Editor’s note
Every corner in San Francisco has an astonishing story to tell. Gary Kamiya’s Portals of the Past tells those lost stories, using a specific location to illuminate San Francisco’s extraordinary history — from the days when giant mammoths wandered through what is now North Beach to the Gold Rush delirium, the dot-com madness and beyond. His column appears every other Saturday, alternating with Peter Hartlaub’s OurSF.
The great Spanish flu epidemic had just struck the city. On Oct. 9, 169 cases were reported; one week later there were 2,000. Before the epidemic ran its course, 45,000 San Franciscans would fall ill and 3,000 would die.
By happy coincidence, just as the fighting ceased, the epidemic eased. On Tuesday, Nov. 12, The Chronicle reported that only 15 new cases had been reported Monday, compared with 81 on Sunday.
On Nov. 21, the city declared the epidemic over. It was premature — the disease flared up again in January with 600 new cases — but the worst of the crisis had passed.
Six months after the armistice, on Memorial Day in 1919, a 15-acre plot in Golden Gate Park hidden away near 10th Avenue and Fulton, called Heroes Grove, was dedicated to the memory of the American troops who were killed in the Great War. Thirteen years later, an 18-ton granite boulder, purchased by the San Francisco Chapter 1 of the Gold Star Mothers of America, was unveiled there.
One of the lesserknown monuments in the city, it is inscribed with the names of the 761 San Franciscans — 748 men and 13 women — who gave their lives in the war that was supposed to end all wars, but didn’t.