See date: 1890-1918; 1878-1918; 1896-1918; 1917-1918 ... Everyone buried on this snowy slope in Barre, VT died within days, weeks of each other. "It's very humbling," said Brian Zecchinelli.
About 200 people died during that other pandemic, the so-called Spanish Flu of 1918.
Zecinelli and his wife, Karen, now own the nearby Wayside restaurant. It has become a Vermont institution. "Effie Ballu opened Wayside in July of 1918, and two months later the epidemic hit Barre," he said.
Zecinelli never stopped to think about how little he knew about the flu of 1918—and the fact that a grandfather he never met was one of its victims. He died on October 10 of that terrible year at the age of 35. Germinio Zeccinelli, like many other Italian stone cutters, moved to Barre to quarry granite, to carve the country's gravestones (and often to each other, as it turned out).
"The Spanish flu is often referred to as the 'forgotten flu,'" Zecchinelli told correspondent Martha Teichner. "And if we had anything to do with it, it would not be forgotten, Germinio and everyone else. We wanted to do something to remember him and the 50 million others who died around the world."
Because, to their amazement, there was no significant monument - anywhere - despite the staggering number of dead. The forgotten pandemic, indeed.
So, in 2018, a century after the fact, Zecchinelli turned it on. "It's unbelievable that nothing else was done," he said.
Six hundred and seventy-five thousand Americans died in that epidemic. We are almost at one million and counting the dead from COVID.
Has history taught us anything?
Tulane University scholar John Barry, who wrote "The Great Influenza," the definitive history of the 1918 flu, said, "This time around it confirmed the lesson from 1918: You tell the truth.
"You heard things like - it's all about the 1918 virus - 'this is ordinary influenza by another name,' which it certainly didn't. It's quite clear that Trump himself deliberately said things that were not true" (as in his February 27, 2020 statement: "It is going to disappear. One day it is like a miracle, it will disappear").
And what did the confusion over the ever-evolving science do to trust and compliance? (Dr. Anthony Fauci's March 8, 2020 statement, "There is no reason to walk around with a mask on," versus Fauci's October 29, 2020 Support for Community COVID Protocol, "whose chief is wearing a mask.")
"You know, faith, truth, they're all intertwined," Barry said.
Teichner asked, "Was the result the same then and now?"
"Well, clearly those people who would have been alive otherwise died in 1918," he replied. "And apparently this time around, people didn't believe the truth when they were told the truth. Misinformation, active attacks on vaccines, there's no question that it's killed people."
Martha Lincoln, a medical anthropologist at San Francisco State University, looks at the re-occurrence of 1918 amnesia. "We're already forgetting, even before the pandemic is over. We're already forgetting the pandemic. Best of all, there's a long struggle about whether we'll remember, really, and if we remember If so, what would that memory be."
For example, our entertainment, Lincoln said, is like some parallel universe where COVID is invisible, or long gone.
Not everyone is choosing to forget. In Barre, VT, the world's self-proclaimed granite center, the memorial business is booming. "We're up 25-30% depending on product lines; I think all domestic manufacturers are up," said Rob Boulanger, who manages the giant Rock of Ages plant. "People are buying in advance, so people are looking at their mortality, right? And want to take care of those final arrangements before anything happens."
Teichner asked, "Has COVID affected it?"
"Oh hell yeah."
The urge to remember - and to be remembered - is a catalyst.
"I think if we don't manage to properly remember those lost in this pandemic, it says people like my father, his life doesn't matter," Kristin Urquiza said. She never got a chance to say goodbye to her father, Mark Urquiza, who died on June 30, 2020, isolated on a ventilator in an Arizona hospital. It was pre-vaccine. Cases were rising, but Arizona had opened up back.
"Sure, maybe he shouldn't have asked his friends to come over to celebrate the 'end' of the pandemic," Urkiza said. "He was given false information on which he made a choice, and it cost him his life."
Urquiza founded a non-profit marked by COVID, advocating for permanent memorials and CVOD Memorial Day. There has been limited support in Congress. He said, "Our elected officials will go a long way, and I'm here to say that we won't let you do that."
"I really wouldn't be surprised if there weren't that many memorials," Barry said.
"But a million died? Are they invisible?" Tekner asked.
"Well, which party is going to take credit for that, you know?" They laughed. "There has been an attempt to create a COVID Commission like the 9/11 Commission, which, unfortunately, no one is eager to accept."
For Barry, the flu of 1918 should be sufficient justification—evidence of the cost in human lives of forgetting.
"There will be another pandemic," he said. "If we don't allow the lessons to be learned from it, we are really fools."