Today a good many folks will pause to recognize service a multitude of military men and women have given to the country.
My grandfather, Sherman Oliphant, an unassuming fellow who grew up in the hills of southeast Missouri, was among those scheduled to be with the American Expeditionary Force going to France in 1918.
He didn’t, because of the flu epidemic that struck that year. It affected nearly a third of the world’s population of 1.8 billion and killed as many as 50 million, including about 700,000 in the United States.
Sherman was at an Army base in Wyoming, prepping to go overseas, when the flu intervened. He escaped being infected by the killer virus, for which no vaccine or effective medical response then existed.
I’ve a photo of my grandfather, standing ramrod-straight and wearing conspicuous leggings of the WWI uniform, in my room at home. As you’ll soon learn, he was a second father to me.
Every now and then I think of the stories he told about growing up dirt poor, working at Humboldt’s brick plant for less than a dollar a day and finally being hired to a good-paying job at Monarch.
His formal education was limited to a country school that he visited most days on horseback. Playtime, even as a young boy, was catch as catch could. Only once on a Fourth of July did he find a few cents to buy a package of firecrackers.
In his mid-teens, when kids today are sheltered from the rigors of real life, he spent a winter in Montana attending a herd of sheep, living alone in a primitive cabin for several months.
My mother was an only child, probably because of finances and my grandmother, a tiny woman, often having to cope with illnesses.
When WWII came, Sherman, born in 1896, was too old to serve. Without batting an eye, he and my grandmother took in Mom and I while Dad was in Europe for 2½ years. When he returned the arrangement continued.
From day one, I had two sets of parents, and it was toss up who doted on me more. And, I had them to myself until sister Jenelle was born in 1950.
Home from the Army, Dad joined Sherman at Monarch and they worked together to keep the home fires burning brightly, just as did Mom and grandma in domestic chores unaided by today’s host of household marvels.
After Sherman died in the early 1960s, my grandma became more prone to illness and frail, but my parents never considered a nursing home.
Throughout the years, the living arrangement was one of a big happy family, an experience I cherish to this day.
At Week’s End: 1918 flu epidemic kept granddad stateside
