© 2009 By Michael Swickard, Ph.D.
Foreword to the local college’s first yearbook, written in a cave near Las Cruces the last days of March 1907: “It is finished… We have found ourselves in the position of the carpenter who hurried through the narrow, crooked streets of Boston, with his arms stretched awkwardly before him, praying that no one would run into him. He had the measure of a door. He had no yardstick! We have had no yardstick. Nor have our prayers been answered: for we have been ‘run into.’”
What ran into the college yearbook was a pandemic that killed many students in just two weeks. The swine flu scare reminds me of an article I wrote years ago about a controversy involving the name of the yearbook, Swastika (named before Hitler, but NMSU was reluctant after Hitler’s time to discard the name). My 1983 article included a description of a pandemic in Las Cruces and included two accounts of people who experienced those days of sickness:
The first manager of Swastika, Justin Weddell (Class of 1908) recalled the troubled days when the Swastika was founded. He said in an interview with me in 1970, “I came out to New Mexico in the fall of 1906 from Chicago. New Mexico was still a territory and would be for five and a half more years.”
Weddell became the starting quarterback for the football team that surprised the School of Mines in Socorro with a new invention, the forward pass. “It was the good weather that brought me out and the school fees certainly were reasonable — $5 per year in-state, $15 for out-of-state. Most kids called me ‘The Promoter’ because I got the first Swastika going.”
After much debate within the college community through most of January and early February 1907, the yearbook was founded on the 14th. Weddell was chosen as the manager. He had less than two months to put together the first yearbook.
Weddell explained the name: “We had such a hard time those two months that we choose the word Swastika because in Sanskrit it means ‘an auspicious beginning.’”
The printing date for the 182-page book was April 1. By the middle of March all that was left to do was finish some writing and layout the pages. Then disaster hit.
‘An epidemic of malignant scarlet fever’
Senior Grace Brown caught scarlet fever and died suddenly on Sunday, March 17. School was suspended for two weeks while the school and town of Las Cruces were quarantined.
The NMSU Literary magazine, The Collegian reported:
“An epidemic of malignant Scarlet Fever ravaged the community and this fearful disease took its toll. While all that is known to the medical profession was done by the health officers and the officers of the college, the disease had such a firm hold that no school was held for about two weeks, and even after that time there were a few isolated cases.”
Weddell acted quickly when he heard of the quarantine. He and some of the staff packed up the writing supplies and equipment and went out to a cave east of Las Cruces for the duration of the quarantine. Formaldehyde was used as the disinfectant and applied to every surface of the college and the rooming houses. The staff carried their own supply of formaldehyde with them.
While the Swastika staff quarantined themselves in the cave and finished the book, some of their classmates were not as lucky. Of the original nine seniors in the class of 1907, three died. In a special page about this tragedy, the 1907 Swastika said:
“In spite of the care that was given, however, Ben Scott, John Sullivan and Grace Brown were unable to withstand the ravages of the fever, and passed away forever. Their untimely death has been a sorrow to their schoolmates, and one we are unable to express.”
Many students died and only through a complete quarantine was the fever brought under control. The rules of the quarantine were: 10 feet apart in the daytime and 20 in the evening when conversing with outsiders. The Collegian commented that there were signs put up stating: “Boys take warning: One of the dormitory girls threatens, when released, to kiss the first fellow she meets.”
We’re much better off today
They still had their sense of humor in the middle of the crisis. After the fever was thought under control the school was reopened. The Collegian noted:
“On Friday the school reopened after having been closed for nine school days. Very little was done and lessons were assigned for Saturday… One feature was the strictness of President Foster in not allowing anyone to enter classes without a permit showing his perfect health and that of his associates.”
In this the Swastika organization was lucky since none of their members caught scarlet fever. Only one contributing editor was not with the staff since, at his rooming house, the fever was the heaviest. William Gallacher remembered the sickness that spring. “I wasn’t out with Justin because of the quarantine. In my rooming house 13 caught it and 13 died.”
In a 1978 interview he told me the names of the victims. “Don Robertson from Farmington caught it one evening. I sat with him throughout the night. He died the next morning at eight. Of the ones that caught it there were five girls and eight boys and every one of them died. Poor Sully (John Sullivan) woke up with a sore throat and was dead by nightfall.”
My 1983 story went on about the yearbook, but the purpose of this column is to note that pandemics have hit our area in the past and they were devastating. That we have not had any need to quarantine an entire town in southern New Mexico for most of a hundred years is due to both luck and a much more robust health-care system. Swine flu may frighten us, and there may be a number of victims, but we are much better off than a century ago.
Swickard is a weekly columnist for this site. You can reach him at michael@swickard.com.