Description of content: This recording is audio correspondence between a woman in Hawaii and John Allnutt, who sent reels back and forth to each other, like letters, circa 1968. The focus of the discussion is on the 1918 Flu epidemic by Mr. Allnutt, whose family owned a mortuary and funeral home in Greeley, Colorado. Mr. Allnutt, who was 15 years old in 1918, talks in great detail about buying their first hearst, the family's daily schedule, the decor and layout of the funeral home, mortuary equipment, collecting and dressing the deceased, home remedies for treating the flu, caskets and death rates, and other minutiae of the epidemic. The last quarter of the recording is a woman recounting (possibly reading a memoir) of her experience with the flu, as she transitioned from being a teacher to an emergency nurse in the Boston area.
Physical Description: Available in digital format on SoundCloud.
Recording length: 1 hour, 26 minutes.
Project description: Thanks to the generosity of the John W. Emery Family, in 2018 History Colorado hired an Assistant Curator of Oral History to manage all aspects of History Colorado’s oral history collections. In October of 2018, an initial survey of the 700 + recordings identified as oral histories began. The goal of the project includes adding the material to the Argus database and increasing its exposure and access.