1918 Spanish Flu: Heroes on UA Campus
By Diane Dittemore, Ethnological Collections Curator, Arizona State Museum and Tucson Historic Preservation Foundation board-member
The University of Arizona campus is quiet, having been partially shut down in order to help contain community spread of COVID-19. In March, University President Dr. Robert Robbins issued an edict: “The University of Arizona’s top priority is the health and safety of our students, our employees and our community…. “Please remember that we are all responsible for our community’s well-being.”
Dr. Robbins’s words and actions brought to mind the contributions of Dr. Byron Cummings—known affectionately as Dean Cummings, or the Dean—who was the University of Arizona’s ninth president (1927–28), first director of the Arizona State Museum (ASM) (1915–38), and the founding head of the Department of Archaeology (1915–37), during the grave days of the 1918–1919 Spanish flu pandemic.
The university’s academic activities were suspended due to the epidemic. Soldiers who were housed and training on campus for World War I became ill. Students became ill. Campus buildings were converted into hospital wards. And tending to them all were Byron and his wife Isabelle Cummings.
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Archival records at ASM from this time during Cummings’s tenure make reference to the disruption in the work of ASM over the course of the flu’s rampage. Payments for collections purchases were delayed and letters went unanswered for months, followed by deep apologies. This, of course, was in a time without the “benefit” of today’s many alternative means of communication.
Cummings’s biographer, archaeologist Dr. Todd Bostwick, wrote about the Dean’s involvement with students suffering from the flu:
This epidemic, which killed more than half a million Americans, reached Arizona, causing the University of Arizona to shut down in October and become under quarantine. All classes were suspended until January of 1919. True to his humanitarian religious convictions, Cummings and his wife stayed on campus and spent many hours nursing sick students.
It is not known how many in Pima County perished from the Spanish Flu. Archaeologist Homer Thiel of Desert Archaeology, Inc., who pored over death certificates from the time, has estimated that the number could have been around 300, or approximately 1 percent of the population. Statewide, one estimate has placed the number of deaths at 2750.
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In 2016, anthropologist Dr. David Wilcox published an essay that recounts more fully the story of the couple’s heroism, as they stayed on campus to tend to students in the makeshift hospital quarters at Old Main and what is now Herring Hall. Below are several excerpts; a link to the entire article is listed at the end of this essay.
The student newspaper, the Arizona Wildcat, passionately reported [in 1919] as Follows:
When the dreadful Spanish influenza broke out in the University in October, 1918, and people were running hither and thither in wild confusion, some leaving for distant homes, some for the mountains, some for the deserts, and some for other cities, Dean Cummings stepped up and took charge of an entire floor of the sick boy[s]. And when it is said he took charge it means all that the word implies. He nursed them, cheered them up, fed them and remained on the job until they were well. When he was doing this, excitement was at its highest. There had been one death on the campus, one in the business of the college, and many other deaths reported. There had been so many deaths in other places visited by the Influenza and so many boys were falling sick every day that most people thought that practically that everyone who had it would succomb [sic]. No one had any idea just how Arizona would fare. But Dean Cummings did not hesitate. From the goodness of his heart, with nothing to gain but a good case of influenza, Dean Cummings took his place by the side of those stricken down by the epidemic. It takes courage to step forth and take a place where Cummings stood. It takes courage to face the unseen and to offer your services to your stricken fellow-man. Dean Cummings showed the courage of the twentieth century. He showed the spirit of the American hero. When the Spanish Influenza broke out anew in January, 1919, Dean Cummings opened up the hospital and again took charge of the sick boys. Therefore into the Hall of Fame at the University of Arizona allow us to subscribe the name of Dean Cummings. When Isabelle Cummings died a decade later, a faculty committee went on record with a letter of appreciation that stated in part: “Particularly do we recall the service she rendered night and day to the students and in the homes of Faculty during the influenza epidemic of 1919.
Wilcox goes on to quote from a 1936 Arizona Daily Wildcat article, featuring the recollections of Allegra Frazier, a University of Arizona English professor:
It was a small campus then, and a very pretty, informal one. It was so lovely that every Sunday afternoon the townspeople would come out to see it, riding out in old style, horse-drawn victorias which were driven by Mexicans….In those days, …the cactus gardens were in front of Old Main, extending from where the fountain is now, to beyond the flag pole….Sometimes, Dean Cummings gave night lectures on Indian customs….When we had that terrible epidemic of influenza, the entire campus was quarantined and cards were issued as passes to the professors who lived off campus. Dean Cummings established a hospital in Herring Hall, our only gym, and cared for some of the patients himself.
In a 1950 publication in honor of Cummings, For the Dean, famed University of Arizona scientist Dr. A. E. Douglass, developer along with Dr. Emil Haury of the science of tree-ring dating, paid homage to his longtime associate: “I have always felt that his help day and night in the campus hospital at that time when nurses were scarce and students were dying, saved the lives of many students”
Today thousands of employees at the University of Arizona are working along with Tucsonans, pitching in to combat the effects of the coronavirus. With role models such as Dean Cummings and his wife Isabelle Cummings, all Tucsonans can be inspired to do what we can over the weeks and months ahead to help our beloved city, and the world, weather this viral storm.
References and Suggested Readings:
Berry, John M. 2005. The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History, revised edition. Penguin Books, London.
Bostwick, Todd W. 2006. Byron Cummings: Dean of Southwest Archaeology. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.
Douglass, A. E. 1950. Introduction: Our Friend, Byron Cummings. In For the Dean, edited by E. K. Reed and C. S. King. Hohokam Museums Association, Tucson, and the Southwestern Monuments Association, Santa Fe.
Frazier, Allegra, Frank N. Guild, Estelle Luttrell, G. E. P. Smith, and Frank H. Fowler 1929. Letter of Appreciation for Isabelle Cummings, November 1929. Byron Cumming BioFile, Special Collections Library, University of Arizona, Tucson.
David Wilcox essay, published in Glyphs, publication of the Arizona Archaeological and Historical Society.
To read more about Byron Cummings. Estimates for deaths in Arizona.
Homer Thiel’s research into Tucson deaths.
Thanks to the following people for their assistance: Darlene Lizarraga, ASM Marketing Director;Alan Ferg, ASM Archivist, retired; Rachael Black, AHS Archivist; Tobi Taylor, THPF Board Member; Dr. David Wilcox.
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