Join us for a Vashon Senior Center/Vashon Heritage Museum talk; The 1918 Influenza Pandemic: Stories of Vashon, Puget Sound, and the United States. Dr. Nancy Bristow, Vashon Islander, Professor of History at the University of Puget Sound, and author of American Pandemic: The Lost Worlds of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic; and Dr. Bruce Haulman, Vashon Islander, retired Professor of History at Green River College, and author of A Brief History of Vashon will talk about the Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918, its impact on the United States, on Puget Sound, and on Vashon Island.

After the 1918 pandemic an optimistic national narrative emerged that celebrated the successful fight against the pandemic, which resulted in a national "amnesia" that erased the painful memories so many Americans "held in their hearts", and suffered "privately, and often silently."  History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme (an aphorism often mistakenly attributed to Mark Twain), and we have the opportunity to ensure that this COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 is not forgotten and that the suffering it engenders is not carried privately and silently.