Resilience of N.O. citizens was tested in 1918

Sporting events and festivals that we are accustomed to enjoying this time of the year are in limbo for the foreseeable future. 
 

Exactly when limbo ends is pure speculation.
 

In the interim, sports fans will have to get used to this critical moment in time when life and leisure, as we know it, are put on hold.
 

The last few division and class championship basketball games have taken place without spectators as the Louisiana High School Athletic Association (LHSAA) follows new state and federal guidelines to ensure the safety of the public and the student athletes. 
 

The Division I championship game last week ended in disappointment for St. Augustine, which lost to No. 1 Scotlandville, 66-39, for the second consecutive year. The win was the host Hornets’ fourth in a row.
 

The spring sports of baseball, softball, track and field, tennis and golf are in limbo as health officials monitor the fluid movement of this disease through the state and nation.
 

This is not the first time that a disease has tested the resilience of our young and old. An influenza epidemic was the first to have a far-reaching effect on local sports in 1918. We rallied from that setback as I’m sure we will from this rapidly spreading virus.
 

This is how it unfolded as written in a chapter of “The Golden Game: When Prep Football Was King in New Orleans,” and gathered from microfilm research in the special collections department of the Jefferson Parish Library:
 

An unwanted visitor
 

World War I was grinding to a close. The U.S. involvement lasted a comparatively short time, but as soldiers returned to their respective bases on the mainland, they brought with them an uninvited, deadly passenger.
 

At Fort Riley, Kansas, an Army private reported to the camp hospital just before breakfast on March 11 complaining of fever, a sore throat and headache. He was quickly followed by another soldier with similar complaints. 
By noon, the camp hospital had dealt with more than 100 ill soldiers. By week’s end that number rose to 500.
 

Within three months, other states were reporting similar maladies among the populations. By July, public health officials in Philadelphia issued the first bulletin naming the quickly spreading disease “Spanish Flu.”
The epidemic was a deadly by-product of the war, brought home by soldiers who lived, slept, ate and fought in the disease-ridden trenches of France and Germany. 
 

By the time it had run its course, the Spanish Flu had claimed 200,000 American lives, and the numbers continued to climb through the end of the war in November 1918.
 

By October, citizens of New Orleans began to experience flu-like symptoms, just as the city’s high schools were preparing for their football seasons to begin.
 

Organizers of the newly formed New Orleans Prep School Athletic Association placed football teams at Warren Easton, Jesuit, Manual Training (Newman) and Rugby Academy in a Senior Division, and St. Aloysius and Verrina Catholic School joined the second units at Easton and Jesuit in a Junior Division. 
 

Admission was set at 25 cents to attend a Senior Division game and 15 cents for a Junior Division contest. But the planning soon became moot.

As the flu spread throughout the city, school officials began to realize there might not be a season. The ability to schedule games outside of the city was hampered by the flu epidemic as it spread through the cities and backroad towns throughout the state.
 

On Oct. 9, the epidemic reached a critical point at home. Tulane announced it was canceling its football program. Schools in New Orleans and Baton Rouge closed. Football practice at Easton was postponed until the school reopened.
 

Football in limbo
 

The city’s Public School Board had scheduled a meeting in mid-October to decide if there would be a prep season at all. Within days, Easton’s athletic director and head coach (of all sports) Perry Roehm secured permission from the school board to hold limited workouts on the school grounds. Others followed suit.
 

On Oct. 10, the epidemic hit the Jesuit football team. Four of its best players, including  captain Gernon Brown, were infected. The school’s junior team discontinued practice then disbanded when the school closed.
 

Although local Catholic and private schools had not yet started classes, Manual Training players continued to work under new coach Twombly, while at Rugby, coach Bennie Clay was running practice sessions at Audubon Park by remote control. 
 

Quarantined for three weeks at the U.S. Army Reserve camp in Mississippi, the flu-stricken Clay mailed a correspondence course of formations and running plays to his prospects. He sent practice instructions to manager Curran, who, in turn, sent progress reports to the ailing coach.
 

Three Rugby players, along with five others from local prep schools, took advantage of the situation by journeying to Chatawa, Mississippi, for a hunting trip. They promised to stay in playing condition by taking along a football to toss around.
 

If the flu wasn’t bad enough, would-be players were entering the military just a month before the war ended. Easton captain Ed Toledano applied for the Field Artillery Officers Training Camp and was expected to be called away in November. Two other Easton players enlisted in the Navy.
 

All remained quiet
 

Opening day of the season came and went with no games scheduled. As the flu worsened, fall weather began to add to the deplorable conditions Orleanians had to face. Rain fell for days as the temperatures dropped and dampened. Commerce came to a veritable standstill as the U.S. Department of Health advised citizens to remain indoors. Because of a travel ban, all outdoor activities, particularly football workouts, were postponed indefinitely.
 

But as days passed, the weather had improved enough for the department of health to issue statements that the epidemic was subsiding. An editorial in The Times-Picayune called for the prep season to be extended. 
Prep League president P.J. Flanagan called a meeting of the schools on Nov. 3 to discuss scheduling games as some teams resumed practice.

The group favored Flanagan’s plan to play games scheduled in November and add more that were canceled when the opportunity permitted. But it became obvious that travel restrictions would limit the number of games and quality of opponents, and there would be no contest to determine a “state” champion.
 

The season finally got underway on Nov. 14, just a few days after the health department announced that the city was in remission from the Spanish Flu. 

Manual Training was the first to play. Short of opponents, the school founded by Isidore Newman, took on the “Jackies” of the West End Naval Station at Heinemann Park on South Carrollton and Tulane avenues, and lost, 12-0.

Because game officials were hard to come by at this time, a Tulane halfback, Harold Gentling, volunteered his services as referee and promised to obtain a number of his teammates to help officiate local high school games.
 

Four days following the initial game, Jesuit and Warren Easton’s teams got together for a game they had twice postponed. Again, the weather was cold and a nagging rain covered the city. But that didn’t stop “several hundred spectators,” as was reported, from paying two bits to watch the city’s iconic public and Catholic schools scrap under weather conditions that rendered the field virtually unplayable. Easton scored the only points in a 6-0 victory. 
 

Short and bitter-sweet
 

The football season lasted just eight games with no possibility of a state championship on the horizon. 
 

After Easton defeated Manual, 13-0, the following week, and the remainder of the season canceled, Roehm declared his team the Prep League champion. 
The holidays were approaching, and with the travel ban lifted, many high school students and their families would be visiting relatives out of town. Football was the last thing on the people’s minds.
 

But despite its disastrous start, the football season was deemed a success because the city had finally established an organization of schools that was run efficiently by professional men. 
 

Two years later, in 1920, the LHSAA was founded. Its centennial celebration, God willing, is supposed to take place this year. 
 

But during this time of uncertainty, hope, prayer and reflection, I’m reminded of an inspirational song I heard as a child in the dark days of World War II, song by entertainer Vera Lynn:
“We’ll meet again,
“Don’t know where, don’t know when,
“But I know we’ll meet again some sunny day;
“Keep smiling through,
“Just like you always do,
“‘Til the blue skies drive the dark clouds far away.”
 

Ron Brocato can be reached at [email protected].