Naval Station Great Lakes cemetery tour goes virtual
Just over a century ago, Alice Lea andEmmaKotte spent theirwaking hours nursing solders atNaval Station Great Lakes who had contracted whatwas called the Spanish flu.
Both nurses, one of whomsuccumbed to the flu, are buried at the station’s cemetery on base. Their stories will be told during the virtual tour of the cemetery held at 10 a.m. Oct. 10 by theNational Museum of the American Sailor.
Typically, the annual tours are held on base, offering the public a rare chance to visit the small, closed cemetery where roughly 200 individuals are buried.
This year, TriciaMenke, the museum’s curator of education, andKim Ortega, museum technician, prerecorded the tour, walking through the cemetery pointing out headstones and talking about some of the individuals buried there. A live question-and-answer period will followthe tour to be held via Zoom.
“Even though folks can’t bewalking through the cemetery physically, they canwatch uswalk physically andwe can share things they don’t normally see, photos of individual service records, newspaper documents, historical photos,” Menke said.
Each year, the museum focuses on different individuals buried at the cemetery.
“People are very interested in cemetery tours,” Menke said. “They’re very popular this time of year. We get a little bit of the spooky factor, but I think people are just interested, too, inwhat all is represented in a cemetery. There
are so many different people fromso manywalks of life with different life experiences. We see so much of humanity in a cemetery, even a small one like ours.”
Menke said the museum decided to talk about the Spanish flu during this year’s cemetery tour.
“It’s very timely to talk about what the nurseswere dealing with andwhat it was like for the sailors,” Menke said.
Nurses Alice Lea and EmmaKottworked at the base when the flu pandemic hit in 1918 and 1919.
“Emma likely died of the Spanish flu,” Menke said. “One record indicates Alice may have died fromexposure to mustard gas, but cause of death is uncertain.”
Menke and Ortega have discovered a vivid account of that era given by nurse JosieMabel Brown, who survived the pandemic. Theywere calledNaval Nurses, butweren’t at that time members of theU.S. Navy, Menke said.
In her oral history, Brown said: “As one boy lay dying in bed, anotherwaited on a stretcher on the floor for the bed to empty. Each morning as the ambulance drivers would bring in more sick boys theywould carry the dead bodies out.”
Menke said they’ll discuss the experience of the nurses through Brown’s eyes. They’ll also talk about the sailors. “Theywere doing whatwe are doing,” for the pandemic, Menke said. “Things shut down quickly. Theywerewearing masks. Theywere not able to go out on liberty.”
Sailors whowere overseas duringWorldWar I returned to Great Lakes after having contracted the flu. “The first case in the Chicagoland areawas a sailor at Great Lakes. We’re ground zero for Chicagoland. It ran rampant through the base pretty quickly,” Menke said. “More of the nurses’work then was dedicated to Spanish flu patients, more than those injured in theWorldWar.”
The tour also will highlight Jack John Strong, who died while serving theUSS Wallace, a submarine. “It wasn’t during a battle. It was during an accident,” Menke said. “The submarine suffered a valve failure and ended up sinking… Strong is aboard the submarine, and sadly he is in the compartment as it is flooding. Therewere 26 of them whowere not able to get out of that section.
“Several other people whowere on the submarine survived. TheNavy rescued them, and the submarine was recovered. The bodies of those aboard including Strongwere recovered and hewas buried at Great Lakes. Hewas in his mid-20s.”
The tour also will focus on the cemetery’s large section of children who were buried there in the early 20th century. “There was a high death rate among infants because advances in health care are not anywhere near what we’re used to today,” Menke said. One infant in particular died in 1915 a few days after hewas born. Hewas the son of the station’s commander, she said.
“Our goal is to give you a full picture of the people who lived andworked at Naval Station Great Lakes,” Menke said.
Preregistration is required for the free program, which will be shownvia Zoom. It will be available after that for a limited time on YouTube. Register online at history.navy.mil.