Santa Clara has gone through its fair share of crises—fires, earthquakes, and world wars, just to name a few—but so far we have always been able to use the crisis to evolve and improve. If we can learn anything from the outcome of the 1918 flu pandemic on our beloved school, it’s that tragedy and hardship is part of the human experience but with faith and social connection it is possible to overcome. This should be the case for our current experience in the Covid-19 pandemic as well.

The Great War

At the start of 1918, the United States’ involvement in the First World War dominated the thoughts of everyone in the Santa Clara Valley. With the establishment of the American West’s first ROTC program on the SCU campus the preceding fall, by January the program was officially inaugurated and Santa Clara’s boys transformed into student soldiers, having class changes, chapel, and meal times announced by bugle. Students were moved out of their private rooms in O’Connor Hall and into barrack-style dorms in the Ship. Just a few months into the year, one in three SCU students had been sent to aid in the war, whether that be to Europe or a military base in the U.S. (McKevitt 183), and as one student described in the 1917 Redwood, the loss of their peers made for a lonely and discouraging atmosphere (“University Notes” 251-52).

1918 Influenza

By fall of 1918, another tragedy played out on campus, dramatically changing daily life: the second wave of the so-called Spanish flu—the 1918 influenza epidemic—ravaged Santa Clara quickly. Within five days after the first appearance of the flu on campus in early October, hundreds of students had fallen ill; the day-students were sent home; boarders were put under quarantine and only visitors with critical business were allowed to enter the campus; and finally, by order of Captain Donovan, the Mission Church was ordered to be closed (McKevitt 184). Ultimately two students, Clement Schuh and Lyle Butts, died of the Spanish Flu (Walsh 468). Writing about the flu in the November 1918 issue of the Redwood, one editor villainized it with racist war analogies, calling it the “Black Latin Demon” (“University Notes: Influenza” 49) regardless of the fact the flu actually originated at a military base in Kansas (Vedantam). The misnomer “Spanish Flu” came from the fact journalists in neutral Spain were able to report on the deadly illness ravaging the troops, while all other national presses were censored to only publish news that supported the war effort (Roos). In the same issue of the Redwood, a former SCU student now stationed at Hospital School, U.S. Naval Tr. Station, Goat Island in the San Francisco Bay described his quarantine as a Navy trainee in a letter to Father President:

I read where the ‘old school’ has been quarantined. Well, you have nothing on us up here. It is forty days today since we went under the ban, and from the looks of things it will take a few more before we can once again pace our old familiar haunts in ‘Frisco.’ Being a grandson of the well-known Patrick Henry, I am strongly in favor of getting my liberty very soon. This business of sticking to the ship begins to grow a trifle monotonous after 40 days. Wonder how old Noah stood it so well. Still, the quarantine has certainly proven its worth, even if a bit inconvenient to many of the boys. There is not a single case of ‘Flu’ on the Island. Quite extraordinary, with so much of it in the city. After the second week of our quaurantine [sic] a vaccine was made and we received three shots in the arm. During the epidemic we shipped out over 300 men to do ambulance and nursing work in the city and bay region. We have on the Island a very energetic priest in the person of Fr. Bradley. He says two Masses each Sunday morning, and during the day he is around the boys urging them to join the K. C. My application is in, and I expect to join, with about 300 other boys, just as soon as the quarantine is lifted.

Bergna 40

Ultimately the 1918 flu took the lives of more Americans than WWI—somewhere between an estimated 500,000 and 750,000 Americans died of the flu—yet President Woodrow Wilson never publicly addressed the flu epidemic, instead deciding to focus America’s attention on the war effort (Vedantam). By the end of 1918, the war had ended and the second wave of the flu had passed Santa Clara, indeed leaving the campus shell-shocked at rapid change and loss, but offering the promise of stability and return to normalcy.

The Donohoe Infirmary

The campus’ infirmary was stretched to its limits during the 1918 flu outbreak. There was simply not enough beds for the ill students, and the barrack-style dorms combined with the lack of dedicated facilities for ill students—a problem we are also facing during the Covid-19 outbreak—most likely contributed to the rapid spread of the virus throughout the body of students and faculty. As an antidote to the problem of an insufficient infirmary, by the early 1920s President Maher secured a donation of funds from Katherine Donohoe for the new Donohoe Infirmary, which was dedicated in 1925. Miss Katherine Donohoe was raised by devout Catholic parents nearby on Franklin Street and the family was active at Saint Clare’s Parish and had donated to Santa Clara College in the past (“Donor” 1-2). The new infirmary was outfitted as a “complete small hospital, with private rooms and ward, diet kitchen, dispensary, operating room, chapel, and offices for the infirmarian and visiting physician” (University of Santa Clara, 19).

The structure formerly known as the Donohoe Infirmary still stands, having become the Donohoe Alumni House after Cowell Health Center was opened in the mid 1970s, and having been renamed the Bannan Alumni House as announced by the SCU Alumni Association in April of 2019.

Over 100 years later, it is difficult to know the exact financial impact of the 1918 flu on Santa Clara because so many changes that happened that year were bound up in the Great War. However, one thing is certain: as a campus united in grief from both the losses of the war and the flu epidemic, the students, faculty, and leaders of Santa Clara pushed forward into the new year of 1919, and part of the outcome of the adversity still stands today: a tradition of improved medical services to students that now lives in Cowell Health Center, and the landmark built by the generosity of Katherine Donohoe, now known as the Bannan Alumni House.

Let us hope Covid-19 will not prove deadly at all compared to the 1918 flu for the Santa Clara community, and let us take solace in the comfort of our friends, colleagues, and classmates we have found at SCU while we look forward to the day we can again join together physically on campus.

Header Image: Camp Funston, at Fort Riley, Kansas, during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic from Wikimedia Commons.

Works Cited

Bergna, Louis A. “Communications.” The Redwood 18.1 (1919): 40. Web. Mar 27, 2020.

“Donor of Santa Clara Infirmary Revealed: Miss Katherine Donohoe Gives New Building.” The Santa Clara, 4:11 ed., January 28, 1925, p. 1. Web. Mar 27, 2020 <https://content.scu.edu/digital/collection/broncoseg/id/548/rec/2>.

McKevitt, Gerald. The University of Santa Clara: A History, 1851-1977. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1979.

Roos, Dave. “Why the Second Wave of the 1918 Spanish Flu Was So Deadly.” HISTORY. Web. Mar 30, 2020 <https://www.history.com/news/spanish-flu-second-wave-resurgence>.

“University Notes: Old Familiar Faces.” The Redwood 17.5 (1918): 251-52. Web. Mar 27, 2020.

University of Santa Clara. Catalogue for the Ninetieth Year 1940-1941. Santa Clara, California: University of Santa Clara, 1941 <https://content.scu.edu/digital/collection/p17268coll9/id/8521/rec/1>.

Vedantam, Shankar, et al. “An Unfinished Lesson: What the 1918 Flu Tells Us about Human Nature.” Mar 23, 2020. Web. Mar 27, 2020 <https://www.npr.org/2020/03/23/820066211/an-unfinished-lesson-what-the-1918-flu-tells-us-about-human-nature>.

Walsh, Henry L. The Annals of Santa Clara : College and University, 1851-1951.Web. Mar 27, 2020.