“During the present epidemic of Influenza we are obliged to ask our subscribers not to use their Telephone except when absolutely necessary.
” … Influenza has greatly reduced our operating force and at the same time has caused a tremendous increase in … calls for Physicians and Hospitals, Nurses and Government War Industries … .”
In the fall of 1918, a young telephone operator, Velma Simpson, recorded these words on the inside cover of her diary. That diary came to light after Velma’s daughter, Margaret Werren, died at age 96 in Eureka. In late April, Velma’s granddaughter, Jan Werren, and her partner were sorting through Margaret’s possessions, getting ready to sell the house.
“We were boxing up the thrift shop items and putting recycling and trash items in Mom’s outside bins,” Werren recalled. “There was a pile of old clothes on the back porch.” When she moved the clothes aside, she found a box of her grandmother’s diaries.
The diary on top was from 1918.
America had entered the World War, as Velma knew it, in July of the year before. Many young soldiers had headed for France, and some were sickening and dying from a particularly potent strain of influenza.
Stricken
By September the influenza had come home. Twenty-year-old Velma, who worked for the Southern California Telephone Company, came down with it early. She lived in Los Angeles with her parents and her brother Irving.
“Thursday September 26, 1918: Didn’t sleep hardly at all last night had a cold and coughed and my limbs ached. Bawled till I had a terrible headache … couldn’t stand it any longer. Mother gave me dope … . Mother called up Dr. Carter [who] got out here at 9:45 AM [with] some more dope to take.”
According to Dr. Ann Paulet, professor of American history at HSU, the viral cause of the epidemic was unknown, as were any effective treatments. Doctors tried a variety of unproven medications to relieve their patents. Back then, “dope” was a generic term for medicine in syrup form. Velma describes it as: “Tonic. Horrible tasting stuff.”
Over the next eight days Velma’s entries include: “my throat is terrible sore … coughed a great deal till after midnight. Lungs very sore.”
The usually ebullient Velma hit a low point: “No mail for me all the time I was ill. Nobody loves me I guess. Still, she was able to enjoy a [m]ost beautiful rainbow. Colors perfect.”
Then, like now, people needed to be in touch with their family and friends. They relied on mail and the newest communication technology — the telephone. But phone service was rudimentary.
Essential work
Operators, mostly women, sat close to each other at switchboards in small, crowded rooms. They spoke to each caller before they could plug in cables by hand to connect the call. It was skilled, essential work and Velma — who was a supervisor by then — was needed back on the job.
On Monday, Oct. 7, she returned to work and picked up her paycheck, $17.50. Her pay had been docked because she’d been out sick.
The next day the mayor of Los Angeles declared a public emergency and some forms of social distancing were put in place.
Oct. 11: “Theaters, churches, schools, dance halls. All public places closed on account of influenza. Seemed so strange to see the Palace Theater closed.”
But that same day: “extra papers out. Germany excepts [sic] peace terms.”
The next day the phone operators started wearing masks. Despite efforts to contain the contagion, it spread. Four days after Velma returned to work, 300 other operators who worked at the telephone company were out with the flu.
There was no automated phone messaging then. The operators who could work were directed to, politely, get non-emergency callers off the line using scripts like the one Velma recorded in her diary.
Home front
Oct. 31: “Dad came home with influenza at 4 PM… Mary Save died from a relapse of influenza at 5:30. Sure is terrible, girls feel terrible about it, doesn’t seem possible. Mary was…[with] the telephone company a good many years.”
Young adults were especially vulnerable to this influenza.
Velma records death after death, of her colleagues at work, of Irving’s close friend. She worries about her mother, who is worn out from nursing the rest of the family. But there was good news, too.
Nov. 7: “A very exciting day this has been. At 10:15 AM extra (news)papers (came) out. Peace declared. War is over.”
By Nov. 11, the armistice was official. People poured into the streets to celebrate the end of the war together.
In December, more freedoms came. And more deaths.
Dec. 3: “Schools open today. All the kiddies in the neighborhood delighted. Broadway is packed. Shows all open. Fair opens tomorrow at Exposition Park.”
As the sickness spread, many refused to return to wearing masks, according to Paulet.
Third wave
Then in January 2019, the third wave of the pandemic hit. By the time the virus subsided in summer of 1919, “an estimated 1/3 of the world’s population was infected … resulting in at least 50 million deaths worldwide,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Everyone in the Simpson household survived.
“It was just amazing to open this diary and read my grandmother’s words,” Werren recalls. “She’s always been my role model. She and my mom were so strong and resilient.”
Over the years, Velma married and raised a family. She and her husband managed a ranch which Werren visited often as a child and now remembers as “my happy place.”
Her grandmother was proud of her years as a supervisor at the telephone company, Werren recalls. “But she never said a word to me about the pandemic.”
Until now.
Author and educator Carolyn Lehman lives in Arcata, and thanks Jan Werren for bringing Velma Simpson’s story to light and for transcribing the diary for this article.
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