Victory was eminent for the Allies on the western front in 1918. In January President Wilson announced his Fourteen Points of Peace program signaling to the nation that victory was just around the corner. Grand Rapids had been a strong supporter of the war right from the start. Thousands of young, able-bodied Grand Rapids boys enlisted when the United States entered the war and by the time the draft was called, less than 300 men were called up from Grand Rapids. Besides manpower, Grand Rapids played its part in helping to pay for the war effort by buying Liberty Loan bonds. Parades were held in Grand Rapids and across the country to increase awareness of the public duty to buy more Liberty Loan bonds. Kent County as a whole subscribed for $38,460,400 Liberty bonds during the World War drives for funds and the city of Grand Rapids subscribed for around $30,000,000. The war was a time for great pride and joy in the city of Grand Rapids and the citizens showed it by going above and beyond the call of duty in their support of the Liberty Loan program. In the months and weeks leading up to the end of the war there was cause for much celebration.
All over the country, men returned from combat and were greeted with huge parades and fanfare. Little did they know they were carrying a disease so contagious and so deadly that in little more than a year, estimates as high as 100 million people worldwide (one-fifth of the world’s population) would have to be buried. The disease killed more people than any other disease in history. The disease would leave entire cities decimated, families devastated, and workforces wiped out. It was a disease so horrible and so deadly that history has tried to forget that it ever happened. What scared people the most was that this killer disease was nothing more than the common flu, hardly something to worry about. Many at the time recalled the last outbreak of influenza in 1889-90 but none were prepared for the ferocity of this new strain of flu. They called it Spanish Influenza because at the time of discovery it was very prevalent in Spain but historians today often refer to it as the Purple Plague because of the color it left its victims. Men and women were literally drowned by their own bodies. Spanish flu brought entire continents to their knees. Historians compared the 1918 city scenes to that of European cities during the Black Plague. Carts rode through the cities beckoning citizens to bring out their dead and mass graves were dug wherever there was room. Central Park in New York City was the site of one of the largest of these mass graves. Every town and every city in the world was affected by Spanish flu but there were some that did well to avoid the devastation that influenza was known for. Grand Rapids, Michigan was one such city.
The furniture capital of the nation should have been affected just as badly as its larger neighbors, Chicago and Detroit, but made it through virtually unscathed. Very little has been written about this era of history in Grand Rapids but what little survives gives a very clear picture of how this fair city was able to weather the storm and fight off one of the worst disease pandemics in the history of the world. Rigorous implementation of local and state public health programs such as voluntary and mandatory bans on public gatherings, city and state-wide poster campaigns in theaters and churches, influenza masks, a placard system on homes, voluntary individual quarantines, and the creation of isolation hospitals for influenza patients combined with constructive and positive reporting on the pandemic in the city’s newspapers prevented heavy loss of life in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
