found on the free website, www.ndag-
rave.com.
Barron concluded his talk with the
need of $250 to fuel lawn mowers an-
nually—and $2,500 to fund a new trac-
tor. To date, $2,000 has been raised for
the equipment. The work of volunteers
continues to preserve this historic site, a
great value to the community.
Barron mentioned that monetary
donations to help with ongoing efforts
preserve to St. Michael’s may be sent to
Holy Infancy R.C. Church, 312 E. 4th St.,
Bethlehem, PA 18015 and specify ”St.
Michael’s Cemetery.”
Southern Exposure
3
Winter 2018
T
he South Bethlehem Historical
Society’s Thirty-third Annual
Meeting featured a talk given
by Al “Corky” Barron on the status of
St. Michael’s Cemetery—the burial site
and historic legacy of immigrants who
worked and died in South Bethlehem.
In his talk, Barron stressed the need
for volunteers with the ongoing mis-
sion to keep the cemetery in repair,
grass cutting during summer months
and control of vegetation that continues
to creep up the northern slope.
One particular volunteer Barron ref-
erenced was John Kosalko, who spent
much of his free time maintaining the
cemetery.
On Dec. 4, 1975, reporter Len Bar-
cousky of The Globe-Times featured an
article on Kosalko’s progress at St. Mi-
chael’s, “. . . clipping, cutting, raking
and hauling.”
That was 40 years ago. Since then,
vandals had toppled headstones, many
marred with grafti.
In the 1980s SBHS founder, Joan
Campion and Society board member,
Wilma Balzer explored the condition of
the cemetery and pushed for recogni-
tion of the historic site.
For the past twenty years, Dan
Gasda headed a crew of like-minded
volunteers, who manned lawn mowers
and kept the grass cut.
Lehigh University founder, Asa
Packer, donated the original 2.2-acre
mountainside plot to Holy Infancy Ro-
man Catholic Church for a cemetery.
The rst to be interred within its bor-
ders was James Grifn on Oct. 22, 1867.
Today, many parishes in the region,
including Holy Infancy Church, strug-
gle to maintain their properties, like St.
Michael’s.
A team of volunteers created the
Facebook page, “Friends of St. Michael’s
Cemetery, Bethlehem, Pa.,” to attract in-
terest and help support others who ex-
pressed empathy for the cemetery, for
example, Ken Bratsch, who searched
for missing or lost headstones, discov-
ered 400 headstones hidden under the
sod; he also compiled a list of veterans
from the Civil War to WWII and makes
sure their graves are marked.
Rosemary Bufngton researched
death certicates of deceased who were
interred at St. Michael’s during the Span-
ish Inuenza outbreak in 1918. Results
from this and her other research can be
Support Preservation of St. Michael’s Cemetery
Reclaiming Years of Neglect
Eric, 6, left, and Jeff, 5, help their
father John Kosalko, Jr. with clean-
up at St. Michael’s Cemetery. As the
caption under the photo in the Dec.
4, 1975 Globe-Times stated— “Lone
man, 40, in a long battle to end years
of cemetery neglect.”
The article tells how the Hel-
lertown, PA, resident cared for the
cemetery most Sunday mornings
and some of his days off from his
mail carrier job.
His work followed earlier efforts to
keep the cemetery from visible dete-
rioration, but as he witnessed, the job
was never quite done.
Today, the tradition lives on
with Friends of St. Michael’s, who
invest their time on preservation and
research with the support of South
Bethlehem Historical Society.
Globe-Times photo by Tim Gilman
SBHS Annual Meeting
Facebook page: Friends of St. Michael’s
Cemetery, Bethlehem, Pa.
Preservation and long-term steward-
ship of St. Michael’s is a hallmark that
helps to enhance the surrounding area’s
quality of life, while creating a more at-
tractive neighborhood.
Join “Friends” to raise awareness of
this important historical resource in the
community. Your support is urgently
needed for continued restoration and
maintenance of this site.
For additional information, leave a
message on the Facebook page.
33
2
7
3
1
2
2 2
5
8
28—
21—
14—
7—
0—
0 - 2
3 - 4
5 - 6
7 - 8
9 - 10
11 - 12
13 - 14
15 - 16
17 - 18
19 - 20
21 - 22
23 - 24
Age at Time of Death from Spanish Inuenza
(Interments at St. Michael’s Cemetery)
Number of Deaths
4 Southern Exposure
Winter 2018
J
ust over 100 years ago, all of South
Bethlehem braced for a virulent strain
of inuenza that marched across the
country during the nal months of World
War I. With daily war updates and Bethle-
hem Steel plant injuries, local newspapers
were used to continuous horrors—but this
was tough, as doctors struggled to keep up
with new u cases in St. Lukes and hastily
built emergency hospitals.
Bethlehem was better prepared than
most towns because of urgently needed
war materiel produced by the Steel com-
pany and the newly unied City of Beth-
lehem, that lowered contagions by enforc-
ing strict prohibitions on gatherings of all
kinds. This included church services, ath-
letic meets—and with great difculty, bars
and saloons. The townspeople went all in,
buying war bonds with whatever extra
money they could afford, shipping goods
to the front where they could.
I wish my grandparents had told me
about this historic time, but they remained
their stoic selves till the end. So this past
fall, I began researching the stories of 157
people interred in St. Michael’s Cemetery
—their demise attributed to ‘The Spanish
Flu’ or ‘Pneumonia following Inuenza’
on their death certicates.
The rst illnesses were agged in Sep-
tember 1918, with a horrifying acceleration
that peaked in mid-October, then dropped
in November, only to are up again in De-
cember before tailing off into the winter. We
now know this classic pattern of the infec-
tion, although at the time, daily newspapers
zig-zagged between hope and despair, even
as advertisements lled the pages touting
treatments that ranged from Father John’s
Medicine to Vick’s Vapo-Rub.
More men than women died—I sus-
pect that more men than women probably
lived in the area around St. Michael’s Cem-
etery at that time. Many men who arrived
alone from foreign lands and surrounding
towns, lived in crowded boarding houses
after they found work in South Bethlehem.
Similar to the national statistical data, the
average Spanish u burial in St. Michael’s
was a person in the prime of life. Today we
still debate why the epidemic cut down
people who had the most to give in life that
were suddenly stricken gasping for breath,
turning blue and dying within hours. In ad-
dition to interments at St. Michael’s, cofns
were sent ‘home’ to nearby cities via train,
while others were buried in Sts. Cyril and
Methodius, Holy Ghost, and Fountain Hill
cemeteries. Using St. Michael’s current data
as a snapshot, the total number of burials
amounted to 311 in 1916; 316 in 1917; 485 in
1918; and 229 in 1919. The ‘excess’ deaths
in 1918 were certainly visible.
O
f the 157 death certicates I sampled in
my research, 38 died in St. Luke’s Hos-
pital and 15 in the Northampton Heights
Emergency Hospital. Thirty-seven different
doctors signed the death certicates, by far
the most signed by Dr. Loyal Shoudy of
the Bethlehem Steel (18)—and Dr. George
Pehutias of St. Lukes, who signed 24, an
amazing amount of work.
Undertakers busily prepared the de-
ceased for burials . . . McGovern had 45,
Bolich, 31; Madden, 22; Kinney, 20; and
Conahan, 17.
As the epidemic raged, deaths contin-
ued with the usual ever-present childhood
diseases, deaths in childbirth, accidents,
and suicides. The Oct. 7 issue of The Morn-
ing Call reported that Joseph Csandli fell
35 feet to his death, when he slipped while
he jumped between two cranes at the Beth-
lehem Steel Company; Joseph Marich, 25,
died of typhoid fever; Lizzie Mamaro, 2,
died from burns received while playing
with matches; and two people died when
a trolley car ipped on a steep grade on
Wyandotte St.—a mere sampling of deaths
reported on Oct. 7.
On Nov. 11 at the end of WWI came Ar-
mistice Day . . . a day forever remembered
with red poppies, when the town took a
collective breath and newspapers shouted
blessed peace, when army conscription
was suspended and ads appeared touting
gifts for the upcoming Christmas season—
and life went on.
•
•
1 9 1 8
-
C E N T E N N A R Y
•
O F
•
S P A N I S H
•
I N F L U E N Z A
-
2 0 1 8
•
By RosemaRy C. Buffington
Flu Deaths Had No Boundaries
St. Luke’s 38
Hospital
Seneca St. 1
Fiot St. 1
Flu Deaths in South Bethlehem
Map also lists number of deaths from Spanish Inuenza in Fountain Hill, Northampton Heights and
places outside South Bethlehem. Data based on death certicates of interments in St. Michael’s Cemeter
y.
•
1 9 1 8
-
C E N T E N N A R Y
•
O F
•
S P A N I S H
•
I N F L U E N Z A
-
2 0 1 8
•
—Chart and map data researched from
death certicates and interments at St.
Michael’s Cemetery by Rosemary Bufngton.
Map illustrated by Kenneth F. Raniere.
Age in Years
12
3
3
1
1
1
1
2
2
5
5 5
4
8
7
12
14
21 - 22
23 - 24
25 - 26
27 - 28
29 - 30
31 - 32
33 - 34
35 - 36
37 - 38
39 - 40
41 - 42
43 - 44
45 - 46
47 - 48
49 - 50
51 - 52
53 - 54
55 - 56
57 - 58
59 - 60
61 - 62
Age at Time of Death from Spanish Inuenza
(Interments at St. Michael’s Cemetery)
Southern Exposure 5
Winter 2018
•
•
Sep 1
Sep 4
Sep 15
Sep 22
Sep 29
Oct 6
Oct 13
Oct 20
Oct 27
Nov 3
Nov 10
Nov 17
Nov 24
Dec 1
Dec 8
Dec 15
Dec 22
Dec 29
Jan 5
Jan 12
Jan 19
Jan 26
Feb 2
Feb 9
Feb 16
Feb 23
20
2
9
24
3
3
1 1
1
16
4
6
5
4
11
7
12
24—
18—
12—
6—
0—
12
2
Weeks in 1918-1919
Number of Deaths
Frequency of Spanish Inuenza Deaths
(Interments at St. Michael’s Cemetery)
Seneca St. 1
Second St. 1
Columbia St. 4
Adams St. 2
Third St. 3
Fourth St. 5
Pierce St. 3
Evans St. 3
Perry St. 3
Railroad St. 1
Deschler St. 1
N. Hts.
Emergency
Lehigh University
Emergency Hospital
1
Fiot St. 1
Wyandotte St. 1
Summit St. 1
Vine St. 1
Taylor St. 2
Rennig St. 4
Hillside Ave. 1
Buchanan St. 1
Atlantic St. 2
Eighth St. 2
Seventh St. 1
Sixth St. 6
Homeopathic State Hospital 3
Coke Works 4
Lower Saucon 4
Redington 2
Steel City 4
NORTHAMPTON
HEIGHTS
Fifth St. 6
Mechanic St. 7
Rink St. 1
Kenton St. 1
ST. MICHAEL’S
CEMETERY
N
BETHLEHEM STEEL
SOUTH BETHLEHEM
LEHIGH RIVER
Hospital 15
Deaths Outside So. Bethlehem
Martel St. 1
Flu Deaths in South Bethlehem
Map also lists number of deaths from Spanish Inuenza in Fountain Hill, Northampton Heights and
places outside South Bethlehem. Data based on death certicates of interments in St. Michael’s Cemeter
y.
Bethlehem
9
Easton 2
Freemansburg 2
•
1 9 1 8
-
C E N T E N N A R Y
•
O F
•
S P A N I S H
•
I N F L U E N Z A
-
2 0 1 8
•
NEW ST
WYANDOTTE ST
MINSI
TRAIL
BRIDGE