This year marks the 100th anniversary of the infamous 1918 influenza. From 1918-1919, the pandemic killed more than 500,000 people in the United and nearly 8,000 Iowans from 1918 -1920. In the coming months, Lab Link will continue to tell stories about the outbreak that changed a generation. The following is from the CDC’s Pandemic Influenza Storybook page.

Iowa patients suffering from influenza-related illnesses in 1918 are treated in a makeshift hospital in the Iowa State College (later named Iowa State University) gymnasium.

I am now 95 years old and I currently reside in San Antonio, Texas. In 1918, I was 6 years old and living in Strawberry Point, Iowa, with my parents and my 7–year–old brother, Clarence. My father Otto Kretzschmar owned a shoe store, and my mother, Minnie, was a homemaker.

My father was also a violinist, and one of my fondest memories is that of listening to him play during Christmas programs at the church. Later that year, I was home from school because I had an earache. My father was at home, too, because he was sick with the flu. A registered nurse, from Charles City, Iowa, came to live in our home to help care for my father. The nurse was with us for two weeks and then she left; my father died the next day. No one else in the family got sick with the flu.