One hundred years ago, on January 30, 1919, my grandmother Freda Blustein died at age 24. Daughter of Polish immigrants in New York City, Freda was one of the estimated 50,000,000 global victims of the “Spanish Flu” influenza pandemic of 1918-1919. She left behind two young children, my father Robert, age 2, and his sister Gladys, age 4.
The ad below, which appeared in the New York Times exactly one year after her death, summarizes a family’s love for one who died so young:
