A first-person account of a MN country doctor fighting the 1918 flu pandemic
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I had discovered my grandfather’s first-person account of the great influenza pandemic of 1918-1919.
Pierre’s efforts during that muddy, miserable winter were a staple of conversation when I was growing up. It was said in family discussions that Grandpa treated more than 1,000 patients with remarkably few deaths even though no one at the time knew how influenza spreads and despite the lack of effective medications.
These sentences are at the heart of Mary Beth Sartor Obermeyer’s fourth book, “When Winter Came: A Country Doctor’s Journey to Fight the Flu Pandemic of 1918,” written in collaboration with Mayo Clinic Press ($21.99). It is the first narrative book chosen by the press to complement its internet bookshelf on scientific subjects.
Obermeyer will celebrate publication with a free reading at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 15, at Next Chapter Booksellers, 38 S. Snelling Ave., St. Paul.
A family heirloom
Now a resident of Minneapolis, Obermeyer was given her father’s and grandfather’s lockbox in a “simple transfer” on Christmas Day, 2001, in the cold parking lot of a Catholic church in Mason City, Iowa. It was given to her by her father, Guido, who was nearly 100 at the time. She kept that box for years, until she finally pulled it off the shelf. When she opened it, she found treasure: the hand-written medical journal of her grandfather, Dr. Pierre Sartor, who successfully fought the 1918 flu as the only physician in Titonka, Iowa, a prairie town and farm community of some 300 residents. The doctor titled his memoir “Thrills of my life — specifically my ‘Flu Life.’ ”
In her skillful and novelistic writing, Obermeyer weaves her grandparents’ love story, which began in Luxembourg, with her grandfather’s remarkable medical career.
As Obermeyer wrote in her 2022 Christmas letter: “I loved the day the editor, Matthew Dacy, called to say, ‘Beth, we have not one but two love stories in this book.’ ” Since Dacy is also a historian, he worked with the author to document the book with maps, timelines, family trees, original color illustrations and 26 pages of endnotes.
The winter of his life
Obermeyer’s name is well known in the Twin Cities since she is a dancer, musician, journalist and author. Many remember her as the organizer of 1,801 tap-dancers who clicked down a Minneapolis street in 1979 to open Hennepin Center for the Arts, and her promotion of the 1989 Minnesota Festival of the Book.
In “When Winer Came,” Obermeyer brings to life the bravery and stamina of her grandfather Pierre, relying on documents in the lockbox and her own memories. Fighting snowstorms and mud, Pierre cared for patients in and around Titonka, 70 miles south of Mankato. He worked day and night, often sleeping in the sleigh while his 12-year-old son Guido (the author’s father) drove to farmhouses through the freezing cold. (Guido would grow up to be a physician himself.)
What’s remarkable about the story Obermeyer tells is how her grandfather, born in Luxembourg in 1871, was ahead of his time in dealing with the pandemic, which came to Titonka on Oct. 1, 1918, when a sick woman was taken off a train. She had been visiting the Great Lakes Navy Station, scene of the first outbreak in the Chicago area. (In that month of October, 200,00 people would die of influenza in the United States.)
“…during the fall of 1918 Pierre began to develop a multifaceted plan to meet the intensifying health crisis,” Obermeyer writes. “His response was built upon key principles, but he also had the flexibility to adapt his plan to changing conditions. The three pillars were … education, involvement and isolation.” Although there were no official plans for coping with the epidemic, Pierre’s rules are the ones we’re practicing in the COVID crisis — “maintain isolation, practice good hygiene, wear a mask, be kind.”
When Pierre realized one outbreak came from a barn dance, he was able to do what we now call contact tracing, following timelines that helped him figure out when people would first show flu symptoms.
Why did the doctor drive himself to exhaustion? Because “I was needed.” Also, he was grounded in his deep Catholic faith and pride in his Luxembourgian lineage.
After the pandemic
After the pandemic, Pierre was widely honored as he continued practicing medicine. In 1953 he was named General Practitioner of the Year by the Iowa State Medical Society. and he was a frequent public speaker.
Guido, the boy who assisted his father during the pandemic at risk to his own life, graduated from medical school, received specialty training and practiced in Chicago. In 1941 he and his wife, Luella, moved to Mason City, Iowa, where their daughter Mary Beth grew up hearing stories from and about her grandfather, who died in 1958. Her father died in 2004.
Obermeyer also gives credit to her grandmother, who had to stay home with six children during that dark winter of 1918 when she was so tired she stopped starching clothing, let the kids wear nightclothes until noon and remade the older kids’ clothes for the younger ones.
“Mary’s way was to become quiet, until Pierre asked what was bothering her — a risky question.” Obermeyer writes. ” Was he oblivious to a household under quarantine with a nearly absent father and older son, while illness surged all around?”
The Mayo connection
Throughout her book, Obermeyer emphasizes the century-old relationship between her grandfather and father with the Mayo Clinic.
In a preface to the book, Matt Dacy, Mayo assistant professor of history of medicine, and Christopher J. Boes, professor of neurology and history of medicine write: ” Like Dr. William Worrall Mayo, who founded our medical practice, Dr. Sartor was an immigrant — short of stature, towering in his commitment to excellence on behalf of patients. Like Mother Alfred Moes. who founded Saint Marys Hospital as Dr. Mayo’s partner in healing, Dr. Sartor was a native of Luxembourg and exhibited many of the tenacious qualities that Mother Alfred described as ‘our faith and hope and energy.’ ”
More about the author
Obermeyer is a graduate of Iowa State University with further study at St. Catherine University and the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. While on the faculty of the Minnesota Dance Theatre, she soloed with Garrison Keillor on “A Prairie Home Companion”; with the Minnesota Orchestra in “The Tap Concerto,” a 20-minute piece in four movements composed by Morton Gould; with Gregory Hines to promote his film “Tap”; and with Christopher Plummer in Minnesota Orchestra’s British series.
Her previous books are: “The Days of Song and Lilacs,” a tribute to Meredith Willson’s hit show “The Music Man”; “The Biggest Dance: A Miracle on Concrete,” a memoir about organizing those tapping feet on Hennepin Avenue; and a companion to that book, “Big! World Records in the Streets! Plus Tap Dancing Galore!”
Obermeyer wrote seven drafts of “When Winter Comes” and did months of research. Readers will thank her for a look to the past and a portrait of her grandfather, whom she imagines sitting in a farmer’s bedroom in the light of a kerosene lamp, holding the hand of a sick patient.
