Author: Ronald Guenther
Written: February 14, 2014

(Question statement from Edward Guenther):

1927 Aunt Louise Dies of PolioGramma made a ritual of going to the local family graves in Coos County on Memorial Day. One of the graves was her sister’s, our Aunt Louise. Gramma grieved every day of her life for the loss of her big sister. One of Gramma’s favorite personal proverbs was, “Family is what counts and in the end all you have is family.”

In 1916 polio was declared an infectious epidemic in New York. Vaccines were several decades away. It was a crippling disease and sometimes killed. Aunt Louise was the first in the area to contract the deadly disease and it was deadly. Gramma Wilda never recovered from the death of her daughter. by Ed

(Response from Ronald Guenther):

She did die of polio, Ed, but in those days they called it infantile paralysis.  Polio is a terrible disease, it leaves one crippled, it kills.  In the case of Aunt Louise, it killed.  She came home from school and was tired.  That weekend, she got a sore throat.  Grandma Wilda was beside herself, there was a polio epidemic in Coos County at that time and Grandma just knew that Aunt Louise had it.  Moreover, Grandma had dreamt of muddy water and she knew that Louise had polio.  But there was no cure for it at that time.  Actually, Franklin Roosevelt had gotten it, and it had left him crippled, but he carefully hid that fact.  Monday, Louise did not feel like going to school, she stayed home, but asked mom to bring her homework home, which in fact mom did.  Grandpa poo-pooed that whole business about muddy water and said he did not believe that she had polio, she probably had a strep infection, which in those days they called septic sore throat.  When mom came home from school, she was already going in and out of consciousness, it was now obvious to all that she was sinking fast.  They had gotten to know Father Sheridan in Coos Bay and asked him to come out.  He gave her the last sacraments and it was the last time she was conscious and aware of her surroundings.  She died later that day, I believe in the evening.  It was Nov. 24, my birthday.

She had been very popular at her school and she had the prime place to sit, right next to the stove, so it was warm all winter long and all the other children wanted that seat.  But after she died, no one took that seat, it was left vacant the rest of the year.

Grandma and Grandpa wanted to bury her in the graveyard close to Myrtle Point, it is a beautiful graveyard, but she had once said that she would never want to be buried there and mom and Uncle Dick put up such a fuss that they buried her in Coquille.  Grandpa went there every day to visit the grave and one day he went there and the grave had fallen.  That was typical in those days.  You had a wooden casket and the wood would rot and the grave would sink.  Grandpa almost had a heart attack over that.  He smoothed over the grave and planted flowers around it.  That is what you see today.  Mom decorated that grave every year for the rest of her life on Decoration Day.  Right next to that grave is the grave of another little child, if I remember right, a little girl, who had been buried there a couple weeks earlier.  Mom always left flowers there, too.  One year when we went there, that grave had not been decorated and mom thought that all the people who remembered that little one were dead, but the next year, it was decorated, so her people are still in the area.

That, Brother Ed, is about the last days of Aunt Louise.  There is more there than you wanted to know, but anyway, that is the story.  Love, Ron