2020.07.23 THROW BACK THURSDAY - THE SPANISH FLU HITS LITTLE ROCK plus Class News
THROW BACK THURSDAY - THE SPANISH FLU HITS LITTLE ROCK plus Class News
Well, here we are in trouble again in Little Rock in 2020!
Hillcrest Physician Faces the Ultimate Challenge
“My mother talked often of Uncle Charlie” recalls well known local teacher and attorney, and graduate of Pulaski Heights, Ann Bilheimer Grimes.
“Uncle Charlie” (Dr. Charles Willis Garrison) and his wife Vinnie had moved about 1917 into one of the first homes on Ridgeway in Little Rock’s Hillcrest. It was a spacious two-story wood frame American Four-square style home, built in 1911. The home provided space for a grand piano and a collection of antiquities, which their niece Ann recalls as ranging from rare china dolls to beaded opera glass bags from their European travels. They both had formal training in the medical field, he a physician and she a nurse.
Dr. Garrison’s special training in managing malaria and other serious public health issues, caused the Texas and Tennessee-trained physician to be sought out by Governor George Donaghey for employment in our new state health office in 1911. By 1914, he was named Arkansas’ third State Health Officer, a position he would hold for almost two decades. Though managing public disease is an intense job, in 1918 he encountered the ultimate challenge - as neighbors watched the handsome physician leave his Hillcrest home for his office in the fall of that year, they knew he faced unimaginable burden.
The vicious but misnamed (it did not begin in Spain) “Spanish Flu” pandemic had come to Arkansas. In fact, due to the 52,000 person wartime population of Camp Pike (now known as Camp Robinson), central Arkansas was considered a national “hot spot.” By early October of 1918, over 1000 new cases a day were occurring at the densely populated camp, and Dr. Garrison coordinated quarantine, distancing and other procedures in an effort to stem the spread. Through such public health efforts, combined with a decrease in travel at war’s end, and after two return flu waves over a span of two years, the pandemic ended. The death toll was over 7,000 Arkansans, over three times the number our state lost in action in World War I.
There will always be second guessing about handling of public health matters, but Dr Garrison appears to have been a man with good judgment and solid scientific background to competently provide leadership through the pandemic. The Garrisons continued to take their medical careers very seriously, attending conferences all over the globe to maintain the latest perspective on health issues; but they were able to relax a bit more following the pandemic. Vinnie was able to fill the home with her piano music and Charlie viewed from their ample front porch the development of the new houses on beautiful Ridgeway. One home particularly caught their eye, and by the early 1920s they had moved a couple doors down to an even more spacious and handsome Craftsman home, with overscaled brackets supporting roofs and eaves over shady porches.
Dr. Charles Garrison’s portrait remains in the board room of the Arkansas Health Department where he looks down upon his successors as they toil to make us healthy again.
by Jim Pfeifer aia
CLASS NEWS
Our heartfelt sympathy to two classmates:
Lynn Hansen Lindsey lost her husband, Wayne Lindsey, June 25. Lynn is the retired Minister at Pulaski Heights Methodist Church Jane Goodwin Davis lost her sister, Kay Coleman, July 16. Jane lives in Fort Smith.
ML