ABOUT OUR LEAGUE
HOW THE JUNIOR LEAGUE OF WASHINGTON HANDLED THE FIRST PANDEMIC
O
ne hundred years from now, when members of the Junior League of Washington (JLW) look back on our history to see how we handled the COVID-19 pandemic, they will have the good fortune of having most of our efforts well-documented whether it is on our website and blog, social media, or the 3039M magazine. We are fortunate that for all of the disruption to our daily lives, programming, and volunteer efforts, we as an organization are still active in helping to improve the lives of others within the Washington, DC community. This is not the first worldwide pandemic we as a League have lived through. How did the women of JLW handle the Spanish Influenza (Flu) epidemic of 1918? According to the CDC, the Spanish Flu was first identified in the United States (U.S.) in spring 1918 after being brought back by soldiers returning from World War I (WWI). For a pandemic that caused 675,000 deaths in the U.S., very little is written about how JLW handled the outbreak. Excerpts from the 1918-1919 Annual Report indicate there were a great many volunteers needed to bolster some of the League’s normal activities. However, most of those needs did not appear to be due to Spanish Flu fatalities. Rather, many women were pulled into “war jobs” that kept them from many of their Junior League duties, which included sewing clothing for
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Katie Hatfield
“poverty-stricken families” and volunteer work at local settlement houses (homes for lower-income families where women of means would often assist with education, childcare, and healthcare). Despite the difficulties presented by WWI, what was clear from reports of several of the committees within the Annual Report was that the focus for JLW at this time was on the destitute, specifically children. According to the Hospital Committee, “At the Children’s Hospital this year there are seven workers and each girl goes to the hospital one afternoon a week and amuses the convalescing children in the wards. The committee did not start until late in the fall on account of the epidemic of influenza, but at present they are doing regular and excellent work.” Mostly unhindered by the pandemic climate and despite also needing more volunteers, the committee was still able to donate nearly 300 Christmas gifts to children across various hospitals, orphanages, and institutions. Perhaps this is an indicator that JLW was mostly unaffected by the pandemic of 1918. Or, perhaps a lack of mention was because the ravages of war affected their efforts more than pestilence. At any rate, what is clear from the Annual Report of 1918-1919 is that the women of JLW continued to motivate each other to give more of themselves and remind each other of the importance of their good work – a theme that continues today.
