When the Great War came to an end in late 1918, a cloud hung over the jubilation; the world was suffering the worst pandemic in history. From 1918 to 1919, the Spanish Flu killed more people than the fighting did in World War I and infected more than a quarter of all Americans.

Educator Wilma Buntin describes the flu striking her family in the Houston area:

"And I remember my older brother Louis was the only one who didn't get sick. So he'd try to fix something for us for breakfast, or he'd tried to fix something for supper. None of us were interested whatsoever. They didn't have a doctor there, so you just had to do what you thought you could. And they knew to drink fruit juices and rest. Then he'd cry when he'd fix something. He said, ‘It's because I can't do a good job of cooking you all are not eating.' And he didn't—(laughter)."

In a 1987 interview, Louie Mayberry recalls how the virus changed everyday life for children:

"When we moved to San Antonio I started to school. I hadn't gone to school but a few days, they had a—a flu epidemic in San Antonio and they turned the schools out. And we stayed out for quite a while. And they was trying to teach me how to work. They let me shine shoes at the I&GN [International-Great Northern Railroad] station in those days; it's Missouri Pacific [Railroad] now. And then school started again, and it went on for a couple of weeks, and they turned out again. We didn't get much schooling before Christmas."

Bible translator Robert Bratcher, who was born in Brazil in 1920, tells how the illness affected travel:

"My parents and my older brother, who was at that time four years old, had gone to Brazil in 1919. They had been appointed by the Foreign Mission Board and were due to go in 1918, but the great flu epidemic was at that time, and it held them up. They stayed in Valhalla, New York, with some other missionaries waiting till the ships, you know, were available that had sailors that could man them to take them to Brazil."

Folklorist Martha Emmons remembers escaping the flu:

"I have often thought that the Lord in His providence kept me from having the flu. I used to give a more earthy explanation than that. People asked me how I avoided it because, oh, people just dropped dead all around from that. But I was so needed, I thought. See, I had my father with me, and I was teaching at Maypearl, Texas, and I remember when I was asked that I said, ‘Oh, well, all I can attribute it to is eating onions and staying happy.' (laughter) And I did eat onions and anything else that way that I thought was the right kind of thing. And I did make an effort to stay happy. But I've often just thought it must have been a providential stroke because I don't know what could have happened if I had had to have the flu right there with my father an invalid and with me, and we were in that little apartment there. And it would have been awful for him to have taken the flu from me, don't you see?"

The nationalism and acceptance of government authority heightened by the war allowed public health workers to easily put in place restrictive measures to bring the epidemic under control. The Spanish flu outbreak then faded from public memory, until flu scares in recent decades.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Guest(s): Fiona Bond

Topics:

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Formed separately in the mid-1800s, the Young Men's Christian Association and the Young Women's Christian Association have since collectively been at the forefront of most major social movements, such as women's, civil, and human rights. The YMCA and YWCA are more commonly associated with promoting physical activity and education and offering safe lodging.

Gladys Casimir describes her mother's involvement with the Waco YWCA prior to Prohibition:

"When they went to their meetings they wore little white ribbon bows or rosettes, whatever you want to call it, on their left shoulders. They marched. The women were very active in trying to promote the abolition of liquor. City of Waco had a lot of saloons before they had to close down."

Tom Charlton, former director of the Baylor Institute for Oral History, recalls the Y in Beaumont in the 1940s and 50s:

"The YMCA played a—a big role in my life from the time I learned to swim at the YMCA when I was about nine. My mother and dad always made sure I had a membership at the downtown YMCA. And I would ride the bus from out Calder Avenue down to the YMCA, which was also on Calder near the downtown area. And so when I was in elementary school and early junior high school, I frequently was at the Y on weekends, whether it was Ping-Pong or playing tennis or swimming or basketball at the YMCA."

Dick Simpson, a YMCA leader and University of Texas student in the early 1960s, explains in a telephone interview how the Y took part in the Civil Rights Movement:

"The Y is the organization that housed the first planning meetings for the stand-in movement. And, in fact, at our first meeting at the Y, we were bombed, but the pipe bomb was ineffective. It just blew out a few bricks. The stand-in movement was an attempt to integrate the theaters that were on the street directly across from campus. We would form a line as if we were buying tickets, and let's say I was going as a white, and I would have an African American next to me. We would go up to the window, and I would say, 'I'd like to buy two tickets for this event,' or whatever. After a while, it—we didn't even get to quite that stage, but it looked like a line of theater-goers. But essentially it discouraged people from going to the theater because it was a protest in front of the theater.

"But the pattern was somewhat different than when you sit-in in a restaurant, but the principle was the same as the sit-in movement. It was to simply cut off enough business by making it known that the theaters were segregated, that there were protestors against it. As we cut the attendance, we obviously cut into their profits, which was the economic lever used in the Civil Rights Movement."

In response to a changing society, the YMCA of the USA began reappraising its role in the 1980s and decided to shift its focus to families, while the YWCA continues to promote empowerment for women. In keeping with tradition, both organizations continue to push for social justice and better communities.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Guest(s): Kris Collins

Topics:

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Graduating from a school and starting a new chapter in life at another campus can be a bittersweet moment.

Charles Armstrong remembers his last days at Bell's Hill

Elementary School in Waco:

"They asked everybody that wanted to, to write a little something about the school, what they—what they learned or didn't learn. So I wrote a little poem, entitled ‘Good-bye, Bell's Hill.' Said:

Mrs. Armstrong: "It's darling."

Interviewer: "That's nice."

He recalls a time in 1941 when he and his wife Ruth, who also grew up in Bell's Hill, returned to the school:

"They'd vote up there at the school; they still do. And I was voting for the first time, and she was. I walked down the hall there. I was going there to pick her up and walked down the hall and looked on the bulletin board, and my poem was still up there—this one. It stayed up there at least seven years I know, maybe longer, but I remember seeing that/it stayed there(??)."

Mary Sendón describes the excitement and emotions of graduating from Waco High:

"From the time I was in grade school I knew I was going to go to Baylor when I finished high school. And my dad, he was going to make arrangements for me to go to Baylor in the fall. And that was all planned out. One thing that my graduation did—(laughs) we graduated in First Baptist Church. My entire family turned out, regardless of the fact that they were disappointed that I didn't quit school like they wanted me to. But the whole family, the great-uncles and the great-aunts. And I think deep down they had a little pride in the fact that I—that I did go ahead, you know. But I had—they had a whole section there in First Baptist Church, (laughs) and I remember them all sitting there. And—but it put a stop to all of that feeling of matchmaking, you know, that sort of thing: What you going to do now? What are you going to do? And nobody asked me that anymore.

"I had a feeling I had cut loose from something. I don't know. It was just a kind of a—not a disturbed feeling—but I was really sorry to leave Waco High in a way because the last two years of my Waco High were just—I loved every bit of it. And, of course, I knew I had something better to look forward to, according to my dad. (laughs) But it sort of meant the end of one section of my life. I said—that was 1919. It was like a decade of my life was—was out now. That was finished, like I closed the book on it."

Everyone deserves a school experience that makes it sad to leave, even with new adventures and people on the horizon.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Guests Ashley Cruseturner and Marlene McMichael

Topics:

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this episode:

Dr. Kenna Lang Archer, author of "Unruly Waters: A Social and Environmental History of the Brazos River," joins us to talk about Waco's most prominent river. We talk about its history all over the state, and the many attempts to tame it.

Check out Dr. Archer's website at kennalangarcher.com.

You can find Kenna's book on Amazon and at Barnes and Noble.

Special thanks to ACT Music for letting us play "Brazos River Breakdown" at the end of this episode. It's by the Nils Landgren Funk Unit from the album ACT 9455-2 License to Funk.

About the Waco History Podcast

The Waco History Podcast is co-hosted by Randy Lane and Dr. Stephen Sloan. Randy Lane is the great-grandson of Waco architect Roy E. Lane. He’s also a former American Forces Network Radio DJ and is currently the host of the High Performance Leadership and Charity Champions Podcasts. 

Stephen heads the Oral History Institute at Baylor University. He’s authored several books and created and developed WacoHistory.org, a website and free mobile app for learning more about Waco’s history. 

Together they’re telling the known and unknown stories of Waco’s past. 

Find out more at wacohistorypodcast.com.

Follow us on

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wacohistorypodcast

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wacohistorypodcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson.

Over the years, Central Texans have celebrated a variety of Easter customs.

Dr. Delta Hafford of De Leon managed the clothing program at the Methodist Children's Home in the 1950s and later served as school coordinator. She describes Easter at the Methodist Home in a 1977 interview:

"Easter Sunday was always such an exciting time because this was the time when every little girl had a new dress and a new pair of shoes, and they were so proud to wear them on Easter Sunday. This was probably the only day of the year that everybody had a brand-new dress on the very same day. Otherwise, the clothing was renewed, you know, at specific—at—on a staggered basis over the year. But on Easter Sunday, every little girl had a brand-new dress and a brand-new pair of shoes. And that was an exciting time. And it was really a time of pride, I think, for the children. This was also coincided with homecoming day. Homecoming, at the Methodist Home, has historically been on Easter Sunday. It's a time when everyone goes to church, and they like to look nice for the homecomers, you see, and for all the guests that were on campus. So it was doubly important for all the children to have something new to wear on Easter Sunday."

Dr. Adolph Basse of Fredericksburg explains an Easter tradition he took part in in the 1930s and 40s:

"Every Easter they'd build huge fires, and the idea was that the Easter Bunny was cooking eggs up there. And so that was a big, big thing. All the kids in all these little hills around here, everybody got a bunch together if we had—well, first we'd build them out of wood and later on out of old tires. And then they had a pageant with it, you know. And then they'd talk about these fires, and then they'd have the Indians and the whole works there. The legend goes it all got started because the Indians used to build fires on these hills, and the mothers would tell the kids, ‘That's—the Easter Bunny's up there; he's cooking eggs.' But it was actually the Indian fires."

Carol Durón grew up in Waco in the Calle Dos neighborhood. She shares memories of Easter week from the 1940s and 50s:

"You prepared yourselves. Since we went to a Catholic school, we went Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and we didn't go Thursday, Friday. Thursday, my aunt would start with the cooking. We had capirotada. Oh, I remember my daddy—the trips to Safeway on Eighth and Washington. I mean, we—oh, we always ate so good. My aunt, I'd be watching her and helping her and, ‘Peel this. You're going to make the agua fresca.' And, mind you, all of this was done before going to church at two o'clock in the afternoon. Church was a walking distance, not far from us. And, of course, come back home, and we always enjoyed the food."

Clothing, bunnies, eggs, special recipes, church services—they share the thread that runs through all Easter traditions: spring as a time of natural and spiritual renewal.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Guest(s): Brady Taylor

Topics:

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices