as he entered his 70th year, but he never was a prisoner of the past.

“The world is moving with accelerated speed,” he said, “and we are bound to keep pace with it. Changes are constantly required in the interest of the great majority, and we are bound to bow when demands are made.”

 

Courthouse, Jackson County, Oregon

The county seat moved to Medford in 1927, three years before C.B. died. He would be happy to know, the brick courthouse still stands.

Writer Bill Miller is the author of five books, including“History Snoopin’,” a collection of his previous history columns and stories. Reach him at newsmiller@live.com.

https://mailtribune.com/lifestyle/a-tenderfoot-remembers

History Snoopin': The rationing of panic

The rationing of panic

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by Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune

Monday, April 6th 2020

It was the middle of March, just a few weeks ago, when panic struck.

A long line of shopping carts twisted around a corner at Costco and ended somewhere back in the middle of the meat cases. A frazzled two or three employees were tossing jumbo packs of toilet paper into each basket; baskets pushed by equally frazzled and even more frightened customers.

Panic and hoarding are nothing new in times of stress and emergency; however, toilet paper, as important as it certainly is, certainly seems like an unusual choice in the grand scheme of things.

Then again, I’d bet you couldn’t tell me the very first item customers cleared from the grocery shelves when Pearl Harbor was bombed and the country went to war.

Waiting for it—sugar!

Within a week of the bombing, the government began its first rationing order. Because rubber was a

war necessity, purchasing new tires for the old jalopy was virtually banned, and just forget about riding home in a brand new 1942 automobile. Unless you were in one of 12 employment categories beginning with physicians, nurses and veterinarians, and ending with my favorite, “persons delivering newspapers,” you were out of luck. The serious joke that was going around said, “Be careful with your tires when you’re driving around, Bob, cause you ain’t gonna get no more.”

 Now, let’s get back to sugar.

Rumblings of a sweet ban started right around New Year’s and, boy, did those rumblings get serious attention from the panicky portion of the Greatest Generation. Store shelves were as bare as — dare we say it? — an empty toilet paper roll.

It was hoarding in the extreme. There was plenty of sugar produced in the county, yet officials reported many consumers were “buying in excess of need” and storing the extra sugar in case of a future shortage or price increase.

On May 5, 1942, when sugar became the first rationed item after cars and tires, it was apparent that those panicky sugar folk were actually on to something.

Sugar was also a critical war necessity. Experts said over a million tons of sugar would be diverted from consumers each year to make industrial alcohol, a material needed in the manufacture of explosives. “This is the sugar that can mean more fire power for our fighting men,” said one sugar company. “So long as we need sugar to get enough explosives, every American man, woman and child will cheerfully and gladly accept the sugar ration.”

In addition, there really was a shortage. Sugar production in the Philippines and Hawaii dried up, and Cuban and Puerto Rico sugar was shared with the war allies, Great Britain, Russia and China.

Ration stamps were issued, with each civilian adult allowed 1 pound of sugar per week and children a 1/2 pound. Anyone found hoarding could face a fine of up to $10,000.

There would be more rationing during the duration of the war, including shoes, butter and meat. Even coffee was rationed in November 1942 to just 1 pound per person every five weeks — about a cup a day. That’s a thought that still panics the heck out of us who wake up and just can’t wait to smell the coffee.

Gas rationing began Dec. 1, 1942, allowing four gallons a week. The day before it went into effect, gas stations across Jackson County reported “a heavy run on gasoline in order to start the rationing period with a full tank.”

Not until the end of the war in 1945 did rationing begin to fade away.

Gas rationing ended Aug. 15, and everything except tires and sugar ended Nov. 25. Tire rationing ended Jan. 1, 1946.

Because of a world shortage of sugar, it took until June 11, 1947, before the Mail Tribune could print above the page one masthead, a large, warlike headline, “Sugar Rationing Ends Tonight.”

Here’s hoping toilet paper doesn’t take that long.

Writer Bill Miller is the author of five books, including “History Snoopin’,” a collection of his previous history columns and stories.

https://mailtribune.com/lifestyle/the-rationing-of-panic

To Live and Die A WASP : Evelyn Genevieve “Sharpie” Sharp

3 April 1944- 

WAFS (Womens Auxilary Ferrying Service)

& WASP (Women Airforce Service Pilots)

Evelyn Genevieve “Sharpie” Sharp
#The 38

WASP Pilot Evelyn Sharp

 Dies when one engine on her P-38 loses power on takeoff.

(20 October 1919 - 3 April 1944)

WASP Pilot Evelyn Sharp

WASP Pilot Evelyn Sharp

Excerpt from "To Live and Die a WASP"

On April 3, at 10:29 in the morning, Evelyn Genevieve Sharp lifted off from the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania airport in a twin-engine fighter, a Lockheed P-38 Lightning. She had been flying the fighter all the way across the country, on a delivery flight from the Lockheed plant in Long Beach, California to Liberty Army Airfield in Newark, New Jersey.

Following standard takeoff procedure, she immediately retracted her landing gear when she left the ground and almost instantly she noticed black smoke beginning to pour from the plane’s left engine. Barely 700 feet in the air, her engine shut down. Evelyn threw the rudder hard right, trying to keep the plane from rolling over. She feathered the left prop and cut its throttle. There wasn’t enough power to get higher or stay much longer in the air, so she scanned the countryside, looking for a way to land without hitting any of the homes and buildings below. She veered left, across the Susquehanna River toward Beacon Hill, where the population was scattered. With no time to let down the tricycle landing gear, Evelyn smashed into the ground in an abrupt belly landing, her forward motion only stopped by a forest of trees. The steering column pushed up, forcing Evelyn’s head into the canopy. Her neck was broken, and after only a minute in the air, she was dead.

Mounds of flowers were everywhere on April 9, 1944. Although she hadn’t lived in her hometown for over four years, the people of Ord, Nebraska and the surrounding countryside came to her Sunday funeral services by the hundreds. Her mother and father came by train from their new home in Nevada, to bury their only child in the town that called Evelyn their “favorite daughter.” Fellow WASP and classmate, Nancy Batson, and two servicemen were there to pay their respects. Nancy had accompanied Evelyn’s body to Ord, bringing with her $200 donated by the WASPs at New Castle Air Base in Delaware, to help pay for the funeral.

  Airport in her hometown, Ord, Nebraska, named in her honor.

Sharp Field, Ord, Nebraska

RIP Sharpie!