This family treasure sits on a bookshelf in my piano room. I’ve written about it before. At first glance it seems an unusual keepsake. It would be easy to dismiss it as just “framed hair.” But the older I get, the more I appreciate this treasure created by my Grandma.
You see, that isn’t just any framed hair. It’s the hair of five of eight children born to my second great-grandparents Heber and Hattie. Four died as small children.
Lola lived just three years, eleven months, and six days. She died of diphtheria 27 July 1894.
Nina lived just one year, three months, and six days. She died of diphtheria 2 August 1894, five days after her older sister Lola died.
Montice, or Monty as she was called, lived just two years, ten months, and thirty days. She died of diphtheria 6 November 1900.
Edwin, or Ed as he was called, lived just six years, four months, and thirteen days. He died “suddenly with a ruptured appendix.”
The fifth child represented is my great-grandmother Blanche. She lived a wonderfully long life dying at age eighty-nine.
As my country is openly fighting over truth and as our federal government is rejecting established scientific facts and evidence about the efficacy of vaccines, I’ve thought often about my Great-Grandma Blanche’s description of her siblings deaths.
“My two sisters before me were Lola, . . . and Nina … They both died . . . with diptheria just five days apart.”
“My sister Montice . . . was a sweet little blonde whom we nicknamed “Monty”. On 29 Oct. 1900 my first brother Edwin Perry was born. When he was seven days old, Monty died suddenly with croupel diptheria. They thought at first it was just ordinary croup, and so, three little sisters were buried side by side in an old sage brush cemetery. About a week after Monty died, I came down with diptheria. Of course they didn’t have vaccines and antitocines as they do now and I hovered between life and death for three months.”
“On 11 March 1907 my brother Edwin died suddenly with a ruptured appendix. He was only six years old . . . Grandma Huband lived . . . about two miles from us. When Edwin died, they sent me to tell her as we didn’t have a phone or a car in those days. It seemed a long long walk for a little girl to go alone.”
Heber and Hattie suffered extreme loss. They buried four of their eight children. Three died from diphtheria, a childhood disease that is now preventable thanks to a vaccine. The fourth died from a ruptured appendix. Today, his death may have been preventable with surgical intervention and antibiotics—options that did not exist for Heber and Hattie.
Great-Grandma Blanche’s description of her lingering health challenges because of diphtheria is intense:
“I was left with a bad heart, was crosseyed and had some kind of convulsions. I was also left paralyzed in the legs. I remember they pushed me in a baby buggy for months. This was when I started to wear glasses and have worn them all [m]y life. I was five years old at this time.”
How has our public memory of what childhood was like before vaccines been so easily forgotten?
As a genealogist who has researched countless families who buried child after child who died of diseases we now have vaccines for, I am stunned by how easily people are embracing the anti-vax movement. As I write this there is a measles outbreak in my home state of Utah. Yesterday there were five cases. Today there are seven. Measles was considered eradicated in the United States in 2000. And now we have measles outbreaks in thirty-six states.
Truth is fragile. So is our collective memory of the past. If we want to help the current and future generations understand why vaccines are one of the single greatest scientific achievements of the modern age, we have to help them understand. We have to tell the stories of those who lived before vaccines. We have to talk about how people were overjoyed by each and every vaccine that was created. We have to help them understand the fragility of childhood before vaccines. We have to tell the stories of Lola, Nina, Monty, Blanche, and everyone who suffered from or died from childhood diseases that are preventable today.
When Blanche was born, her parents had already buried two children. Then they buried two more. I’ve experienced child loss. It’s a heartbreak that never leaves you. I cannot imagine losing four children.
Blanche shared a sweet story about her oldest sister Lola:
“When my little sister Lola was alive she stuck little twigs which father had trimmed from large trees in a bank of dirt. In a few years these twigs had rooted and they were the grove that were planted in the rear of the house which gave so much shade and made such a nice place to play.”
Lola’s sweet childhood play with discarded little twigs produced a grove of trees that shaded her family’s home. Lola, who died before she was four years old, left a physical legacy her younger sister, who never met her, felt was important enough to write about in her personal history.
Let’s be like Lola and plant a grove. But let it be a grove of truth. Let’s rebuild our collective memory of the past to help future generations never forget that before childhood vaccines families knew how it felt to say “and so, three little sisters were buried side by side in an old sage brush cemetery.”
Lola, Nina, Montice, and Edwin are not forgotten.
Vaccines save lives. And every life is precious.
As my friend Patty says, “Vaccines cause adulthood.”
Dear genealogist friends, what stories can you share from your own family about the loss of precious children from diseases that are preventable today because of vaccines? Those stories matter. Let’s talk about them with our communities and combat this wave of disinformation.